Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[J Lord]

You claim that "the Bible doesn't necessitate a global flood, and there are many good reasons that it was a massively continental one."

I think the bible pretty clearly implies that it was a global flood:

Genesis - 19 The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; 20 the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

Animals from all over the earth. No.

Again, I think the bible is pretty clear that all the animals on earth died except those that were with Noah:

Genesis - 21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; 22 everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark.

[jimwalton]

Glad to provide clarification. This is where a little more probing beyond the simple words of the text is beneficial.

What does "all" mean? In Gn. 41.57 (same book, same author), we read that "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph because the famine was severe in all the world." Was Brazil experiencing famine? Did the Australians come to Joseph? No. "All" means the countries of the immediate vicinity in the ancient Near East.

Also, Deut. 2.25 (same author): "I will put the...fear of you on all the nations under heaven." Did that include the Mayans? The people of Madagascar? I don't think anyone would argue that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan, and perhaps a few others.

There are plenty of other references like this throughout the Bible (Acts 17.6; 19.35; 24.5; Rom. 1.8). We have to give serious consideration that quite possibly "all" doesn't mean "global".

Also, the flood didn't have to be global to accomplish God's purposes. God was dealing with Canaan and the surrounding neighbors. God was dealing with Noah's context. A flood in South America would be totally inexplicable to the people there, as well as patently unfair (which the Bible teaches that God is not). Noah was a preacher of righteousness, but not to the people of Africa, China, Australia, and the Americas. The language of the Noah story is normal for Scripture, describing everyday matters from the narrator's vantage point and within the customary frame of reference of his readers.

But what about "covering the mountains"? Again, a little detective work (rather than superficial reading) can be of value. First of all, the high mountains were not generally considered mountains, but pillars holding up the firmament. When they talk about mountains, they are referring to the local geological shapes, not the Alps and Himalayas. And what does "cover" mean? The Hebrew root is *ksh*, and is used in a wide variety of nuances:
- A people so vast they "cover" the land (Num. 22.11)
- Weeds "cover" the land (Prov. 24.31)
- clothing (1 Ki. 1.1)
- Overshadowed (2 Chr. 5.8; Ps. 147.8)

In Job 38.34; Jer. 46.8; Mal. 2.13, "covered" is figurative. If Gn. 7.19 is read in the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it doesn't demand they were submerged.

What about "15 cubits above" (Gn. 7.20)? The Hebrew reads "15 cubits *from above* (*milme'la*) rose the waters, and the mountains were covered." It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose 15 cubits higher than the mountains. It can mean "above"; it can mean "upward" or “upstream". If this were the case in Genesis, it would suggest that the water reached 15 cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

What about all the animals dying? Again, we have to define "all", but based on what I previously said, it could easily refer to "all" the ones within the scope of the flood, not necessarily global destruction. Again, look at Gn. 2.13, where the river "winds through all (same word as Gn. 7.21) the land of Cush." Does it mean every square inch of it? Not likely.

Genesis 7.22 says, "Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died." I know hhis could have been expressed in multiple ways, but I don't fault the writer to choosing what he did. "All" not only denotes the scope of the physical flood for the intended population, but it can also connote the completeness of the judgment. If he had said something like "as far as the eye could see" it might be assumed that the judgment was less than accomplished. That wording would have been less adequate for the situation, in my opinion. to point was to express the completeness of the judgment on the target audience, and "all" expresses that, though it obviously leads to other misunderstandings as well. We do have to entertain the thought that the ancients understood quite well the intent of the text, but through the millennia it got lost in "Enlightenment literalism", and we are the victims of the misunderstanding. It's time to get back to seeing the event through ancient eyes.

Besides, we have to look at a few other things.

1. A global flood is totally out of character with all of God's other miracles in the Bible. It's not His m.o.. It's not the way he does things, and it doesn't fit His pattern of working.

