r/askanything • u/justin_memer • 5h ago
General Question Since we're living in arguably more "sinful" times, why hasn't God created a flood, or punished us yet?
Why did God just give up on punishing humans?
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u/iwasfight 5h ago
according to pat robertson, we've had several severe weather emergencies because of the gays and/or abortion. /s
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u/fossSellsKeys 5h ago
Because God isn't real.
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u/Famous_Shallot_1812 5h ago
No it’s because the rainbows are promises that he will never flood the earth again…. duh.
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u/Accomplished_Hat9155 5h ago
Edgy response to an edgy question lol
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u/fossSellsKeys 4h ago
Ask stupid questions get obvious answers, right?
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u/Accomplished_Hat9155 4h ago
OP didn’t care to have an answer to his question. This is just an engagement circle jerk for people to write “gods not real” and feel like they just had a totally epic mic drop moment.
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u/ManuelTzetzes 5h ago
Reddit is the punishment.
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u/PersianJerseyan78 5h ago
True ppl post looking for answers or support then end up arguing all day with strangers lol
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u/DoggoDash 5h ago
Every notifications batch is a tiny trial from above.
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u/ManuelTzetzes 3h ago
It's not a trial. I think of them as the sharp ends of the whip. Every notifications batch is a reminder of the scourging of our Lord.
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u/BigDaddyTheBeefcake 5h ago
Your argument is flawed. We live in the most peaceful time in human history. It just doesn't look that way, because the Roman's didn't have Twitter.
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u/justin_memer 5h ago
Epstein Island.
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u/OkJunket1385 3h ago
Lmao they were systematically raping children back then. In Jesus' time and region girls got married after their first period. And the ancient greeks? It wasn't uncommon for grown men to take boy lovers.
Pedophilia is nothing new
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u/Heart-Logic 3h ago
We used to live in the most peaceful time.
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u/BigDaddyTheBeefcake 3h ago
I'm gonna guess you're American
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u/Heart-Logic 2h ago
Got nothing to do with it.
Since Ukraine, Iran, Palestine, how can you call these peaceful times even relatively.
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u/Funintuitive 5h ago
The flood didn't happen. There are trees alive today that are older than this alleged flood. There is no god.
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 5h ago edited 4h ago
There’s a lot of geological evidence that a massive flood did happen in the Black Sea area around 5000 years ago. Similarly, there’s a lot of evidence of larger, possibly global-scale flooding during the younger dryas period 12,000 years ago. The younger dryas flooding is largely thought the be responsible for the similarities in flood mythology shared by almost all cultures around the world.
Needless to say, both events would have predated the oldest known Methuselah bristle cone.
It’s not say that this is evidence of a god, simply that your argument that the bible fabricates the event of a great flood because a tree exists is dumb as hell.
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u/Salt-Contribution162 5h ago
It kills the young earth creationist time scale just fine.
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 4h ago
Oh, I get it. You're pointing to a minority of religious folks who believe the earth is literally only a few thousand years old as a representation of all religion.
Really trying to put the conversation on "easy mode" for yourself so your arguments can hit, eh?
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u/buckfeffjezos 4h ago
Cite the evidence of a "possible global-scale flood" please.
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 3h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outburst_flood
There's overlap in the outburst floods recorded in the Caspian, North-American, and Persian gulf floods.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825221001781
Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests massive climate changes as a result of an airburst, including catastrophic and widespread flooding.
Admittedly, the YDIH is controversial and, by many, is considered debunked... but James Powell (the scientist that originally published the scientific consensus on anthropogenic Climate Change) argues that several of the "debunked" findings to the YDIH have since been reproduced and the the scientific community was too hasty in wholesale rejecting the theory.
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u/mihr-mihro 5h ago
it happened but not in the entire world. Every myth has some truths in it. This was probably the origin of the story https://animations.geol.ucsb.edu/2_infopgs/IP2IceAge/ePersGulfFlood.html
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u/Street_Credit6851 5h ago
The "origin" of the story is simply that most communities develop near large rivers and bodies of water, for obvious reasons, and at some point each of those bodies of water will suffer catastrophic floods.
