They were there before Noah. Have you ever read the Bible? Let's say it rained twenty inches a day (i.e. a horrific storm.) How much water is that? Think that's enough to fill the oceans with an average depth of over two miles? Because you love to count! Muahahah! One line of a post! Two! Two lines in a post! Now - three! Three lines in a post! Muahahah!
The oceans have been there from the beginning: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:1-2) The land didn't appear until the third day. If you're going to believe fairy tales like the Flood, you should at least get to know your fairy tales.
20 inches up, 20 inches down At least some one come up with a statement , otherwise we even would not have that statement.
It was an error to you it was directed to billvon 20 inches of rain . (Water have to evaporate to come down) So sorry to rattle your feathers >
Can you try to make that make sense? If the water's there it can evaporate, but enough water to cover all the Earth, including Everest? 30,000+ feet deep?
Perhaps one needs to consider metaphor and allegory when contemplating old stories. Troy was once a myth(whose telling was over a considerably shorter time than that of the flood). Do we dismiss Troy as unreal because we do not accept the existence of a god who disguised as a shepard rained down arrows of plague on the invading Hellenes? Would you throw the baby out with the bath water? "myth" bespeaks a bias and a closed mind.
But the Bible is the absolute truth! And myths are just that. Don't go trying to weasel out of the fact that most of the Bible is plain old myth.
?? Of course not. Like almost all myths, it contained some truth. Santa Claus is a myth - but there are grains of truth there (St. Nicholas was a real person.) The biblical Flood is a myth - but also likely contains elements of truth (i.e. a Black Sea flood.) The biblical Creation story is a myth - but also likely inspired by real events (i.e. the Nile did flood once a year then retreat, leaving fertile dry ground that things grew on.) Hobbits were a myth - but it turns out there may have actually been hobbits. (Homo floresiensis) The Pied Piper is a myth - with again some elements of truth. The definition of "myth" does not include the stipulation that everything about it is false. Just that it is a traditional story, usually with elements of the supernatural.
Because a story can be true. Why would anyone be concerned about calling something a myth when it's clearly made-up bullshit?
I've seen myth differentiated from story, fable, tale, history, and the like, as having the property that it's always true. Meanwhile, I see that my "slow comet/smaller Earth" account of the Noachian Flood, published years ago and several times in various places, has been lost in the tides of the intertubes.
extrapolating from known data: We know that before the end of the last glacial period our species was capable of monumental stone architecture which implies advanced civilization. We know that massive storms accompanied the end of the ice with melt-water pulses that would be on the order of tens of meters in a few decades. Added to which, we know that ice has a gravitational effect. It has been estimated that if the Greenland icecap were to melt, the loss of gravity would lower sea level around Greenland bu 1-3 meters.-----that water has to go somewhere else. OK Is it too difficult to extrapolate that there was/were indeed flood/s accompanying the end of the glaciers? And that stories of those floods would persist? We know that: The Hellenes added their gods and goddesses into the story of the battle for Troy----this did not diminish the veracity of Troy story. Why then would the god of the bible being added into the flood stories then diminish the veracity of the flood story? Are you sure that you are not proceeding from prejudice?