2. A global flood is unjust, and God is not unjust. What fits the Biblical description of God is that God judged the people who were worthy of judgment, who had been warned, and who had adequate opportunities to change their ways. A global flood doesn't fit this picture.

I hope that helps.

[J Lord]

"It's time to get back to seeing the event through ancient eyes."

I think ancient people who wrote the bible didn't know that a global flood was not possible, didn't know that having all animals on one boat is impossible, and didn't know that all humans being descended from one family is impossible. Their knowledge of how the world works was so limited that they wrote these stories not realizing the absurdity of what they were proposing. So I agree that when they said "all mountains under the heavens" or "all animals on the land" they didn't know what they were talking about. They could not have been talking about all the animals in America or Australia because they didn't know those places existed.

I think you are reasoning from a position where you know the story couldn't have happened how it is written. You then look at the text with this conclusion in mind and have determined a possible interpretation that is opposite of the way it initially appears. But I do not think this was how the ancient people interpreted the story. If they did have this understanding I don't think they would written such a misleading text that initially appears contrary to their plain reading.

"A global flood is unjust, and God is not unjust."

He is unjust according to the normal meaning of the word. But usually people get around this by defining whatever God does as just by definition. And according to this understanding a global flood would not be unjust because God did it.

"A global flood is totally out of character with all of God's other miracles in the Bible."

Couldn't you say the same about a massive non-global flood?

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the comments. Your observations are good, and your reasoning is sound.

The ancients didn't have a clue what the globe was. (Even in the days of Columbus they were just figuring it out.) In ancient days, they though the earth was a disk, sitting on pillars over a great sea, that the sky was a solid dome. They knew of only one land mass, and nothing of the Americas, Australia, etc. Walton says, "Akkadian texts estimate the land surface of the earth to be equivalent to a diameter of about 3,000 miles stretching from the mountains of southern Turkey in the north where the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates are, to southeast Iran in the south (just beyond Susa). To the east it extended to the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau, but the sources are less clear about the western boundaries. They were certainly aware of the Mediterranean and considered that the main western boundary."

So when they said "all mountains under the heavens" or "all animals on the land," they were serious. Everything they knew, as far as the eye could reach was submerged, and everything was dead. They were speaking literally, but also contextually.

> I think you are reasoning from a position where you know the story couldn't have happened how it is written...

To some extent, yes. When the evidence is decisive that the traditional interpretation is lacking, you dig deeper, or you walk away. I consider this to be academically responsible. I chose to dig deeper, and found reasonable satisfaction. There are still questions, but this is an extremely old oral tradition that came to the writer of Genesis, and so some digging and translation is warranted. But I agree with you that I don't think this was how the ancients interpreted the story. The saw their world deluged, and everything dead, and that was all the world they knew. The mountains were immersed, and so they wrote it that way. We know about the whole globe and go "What the heck?" But they wrote what they saw and meant what they said, and the message was clear: God judges the rebellious. They had no designs to write misleadingly, and didn't, from their perspective. And they wrote so that the plain meaning could be understood. We, on the other hand, are left to interpret, and what was plain to them is not so plain to us, and is able to be interpreted differently. That's where we have to be responsible scholars, and interpret the text through ancient eyes. And, by the way, we know far more about the ancient mindset than has been known for thousands of years. Archaeology has given us access to information that hasn't been read (or known about) for millennia.

> He is unjust according to the normal meaning of the word.

See, I disagree with this. Justice is playing fair, giving people what they deserve: rewarding the innocent, and punishing the guilty. Justice is taking into account actions, motives, and circumstance, and doing what is right: repressing the oppressors, punishing the guilty, quashing rebellion, absolving the innocent, and vindicating the righteous. And that's what God does. But when he does it, he gets accused of immorality. I'm not saying the flood was just because God did it. That's the Euthyphro Dilemma, and I don't buy it. The Bible says that the world was intensely evil and corrupt beyond repair. The issue is: am I really in an intellectual position to evaluate how right or wrong that assessment is? I am not, and neither are you. No one is. But based on that assessment, which is all we have to go by, God was just in what he did. If you consider him unjust, the burden of proof is on you to explicate the moral environment of that age in a different way.