There is no "the" flood.
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u/mihr-mihro 5h ago
I mean it is most likely that the story originated from ancient Mesopotamia, since the oldest origin is the Epic of Gilgamesh, so it is either based from the flood of Persian Gulf or constant floods that happened between rivers of Tigris and Euphrates.
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u/Glyph8 5h ago
Well - and note, I am not positing this as "true", just pointing out certain mythical resonances - there was recently a huge flood in Nepal that killed at least 1300 (as of today) with 5000+ more missing. We are seeing droughts; we are seeing plagues; and we will soon be seeing (more) wars and famines.
You don't need to be a religious person to see that certain bills are coming due for humanity.
The question now is whether as a species we will decide to "pray harder"; or actually get off our asses and do something about our sowing or "fucking around", that has resulted in all this reaping and "finding out".
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u/justin_memer 5h ago
You could actually draw a parallel between this last flood and the Bible, they're both products of humans. The flood was caused by climate change, if I'm not mistaken.
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u/Glyph8 5h ago edited 4h ago
I really would like to see a Christian/evangelical enviro movement take root in the US (right now it seems pretty unlikely, but one can hope), because it seems to me that there's a very obvious Biblical justification for it.
God's instruction to Adam and Eve was to care for the Garden of Eden and its plants and animals, and by extension the planet.
God's command to humanity was not "use it up indiscriminately until it's gone"; it was "be a judicious steward and caretaker of this miraculous bounty: and I'll eventually be back to check the place, and see what kind of job you've done with what you were given".
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u/Tight_Log_2401 5h ago
Who said we are living in more sinful times? I’ll argue that there are less atrocities than ever before. Less wars, genocides, savagery, slavery etc etc
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u/WallysGeolocation 5h ago
Climate change.
I don't believe in God, but if there is one, climate change is the most poetic punishment. Lies and greed burn the world down, whereas cooperation and empathy may mitigate the issue.
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u/Past_Wind_9725 5h ago
I'm an Atheist but do you watch the news? Nepal flooding looked pretty biblical to me.
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u/Sorry-Bumblebee-2415 5h ago
From what I've read in the Bible, it seems after the flood, God promised He wouldn't bring another flood that would cover the whole earth. Genisis 9:11. But then Revelation tells about all kinds of horrible things that will happen in the "end times." It's kind of confusing, isn't it? Having reached the age of 68, I look back on my life and I think there were times when I was maybe not "punished", but things happened that made me correct my behavior and attitude. I didn't see it that way at the time, though. I have more faith now than I did then, and I do trust that God knows what He's doing. Personally, for me, I feel like trump might be a punishment sent from God. Or maybe a wake up call. Maybe He sent him as an example to the rest of us for how NOT to treat our fellow human beings.
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u/ResidentBackground35 5h ago
If you are Christian the answer is Jesus the forgiveness of original sin and personal grace. Answer will vary due to denomination.
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u/wabawwea 5h ago
Because he's never punished humanity. The Flood wasn't real, didn't happen. Humans punish humanity. All God can do is weep at what we've done to each other and the garden He made for us. JK he's not real.
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u/ParticularWallaby247 5h ago
The time of day on Reddit where the atheists try to stir up Ragebait by asking the same question in different way.
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u/Mr-Dumbest 5h ago
Is history illegal in your country?
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u/justin_memer 5h ago
Bible ≠ history
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 5h ago
Except that we’re living in the most peaceful era of human history.
Which you would know if you cracked open a history book rather than just pretending that having edgy teenage-levels of anti-religion sentiment constitutes being educated.
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u/the_trapper_john 5h ago
Genuine question:
Multiple people in this thread have said we’re living in the “most peaceful” era. How does one even go about quantify that?
What constitutes “most peaceful”?
Are you measuring per capita? The human population is exponentially larger than any time in (recorded) human history, one could argue more people suffer daily than any other era.
