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> Also doesn't help that every major culture that's old enough has a Great Flood in their history somewhere. It's almost like it's a TV trope of the ancient tim
by jessriedel 3y ago
> Also doesn't help that every major culture that's old enough has a Great Flood in their history somewhere. It's almost like it's a TV trope of the ancient times.
I know you're trying to argue that this is evidence that humans are prone to pass on exaggerated stories about floods, but if there really was an ancient worldwide flood then we would expect most cultures to have a story about it. That is, without further details, the prevalence of such stories worldwide is evidence for an actual worldwide flood, not evidence against it.
- brnt 3y agoOr evidence for it working as a mechanism in storytelling, ie a trope. It's only one of the many patterns that recur in prehistoric religion, and those aren't indicative of a physical constant either. Well, maybe the constant is our brains.
- kiba 3y agoRivers are prone to flooding.
- chuckadams 3y agoWhen you’re a farmer at the dawn of civilization and the river valley your entire village has lived in for centuries floods, it’s like the whole world has flooded. It’s a basic matter of perspective, it doesn’t require world-wide acts of magic to explain.
- jessriedel 3y agoI'm not claiming it requires worldwide acts of magic to explain. I'm saying that worldwide stories are evidence for a worldwide floor, not evidence against it. Consider: if there were few other stories of great flood around the world, we would take this as evidence against a worldwide floor. So if there are such stories, it's evidence for.
- chuckadams 3y agoI am guessing “flood” got autocorrected in each place…. Well I’m arguing the opposite: that the multiple flood myths across civilizations simply means that floods happened a lot.