> Couldn't you say the same about a massive non-global flood?

Not at all. God is portrayed in the Bible as one who ultimately rewards the righteous and judges the offender. His judgment in a flood is perfectly within his character and within the scope of the way he usually acts.

To really assess the flood, I think we'd have to answer several questions:

1. What is your perspective on justice? What is it and how is it best exercised? I've given you mind, but you obviously think differently than I do, so your concept of justice would have to be explained.

2. We'd have to know to some extent what the population of the region was at the time so we could appraise the qualitative measure of the event. My memory tells me the world was quite sparsely populated, even as far back as 7,000, when archaeologists first become aware of anything resembling a city (Jericho). But since the flood was probably 10,000 BC, maybe 20,000 BC, or even earlier, how many people are we really talking about?

3. On what objective basis of morality are you basing your assessment of the "crime"? "Treat others like you want to be treated" is a great aphorism for our personal lives, but a lousy one for juridical policy.

4. And, as I already mentioned, what was the moral state of society at the time?

[J Lord]

> "So when they said "all mountains under the heavens" or "all animals on the land," they were serious. Everything they knew, as far as the eye could reach was submerged, and everything was dead."

So how did the author know this? If they were writing from their own point of view then obviously they were not getting information about this flood from God. They weren't there to witness any of it themselves. So why would their information be trustworthy?

"The Bible says that the world was intensely evil and corrupt beyond repair. The issue is: am I really in an intellectual position to evaluate how right or wrong that assessment is?"

Yes, you can still evaluate the claim based on the information we have. It seems impossible for everyone in such a large area besides Noah's family to have been guilty of crimes worthy of the death penalty. We don't know this for sure, but it seems extremely unlikely for every man, woman, and child to have done something so bad that it would be just to kill them. So I think it is likely that if God caused such a flood, he needlessly killed some innocent people, which I consider to be unjust. So I conclude it was probably unjust according to my understanding of justice.

> "His judgment in a flood is perfectly within his character and within the scope of the way he usually acts."

Then why not a global flood? Rewarding the righteous and judging offenders occurs would still occur if there was a global flood.

> "On what objective basis of morality are you basing your assessment of the 'crime'?"

I think the way we use the word makes it clear that morality is related to human well being. So any moral judgments are always made with respect to human well being in my opinion.

> "What is your perspective on justice?

There are lots of other things, but for the purposes of judging God's actions in this case I am only need a few basic principles of justice. The punishment should fit the crime, and the death penalty should be reserved for only the most serious crimes.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the responses. I'm enjoying the conversation.

> So how did the author know this?

Ancient Near Eastern societies were hearing dominant. As far as we know, writing wasn't invented until about 3200 BC in Mesopotamia. Everything before that was oral transmission. The stories of society were passed on by repetition. They were an oral culture that knew nothing comparable to authors and books as we know them. While certain variations in the story were culturally acceptable, often the story-telling tradents in a community took pains to recall and transmit the story with accuracy. So "why would their information be trustworthy?" When the Bible claims that it is "God-breathed" (2 Tim. 3.16), we believe that means God preserved the transmission of the story until the time of writing so that it accurately spoke the message he wished to convey. The authority of the text isn't threatened by God's use of accommodation (limited or cultural terminology or understandings) to impart his information. It came down the way he wanted it to come down. So why all the "all" talk if it wasn't ALL? AS I said, it depends how we want to understand "all". God's point is that the judgment was both thorough and complete, judging all the people that he intended to judge, and wiping out the entire population and area that was his objective. "All" was the best term to describe it, as any term would likely bring some confusion 15,000 years later.

> Yes, you can still evaluate the claim based on the information we have.