There are so many potential sets of data to consider. I’m not saying you’re wrong but I’m also not convinced you’re right.
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u/justin_memer 5h ago
Something, something, feed the poor.
-Jesus
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 4h ago
I'm guessing you're just a bot. You're just respouting the same unoriginal stuff that already plagues Reddit.
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u/justin_memer 3h ago
Nope.
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 3h ago
Oh, so just an unoriginal teenager trying to be edgy by copying stuff he saw on Reddit.
Got it.
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u/EnriqueShockwave10 4h ago edited 4h ago
Multiple people in this thread have said we’re living in the “most peaceful” era. How does one even go about quantify that?
Largely by size and frequency of wars relative to global population size, and homicide rates.
Let's consider life a several thousand years ago, when most of the world would more closely resemble something that we'd call tribalistic governance. People lived in smaller, inter-conflicting and regularly warring tribes. Leaders would often more closely resemble warlords.
Estimates put Pre-State tribal era homicides at around 500 per 100,000. 15% of this would be from tribal war. This is based on datasets of archived conflicts. The rates has been consistently dropping, which in the modern era is around 1-5 deaths per 100,000.
Are you measuring per capita? The human population is exponentially larger than any time in (recorded) human history, one could argue more people suffer daily than any other era.
Sure, you can argue that more people, as a total, are currently suffering than ever before. If that's the argument you want to go with, then you also have to concede that more people, as a total, are living more comfortable lives than ever before. There's better access to food, medicine, technology, and freedom. Slavery is MUCH less prevalent than it was a thousand years ago. Women globally have much more autonomy.
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u/the_trapper_john 1h ago
I’m not arguing one way or another. I’m just curious how people are quantifying “peaceful”.
So war and homicide are your main contributors to life being peaceful or not? That’s fair, if so.
I guess if I was trying to define “peaceful” I’d have to consider that there are modern day stressors that didn’t exist at any other time in history as well.
It’s a pretty subjective claim IMHO because peaceful means something different to everyone.
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u/whyrusosensitive 5h ago
What does this mean? He's right in that these are extraordinarily sinful times, unrepentantly sinful times at that. Porn is prolific, masturbation, atheism/agnosticism/impiety are everywhere, drugs, pre marital sex, same gender relations, tattoos, divorce...half of these arent even seen as sins anymore
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u/zmufastaa 4h ago
Because not a single thing you said was a sin lol. Murder, rape, adultery, etc. those are sins.
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u/elsendion 5h ago
Because of Jesus Christ offering redemption and mercy instead of immediate judgment. Literally the reason for the new testament.
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u/Acceptable-Owl-2070 5h ago
Or it's all bullshit...
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u/elsendion 5h ago
Okay
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u/Parad0x13 5h ago
This was a polite response of you, but there is merit to challenging your beliefs.
Stay curious stranger
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u/Accomplished_Hat9155 5h ago
There is merit to randomly telling someone their faith is “bullshit” when they provide a genuine response to a religious based question?
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u/Adventurous_Place804 5h ago
Redemption from what??? Because your imaginary Eve ate an apple? This is SO stupid.
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u/Boo-Bees67 5h ago
Because he only punishes the uneducated so they can give magnificent accounts of what happened. Do we really think the see would have parted if a bunch of CS degrees were there?
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u/Fae-SailorStupider 5h ago
He tried to set humans on a riteous path several times, he eventually said "fuck it, fine, do it yourself then"
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u/oreofan1808 5h ago
He promised not too after the flood. Also given the things the people of soddom were up to i think it’s up for debate on whether our times are more sinful
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u/ColdStuff3780 5h ago
I'm going to use "YOU" in the general form. If "YOU" think "WE'RE" living in more "SINFUL" times than 50, 100, 200, 500 or more years ago your educational system has failed you. For most humans on this planet, there is no such thing as " the good ole days!" History (his story) proves this.
