4 ms·

> the Bible (and lots of other old books and oral traditions) is a surprisingly reliable source... Going to need a source for that. > Noah's flood is as legit

> the Bible (and lots of other old books and oral traditions) is a surprisingly reliable source... Going to need a source for that. > Noah's flood is as legitimate as it has been for 100 years To an extent. 95%+ of the story is false, apart from there (probably) was a big flood. But the majority if the story is false. As with most of the stories in the bible, they tied them into some real events to ground them to the people, to myths of the age, then wove into them a fantasy story perhaps with enough grounding to reality to state "based on a true story", but probably not even that

4ntonius8lock 8y ago
I personally wouldn't have used the Bible as an example, but... I too am impressed that so many old folk tales/myths/legends have recently been found to have a basis of reality. I mean, the way I see it: There are stories from a decade ago 'based on a true story' and if you look at our modern 'myths', like a movie based on a true story, generally they are very loosely based on the true story. And that is with our modern ability to document and review what happened in the past. These stories were oral tradition for hundreds of years before being written. The fact that they have any basis left is amazing and a testament to the powerful events that resonated through history. It's a testament to the ability of humans to pass on information in a uni directional time dimension. * I'm completely non-religious.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > I too am impressed that so many old folk tales/myths/legends have recently been found to have a basis of reality. Why wouldn't they? You're going to want to pass on interesting stories. And what other means would they have had to transfer knowledge if not through oral tradition? It would have been the only available medium. The stories deemed interesting or important would have been the way people would have entertained each other. The other thing to keep in mind is that with these stories we can suffer from historical pareidolia - where if the parts of the story fit the truth just enough we assume that must be the basis. I don't know if that's always the case.
  - 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
    Why wouldn't they is already in my first post: play broken phone in school and see what I mean. 400 years = 20 generations. How accurate is the retelling of things that happened just 5 or 10 years ago... and for which pictures, books and video exist for evidence? We are in the post modern era where we have to make distinctions like personal truth and objective truth. Amazement comes when reality exceeds expectations. If this isn't just the case of pareidolia or cherry picking data: It seems I see maintaining an oral history that retains any connection to reality over hundreds of years as amazing. That is because I see human communication as highly flawed, even in today's day where recording and reproduction are easy. Also, think of education; how much more standardized and advanced it is today and still people have a hard time passing things on accurately. Some people think of human communication as less flawed than I do. So I guess there would be no amazement for them.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      > Why wouldn't they is already in my first post: play broken phone in school and see what I mean. Broken phone is you listening to a message whispered once to you, and there's always a jerk in the middle who changes the story to something totally different. These stories would have been told to you over and over again until you know it by heart. They would naturally get embellished, and that's what we see - floods cover the earth men become gods, mountain peaks become heaven. It's also important to note that, while we don't know events from 5 to 10 years ago off by heart, we all remember where we were when 9/11 happened - those are the sorts of events that would have been passed down. And really, all we get out of these stories is the equivalent to "9/11 happened" - many of the stories lose all other details. For instance, there's a general consensus that Noah's Ark is based upon a flood myth shared by many different cultures is drawn from a Mesopotamian precursors, and seems to stem from ~2000 BCE. There are a bunch of retellings with a bunch of different details - there's heroes and gods, but the water varies from "killing everything on Earth" to "a river flooding", and was due to sin, or overpopulation, or just the caprices of the Gods. That does sound like what would happen if you were playing telephone.
      - 8y ago
weberc2 8y ago
> As with most of the stories in the bible, they tied them into some real events to ground them to the people, to myths of the age, then wove into them a fantasy story perhaps with enough grounding to reality to state "based on a true story", but probably not even that To the extent that the bible is inaccurate, it's certainly less a conspiracy to mislead and more a gradual loss of accuracy due to being passed down generations orally before eventually being written down. EDIT: I’m perplexed that this is a controversial opinion. What evidence is there that supports a conspiracy explanation?
- rexpop 8y ago
  cui bono
neffy 8y ago
It's obviously debatable - but we know that there was a huge flood at the end of the Ice age that would have raised the sea level considerably in a relatively short period. This is about 12,500 years ago. There is also evidence in India, and in the Indian ocean, for civilisation there at that time. And finally that particular myth of a huge flood is found in pretty much every culture. So maybe there was a guy called Noah, maybe there wasn't. But I strongly suspect there was an actual world wide flood within the mythic memory of our species.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  I expect some time since we began using speech to tell stories there was something considered to be a great flood somewhere. Either that's true or you've got a Russell's teapot situation anyways. In both cases it doesn't make the story of Noah's ark true.