That's what I'm doing. Here's the information we have:
- Gn. 4.23-24: Lamech is a merciless killer, a law to himself, with nondiscriminatory retaliation. He blasphemes God. Without the restraining effect of government and law enforcement, society is deteriorating.
- Gn. 6.5: "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time." Hardly a better description of total depravity can be given than this. The depravity affects his actions and even his thoughts. Godless, faithless, rebellious, corrupt, and violent. What would a responsible judge, seeking justice, do with a situation like this? Preserve the moral (Gn. 6.9) and judge the incorrigible (Gn. 6.7).
- Gn. 6.11-12: "Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become for all the people on earth ha corrupted their ways."
- Gn. 6.13: "...the earth is filled with violence."

Just for the record, THAT'S the information we have. Your "it seems impossible" is not based on information but on your opinion. If the information was have is the standard by which we judge the extent of the "crime," then the information we have says that they were indeed guilty of crimes worthy of the death penalty. You say, "We don't know this for sure, but it seems extremely unlikely...", but that's not based on the information we have. You wonder about the women and children. You've read the stories in the news. ISIS is training children to kill. Women strap IEDs to themselves to blow up innocent people. You've read stories before: Boko Haram kidnaps children and trains them to kill, bigots in the deep South teach their children racism. Whole societies can go corrupt. You're assuming there must have been some innocent people somewhere, but the information we have is that the society was corrupt and beyond repair.

> Then why not a global flood?

Because the other societies around the world were not like that. Sure, they were all sinners, but that's different. Some people are redeemable and some are incorrigible.

> Rewarding the righteous and judging offenders would still occur if there was a global flood.

That's true, but he would be judging people who had not been warned, who didn't know what was coming and why, and who still had a chance. That makes the judgment moral: He only judged the people who deserved it.

> "On what objective basis of morality are you basing your assessment of the "crime"? I think the way we use the word makes it clear that morality is related to human well being. So any moral judgments are always made with respect to human well being in my opinion.

Your definition of morality (related to human well being) falls short, because now we have to define "well being,", which is going to change based on one's personal perspective and cultural context. And if "well being" is that relative, it cannot serve as a reliable basis for moral judgment.

> The punishment should fit the crime, and the death penalty should be reserved for only the most serious crimes.

I agree, and the story in the Bible (verses listed above) give an unmitigated assessment of the most serious of criminal corruption. And that's the story we have to go by. Again, the burden of proof is on you to produce alternative evidence, certainly beyond, "Well, my opinion is that 'it seems extremely unlikely' and 'it seems impossible'." Those are opinions and not information.

The story told in the Bible is that the offense was extreme, the corruption endemic, the society impenitent and incurable, and judgment on it was justified.

[J Lord]

> "All" was the best term to describe it, as any term would likely bring some confusion 15,000 years later.

No, it would be very simple to describe a local flood if that was what the authors believed had happened. It is not beyond the power of language to describe and I don't see why it would be inherently confusing.

> Your "it seems impossible" is not based on Information but on your opinion.

No, it is based on known information about how human societies operate. I don't think there is any known possible way to have a society exist where at a certain point in time every single person has committed a crime that would justify the death penalty. Because of known information about human societies I consider this to be virtually impossible and conclude it probably wasn't the case.

I know that the text says everyone was guilty (assuming "everyone" means everyone in this case). But the text also says people should be killed for minor or imaginary crimes like blasphemy, homosexuality, disrespecting your parents, etc. If this is what the authors felt was a reasonable standard for the death penalty then their statement about everyone in society being guilty would have been nearly true, because probably anyone who has survived infancy would be put to death under such standards. But we know that it is not moral to kill people for such things.

> Your definition of morality (related to human well being) falls short, because now we have to define "well being,"

Every word of every definition for anything would have to be defined in order to understand the definition you are giving. That is not a flaw in the definition because the same thing could be said of any definition of morality.

> which is going to change based on one's personal perspective and cultural context.