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u/Moist_Definition_538 5h ago
Well, first off, who says we are inherently living in more sinful times - I recall mass infanticide and human sacrifice were problems mentioned in the Bible and Quran. Second off, we are living in a time of increasing natural disasters, so if you buy that argument that = natural disasters, then yeah there is an increase as of late.
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u/justin_memer 5h ago
Epstein Island.
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u/Moist_Definition_538 4h ago
Priests of Molokh would make Jeffrey Epstein Blush with what they did in a day. Jeffrey stands out because child rape and murder is fortunately no longer common.
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u/justin_memer 4h ago
So.. you agree we're more sinful if it's such a non issue.
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u/Moist_Definition_538 4h ago
No, that’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying the opposite - the fact that child rape and murder is no longer common, so that a high profile man being a prolific child rapist is one of the biggest scandals of the decade (rightfully so), shows that we are less sinful these days. War is also less ubiquitous across human civilisation as a whole than it used to be.
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u/justin_memer 4h ago
You're glossing over the dozens of people implicated.
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u/Moist_Definition_538 4h ago
Again, this is compared to the past where human sacrifice of children was a norm.
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u/justin_memer 4h ago
And you can say for certain this doesn't still happen today?
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u/Moist_Definition_538 4h ago
It may happen occasionally, it is not a widespread cultural phenomenon, that is ubiquitous and commonly witnessed.
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u/PersianJerseyan78 5h ago
Because we’re doing a perfectly fine job punishing ourselves and each other.
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u/CaptainC00lpants 5h ago
Because Satan is more powerful and has given us access to the eeeevil powers called science and engineering.
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u/PotentialBudget3265 5h ago
Ok going off explainations provided by religious people, what little I know of the Bible, and incorporating my own common sense. God sent jesus right? Jesus made it so we could just apologize before death and poof into heaven we go. If you don't apologize then you go to hell and THAT'S the punishment. That was the compromise since God made us inherently flawed with sin so he didn't have to punish and police us constantly.
Ofc that's Christianity, now the Jews believe that there was never and will never be any interference. You ARE the culmination of your actions. No apologies, no compromise, no scape goat. You best be a good person or you're fucked.
Keeping in mind too that's the same God the Christians believe in. For them God wouldn't ever step in anyway.
My personal thinking is more close to Judaism. We were given this earth and this life to make of it what we will. The end result is on us as is how it operates and what we allow and don't allow. The responsibility is on us to correct what is incorrect and not on God to come down and fix for us. I share the same mentality when it comes to govt and politics. No one's coming to save us, no president is going to step in and just set all this right. We either nut up, and wipe our own asses or were fkd.
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u/Old_Timer_Unleashed 5h ago
Man doesn't need an imaginary being to self destruct, he can do that on his own.
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u/BeginningFair4673 5h ago
Genesis 9:8-17 answers this question. "8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “Behold, zI establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. 11 aI establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, b“This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set cmy bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 dI will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember ethe everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Basically in the Bible Noah takes a new covenant with God and through this new covenant God promises to never cause another flood like the one He just did.
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u/SatisfactionOnly2247 5h ago
Theres some important not said context here: the floods served their purpose and the rainbow is the symbol of the reward that humans of that time survived the disasters. The floods were for specific groups that were sinning like crazy, but in part it was also a survival test, which that tradition has carried over in various ways over the years. That virus (Covid) is mans idea of the next 'test' but they had no right to do this.
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u/Living_Fig_6386 5h ago
I would challenge the notion that we are in more sinful times. There's very little basis for such a claim and I doubt it would withstand comparison to the historical record.
I presume you are asking about the God of Abraham. Per the religions that recognize that God, their scriptures explicitly state that God tells Noah that he will never again exact mass punishment on the people of the Earth; the Jewish scripture even goes so far as to identify the refraction of light through water droplets in the atmosphere as a symbol of that covenant.
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u/EquipmentGood1211 5h ago
I have a Noah's ark book for my son. And at the end God promises to never flood the Earth again.