4ntonius8lock 8y ago

I personally wouldn't have used the Bible as an example, but... I too am impressed that so many old folk tales/myths/legends have recently been found to have a basis of reality. I mean, the way I see it: There are stories from a decade ago 'based on a true story' and if you look at our modern 'myths', like a movie based on a true story, generally they are very loosely based on the true story. And that is with our modern ability to document and review what happened in the past. These stories were oral tradition for hundreds of years before being written. The fact that they have any basis left is amazing and a testament to the powerful events that resonated through history. It's a testament to the ability of humans to pass on information in a uni directional time dimension. * I'm completely non-religious.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> I too am impressed that so many old folk tales/myths/legends have recently been found to have a basis of reality. Why wouldn't they? You're going to want to pass on interesting stories. And what other means would they have had to transfer knowledge if not through oral tradition? It would have been the only available medium. The stories deemed interesting or important would have been the way people would have entertained each other. The other thing to keep in mind is that with these stories we can suffer from historical pareidolia - where if the parts of the story fit the truth just enough we assume that must be the basis. I don't know if that's always the case.
- 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
  Why wouldn't they is already in my first post: play broken phone in school and see what I mean. 400 years = 20 generations. How accurate is the retelling of things that happened just 5 or 10 years ago... and for which pictures, books and video exist for evidence? We are in the post modern era where we have to make distinctions like personal truth and objective truth. Amazement comes when reality exceeds expectations. If this isn't just the case of pareidolia or cherry picking data: It seems I see maintaining an oral history that retains any connection to reality over hundreds of years as amazing. That is because I see human communication as highly flawed, even in today's day where recording and reproduction are easy. Also, think of education; how much more standardized and advanced it is today and still people have a hard time passing things on accurately. Some people think of human communication as less flawed than I do. So I guess there would be no amazement for them.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > Why wouldn't they is already in my first post: play broken phone in school and see what I mean. Broken phone is you listening to a message whispered once to you, and there's always a jerk in the middle who changes the story to something totally different. These stories would have been told to you over and over again until you know it by heart. They would naturally get embellished, and that's what we see - floods cover the earth men become gods, mountain peaks become heaven. It's also important to note that, while we don't know events from 5 to 10 years ago off by heart, we all remember where we were when 9/11 happened - those are the sorts of events that would have been passed down. And really, all we get out of these stories is the equivalent to "9/11 happened" - many of the stories lose all other details. For instance, there's a general consensus that Noah's Ark is based upon a flood myth shared by many different cultures is drawn from a Mesopotamian precursors, and seems to stem from ~2000 BCE. There are a bunch of retellings with a bunch of different details - there's heroes and gods, but the water varies from "killing everything on Earth" to "a river flooding", and was due to sin, or overpopulation, or just the caprices of the Gods. That does sound like what would happen if you were playing telephone.
    - 8y ago

weberc2 8y ago

> As with most of the stories in the bible, they tied them into some real events to ground them to the people, to myths of the age, then wove into them a fantasy story perhaps with enough grounding to reality to state "based on a true story", but probably not even that To the extent that the bible is inaccurate, it's certainly less a conspiracy to mislead and more a gradual loss of accuracy due to being passed down generations orally before eventually being written down. EDIT: I’m perplexed that this is a controversial opinion. What evidence is there that supports a conspiracy explanation?

rexpop 8y ago
cui bono

neffy 8y ago

It's obviously debatable - but we know that there was a huge flood at the end of the Ice age that would have raised the sea level considerably in a relatively short period. This is about 12,500 years ago. There is also evidence in India, and in the Indian ocean, for civilisation there at that time. And finally that particular myth of a huge flood is found in pretty much every culture. So maybe there was a guy called Noah, maybe there wasn't. But I strongly suspect there was an actual world wide flood within the mythic memory of our species.

zamadatix 8y ago
I expect some time since we began using speech to tell stories there was something considered to be a great flood somewhere. Either that's true or you've got a Russell's teapot situation anyways. In both cases it doesn't make the story of Noah's ark true.