People can have different opinions on how an action will impact human well being, but you cannot have your own personal definitions of words. Nobody can legitimately adopt their own personal definition of any words. The meaning of the words "well being" is firmly established and is not subject to any cultural or individual perspective. Individual or cultural perspective can inform a person's opinion about how an act impacts well being, but not the meaning of the term "well being."

> if "well being" is that relative, it cannot serve as a reliable basis for moral judgment.

Why not? The fact that there can be legitimate debate about how an action impacts well being is the reason why there can be legitimate moral debates. If there were one course of action was clearly and obviously going to maximize human well being then there would never be a legitimate moral debate about that course of action.

Think about what all moral debates are about. They are appealing to how an action would impact human well being. If you can prove that a certain act will increase suffering you have a great argument in any moral debate. The fact that people disagree about how actions impact well being certainly does make moral judgments impossible or unreliable. The concept, as we understand it, is related to human well being. So for better or worse moral judgments always take this into account.

[jimwalton]

> No, it would be very simple to describe a local flood if that was what the authors believed had happened.

Remember that Noah has no newspapers, TV, internet or radio. He sees water EVERYWHERE. There's no way to procure information from beyond what he can see and know. It is not beyond the power of language, but he is describing the reality that he sees and knows, and it's an adequate word ("all") for that. We do this all the time:
- It was a great party. *Everybody* was there.
- They played *all* my favorite music.
- *Everything* went wrong today.

We know what we mean by all of these expressions. Yet you're so eager to excoriate the text for the same common type of language.

> it is based on known information about how human societies operate

There's a still a difference between typical societies and an occasional specific situation. It's illegitimate to generalize from the typical to specific and assume accuracy.

> But the text also says people should killed for minor or imaginary crimes like blasphemy, homosexuality, disrespecting your parents, etc.

Now you're doing retrogression. You're taking things that were identified thousands of years later, reading them back into the text where they are not posted, and criticizing the text based on your retrogression, not on what it says. The text uses generic terms such as wickedness, evil, corruption, and specifically violence. That's what we have to go on. So if we have to be specific, "violence" is what we have for details. You can't legitimately read later infractions into earlier circumstances. The Hebrew term that is used (Gn. 6.11) is *hamas*. It's a general term that ranges from international contexts to social injustice. It can be used regarding the behavior of individuals or groups and can be either physical or psychological. That's what we have to work with. In the next verse (Gn. 6.12) it uses the same word (hamas) and translates it "corrupt". It's basically lawlessness. The implication is that humanity had become polluted beyond remediation.

> People can have different opinions on how an action will impact human well being, but you cannot have your own personal definitions of words.

I'm not. I'm looking at how the emphasis on "human well being" has played itself out through the years. Hitler, the classic whipping boy for the 20th century, defined human well being as Arianism, and set on a "moral" course to exterminate people groups in the name of "human well being". So also Mao with his "cultural revolution." My point is that without a reference point, we're left with personal opinion. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre recognized this when he said that no finite point has any meaning unless it has an infinite reference point. The only way to legitimately define "good" and "evil" is if there is some standard by which to evaluate such concepts. Atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen, attempting to defend the viability of morals without God, in the end admits, "We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality." And Richard Taylor, another atheistic ethicist, says, "to say that something is wrong because . . . it is forbidden by God, is . . . perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong . . . even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable. . . . The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone." The foundation of "human well being" cannot take us to reliable definitions of right and wrong, but only personally relative, subjective perspectives. Without an objective standard, it's impossible to legitimately condemn war, oppression, crime, child sexual abuse, or rape, just as it's illogical to praise altruism, kindness, and even well-being. In a world without an objective moral standard, good and evil don't truly exist, and no one can judge any behavior except by their personal perspective. Richard Dawkins himself admits that science has no methods or authority for deciding what is ethical, and claims that has "no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." I stick by what I previously claimed: Human well being cannot serve as a reliable basis for moral judgment.