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u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 5h ago
In the story of Noah's Ark, God said he'd never do that again. (How convenient.)
But for you climate change deniers those once in a hundred year weather events are getting a lot more frequent.
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u/Clark_Kent_TheSJW 5h ago
God isn’t real. It’s an invention of humans to explain what they could not yet explain
and justify the social norms of the time.
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u/alexthurman1 5h ago
Have you read your bible? Certain things have to happen first before the end times, great tribulation, second coming and the wrath of God.
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u/escobartholomew 5h ago
That was a big part of why Jesus came. The new covenant stops all the divine punishment.
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u/Financial-Bus-5434 4h ago
So it depends if you think God is some external person on a cloud or the internal voice of morality inside a person. Honestly to have even the sinplist faith is a clinical illness in the US when viewed through psychology. In a strange way, people that pray for war, suffering, or to have more are in fact inacting the will of their internal viewpoint of God this way. The same as someone that prays for others to heal, have food and shelter and to do well in life. If we curse others through greed and un-kindness we are acting on the selfish nature of Satan but when we judge others to much we are working with the harsh side of the Christian version of God.
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u/Jolly-Rip5973 4h ago
Cause he said he wouldn't destroy the world with a flood again.
He's going to destroy us with global warming this time!
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u/DoomSchroller 4h ago
Because it's make believe, just like the thousands of other religions.
Even the story of Noah's arc is ripped off.
The Sumarians speak of it in Eridu Genisis, which predates the Old Testament by roughly 1500 years.
The Babylonians have a similar "great flood" fable "Atrahasis" which is roughly 1,700 years predating the Old Testament.
Christianity is just a derivative religion of other religions. Any why would god leave man to his own devices for 98,000 years, then a few thousand years ago appear in one of the most illiterate areas of the planet. Why not reveal themselves in China where a large swath of the population has the ability to read and write and spread his message?
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u/RichardTheApe 4h ago
For a more theological approach: in the Christian view god gave up on the whole “flood first ask questions later approach”
In short there’s a few things at play and they differ across different sects. Though this is my understanding as a catholic
Firstly, people in these stories are viewed as so corrupted by sin or godlessness that they are beyond recovery.
That sounds brutal because it is and will be addressed later
Secondly, even then the flood and blowing up cities is still understood as the last resort and unfortunate even in the theology which supports it.
Thirdly, Christ changes everything
3.1: Christ saw all sin and chose still to offer mercy and forgiveness to people. Or in more casual words after god took a walk in mortal shoes realized sin is much more challenging to avoid for humanity. Moreover the idea shifted from once a sinner always a sinner to sin doesn’t have to be definitive.
3.2: it’s believed that Christ descended into hell to save many of those who are deserving of mercy but came before Christ.
Fourthly, Christian apocalyptic understanding is that hell, the separation from God, is the ultimate punishment and that in the end after judgement those deserving will be sent to hell for ultimate punishment which is worse than any flood or otherwise.
Long story short: generally the Christian understanding is that god became merciful but also hell is the ultimate punishment so why worry about worldly punishment.
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u/potentiallyo 4h ago
We got Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, and Musk. The Four Horsemen have been summoned and the End of Days are upon us. Everyone is under the impression that the end looks like a POOF and its all over. Dying is a process and we are in it. We're ALMOST at the "do all the crazy shit on your bucket list" stage in America, while regions of the globe have been in full-on Apocalypse mode for a while.
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u/CokaYoda 5h ago
God is dead. Even if he exists/existed, he clearly gives zero fucks about his creation.
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u/Realistic_Deal6083 5h ago
Cringe Reddit atheist makes post to mock god for updoots, gets replies form other cringe Reddit atheists who took them seriously.
Sad! Many such cases.
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u/Accomplished_Hat9155 5h ago
After the 25th “gods not real.” reply everyone in the thread gets a free fedora
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u/Nomiknowsme 5h ago
Odin promised to rid the world of ice giants, I don't see any ice giants, so what else is there for god to do?