I know the Bible never claims to be perfect and it is refreshing to hear that you understand that.
I'm honestly surprised that you didn't know my stance on it because I mention it a lot.
The Bible is neither perfect nor complete.
In Gen. 6 13 God tells Noah that he is going to put an end to all people. Since Noah was to be saved this implies that anyone not with him would die.
Then Gen. 6 17-18 he makes this clearer.
Finally in Gen. 7 21-23 it says that everything that breathes air died as a result of the flood, excepting Noah and his family.
You make a strong point with these references, but I hope you can understand why they might not be that convincing to me.
One of the main issues I have with the Bible is the matter of
perspective. Who wrote what and when?
The book of Genesis is the first book attributed to Moses. The belief is that either he or some scribe wrote the book.
Now, what the Bible does not mention is how either of them gained this information. They did not live until many centuries after the death of Joseph in Egypt.
The story was either preserved as a written record which was translated into ancient Hebrew or it had been passed down orally from generation to generation.
Neither of these methods are perfect and they wouldn't necessarily reveal who originally recorded these events.
The only other alternative is that Moses received all of this information via direct revelation. If that was the case, then I could not dispute the claim that all other flesh had died, but we will never know.
Fortunately, (for me at least) the LDS Church has other books of scripture that support many Biblical events, such as the existence of Noah, his building of the Ark and of a world-wide Flood event.
They also help us better understand these and other Biblical events.
For example, the Bible claimed that the language of "all the earth" had been confounded at the Tower, but the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon claims that the language of Jared and his family and friends as not changed but remained pure.
So, when the Bible says "all", it might not mean literally ALL, but more like every member of a certain group. Like those who built the Tower.
The Book of Moses, which was received by Joseph Smith through revelation, revealed that Noah most likely had more children than the three mentioned in the Bible, but those three were considered righteous, so that was most likely why they were the only ones mentioned.
The Bible also didn't mention the other children of Adam and Eve which had to have existed, otherwise who did Cain marry and have all those other children with that the Bible mentioned?
This is why I said one of my main issues with the Bible is of
perspective. It leaves out many relevant things because it wants to focus on only what it wants to focus on.
However, more to the point, the Book of Moses does record God's declaration to Noah that "all flesh" would be destroyed in the Flood.
I admit that does look bad for my argument, but God complained about the wicked and how He gave Noah a hundred years to preach repentance to them before He made this declaration.
So, by "all", maybe He meant only the wicked? Or those who rejected Noah's preaching? I mean, how likely was it that Noah preached to every single person on the planet at the time?
That there was no flood. I could provide links or you might look up the concept of a population bottleneck. The gist of it is that if a population of a group is greatly reduced the genetic diversity of the group will also be greatly reduced. And that diversity will take some time to develop again. For example cheetahs went through such an event about ten thousand years ago. Scientists can calculate that their population got down to less than ten breeding individuals. As a result all cheetahs are very closely related to each other genetically than you are to your sisters or brothers. There is no problem doing organ transplants with cheetahs. With people extensive tissue matching needs to be done. If the Noah's Ark story were true the threat of waking up in a cheap hotel bathtub missing a kidney could be a reality.
That is just one example of how we know that the story is not true.
Thank you for sharing this, but again, there are just too many variables at play for me to rule anything out.
First of all, the scriptures (by this I mean the LDS canon) claim that the species began with only the two members, Adam and Eve - so if they could gain diversity once they could possibly do it again.
We are talking about people that lived to be almost a thousand years old. They were obviously very different from us today and cheetahs for that matter.
One of the main reasons why I believe in a world-wide deluge (other than the scriptural account) is the fact that Joseph Smith claimed that the Flood had been the baptism of the Earth.
However, like any baptism by immersion, the person is lowered into the water and brought back up again. No one is thrown into the water with a splash.
I mention this because there isn't a lot of descriptions about the Flood event. Yes, the water covered the mountains, but did it cover every mountain everywhere at the same time?
I always imagined it being like an actual baptism.
I see it as water beginning to fill and cover one region of the Earth and then it spreads across the entirety of it. And while some regions are being flooded, the initial flood zone begins to dry out.
To Noah's perspective, floating atop the water, it would look like the entire planet was covered all at once.
I think people had time and it is my belief that God may have prepared other means to save other righteous people.
Noah may have been riding that initial wave for a while, but other places on Earth dried up before they did wherever Noah landed.
Either way, whether our genetics today doesn't compare to the ancient's or there were more people who survived, I don't see any solid reason to stop believing.