[J Lord]

> "We do this all the time: 'It was a great party. Everybody was there'."

Compare this to: "It was a great party, every living thing under the entire heavens was there. Every bird, livestock, wild animal that lives on the earth, they were all there. Every person on earth except for Noah and his family were all there. Every living thing that breathes air was at this party." This clearly isn't a case where the bible is using a common expression that I am ungenerously taking literally. The text goes to great lengths to clarify the meaning.

> "Now you're doing retrogression."

I'm just looking for a way to make sense of the text. It might make sense if we assume that all of the nonsensical death penalty laws from later in the text applied to this pre-flood society. Because if we assume a reasonable standard for the death penalty then I don't think it is possible even for a non-typical human society to exist where every person is guilty of a crime warranting the death penalty. You seem to think this society was exceptional in some way, but I don't see how it could have been possible. So I think the onus is on you to explain what sort of exception you are talking about.

> "The only way to legitimately define "good" and "evil" is if there is some standard by which to evaluate such concepts."

Yes, they are evaluated with reference to human well-being. You seem to acknowledge this by making reference to Hitler. If Hitler believed his actions were morally good it was because he thought they were increasing human well being. If you think his actions were morally wrong, it's because you can see the harm they caused and can see that they actually decreased human well being.

If you disagree that morality relates to human well being then it should be easy for you to come up with an example of something that you think is morally good but that you also truly believe is harmful or detrimental to human well being. Please give some examples of such a thing so I know where you are coming from.

> "In a world without an objective moral standard, good and evil don't truly exist, and no one can judge any behavior except by their personal perspective."

You seem to assume that because there is no externally dictated meaning for a word that anyone can give it any meaning they want. This is not the case. The meaning of words is determined by how they are used. They are not set in stone by some objective power, nor are they open to individual interpretation.

You can be objectively wrong about the meaning of a word. If you look at a duck and call it a tree you are objectively wrong. Appealing to the fact that there is no ultimate authority for establishing the meaning of the word "duck" or "tree" is pointless. The meanings of these words are established by their usage and could change. They are not set in stone by any external force. But you can still be objectively wrong about their meaning.

> "Without an objective standard, it's impossible to legitimately condemn war, oppression, crime, child sexual abuse, or rape"

I think even if you had never heard of the concept of morality you could simply condemn these things because they are clearly harmful. The person doing the crime might not care, but that is equally the case if you tell the person that a God has commanded them not to do these things. I don't see what the difference is.

> "Human well being cannot serve as a reliable basis for moral judgment."

Why can't it? You don't think morality is related to human well being and I think the usage of the word makes it clear that it is related. But why would it be impossible for this to the basis?

Suppose you imagine a universe where no gods exist. People have never even heard of the concept. But they have come up with a concept they call morality that relates to judging actions based on their impact on well being. How would this society be any different from our own? What would be the problem with their term "morality" as they understand it?

Also, what other words do you think have to be defined by a God? And which other words do you think are objectively defined in such a way? If I think drinking bleach is healthy, is this wrong? Or is it like morality where you think anyone could define "healthy" to mean whatever they want. So I think it's healthy to be vomiting all the time from drinking bleach and unless a God has defined the term for us then my interpretation is just as reasonable as anyone else's.

[jimwalton]

Universality of the Flood. Even though it sounds as if the writer is taking great pains to help all readers understand the universality of the judgment, the ancient use of the world "all" shows that hyperbole, more than universality, was often the case. Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. The *Sargon Geography*, which names the lands of the known world one by one, claims that "Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven." It is clear that it was perfectly acceptable (and not considered deceptive) to use *all* to delineate a restricted set. Such usage doesn't violate biblical authority because the Bible doesn't intend to claim more than regional impact.

Pre-flood society. The information we have to go on (since we are basing on information, not feelings) is the utter violence of the antediluvian world. A case in point would be ISIS. I've seen on the Internet news for the past two days an image of a young boy, appearing to be in his young teens, shooting a victim in the head. It's obvious that woman and children, as well as men, can become infected by evil and worthy of judgment. It's not much of a stretch to see where an entire culture could be corrupt. Remember not to think of the ancient world as millions of people. The population of the world at the time is estimated to be quite low, and the population of the region of the ancient Near East only a small fraction of that total.

Morality and human well being. I am not contending that morality is completely separated from human well being, only that it is not grounded there. We have far too many examples of governmental and military leaders acting in what they considered to be moral ways, "for the well being of humanity", and yet committing atrocious horrors: Adolf Hitler, the ethnic cleanings in Yugoslavia and Rwanda during the 1990s, Indonesia, and Sudan—all in the name of human well-being, ridding the earth of human "vermin". That's why I'm claiming that there has to be an objective definition of human well being outside of someone's personal opinion or their political aspirations.

> an example of something that you think is morally good but that you also truly believe is harmful or detrimental to human well being

There isn't one. Morality is inherent goodness and objective righteousness, and so ultimately (though not case by case) works for the well being of humankind. But that morality has to find its definition in some objective standard by which to assess intents and actions.

> The meaning of words is determined by how they are used.

Of course it is, but how does one define "good"? Is it what's good for me, or good for society, or inherently good, or good for this circumstance, or good for all time? Is it good because I define it that way, or because it has some intrinsic quality about it? I would claim that "goodness", like "truth," has to conform to reality (correspondence theory), in that sense, and though the word has nuances and degrees, there is a way we all understand the supreme good. You see, I don't consider goodness really to be an effect, or a goal. Good is what God is, and so our definition of goodness is based in his character. My claim is that God created the universe, and therefore it was good, and goodness is built into it. God is the paradigm of goodness. Our consciences are aware of what goodness is, and we all have a sense of right and wrong to conform to what our conscience tells us (though the perceptions of the conscience can be changed). Therefore, goodness is grounded in the character of God, not in human well-being, and is not independent from God. Therefore, I believe, the definition of "goodness" and "right" are set in stone by an external reality.

> I think even if you had never heard of the concept of morality you could simply condemn these things because they are clearly harmful.

Dawkins says that the universe has "no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." He admits that science has no methods or authority for deciding what is ethical. And yet he believes God is evil. He contradicts himself. Is there evil, or isn't there? Sam Harris claims that without God it is not possible for there to be a moral order at work in life, and yet he chides the Christian God for allowing suffering under Hitler. Without an objective moral definition, why can't Hitler, or anyone, introduce their own definition? You say Hitler's actions were clearly harmful, but Hitler, by his own testimony, and the testimony of those who served him, felt they were engaging in a moral good for the well-being of humanity. So was Nuremberg a kangaroo court, or were the Nazi's guilty? Nuremberg was only legitimate if there is a higher law at work.

Sam Harris says there is no moral framework operating in the world, but he (and you) judge God's actions as morally condemnable. In philosophical terms this is called a mutually exclusive assumption. In some cultures they love their neighbors; in other cultures they eat them. Moral affirmation cannot remain an abstraction. Your basis of "human well being" assumes the worth of your life and the worth of other lives, and therefore "well being" has meaning. But transcending value must come from a a person of transcending worth. In a world where there is only matter, there is no intrinsic worth, and human well-being can only be defined relatively, and so we vest ourselves with worth over an earthworm, but with no logical or objective basis to do so. We are matter, as are worms. Atheist Kai Nielsen said, "Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality." And J.L. Mackie, a vociferous atheist who challenged the existence of God on the basis of the reality of evil, granted at least this logical connection when he said, "We might well argue … that objective, intrinsically prescriptive features, supervenient upon natural ones, constitute so odd a cluster of qualities and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all-powerful God to create them." I would conclude that nothing can be intrinsically good unless there also exists a God who has made the universe good.