Christian literalists: why did cultures wiped out by the flood continue after the flood?

Most xtians will tell you that things like radio carbon dating are useless. These are the ones that think science is the tool of the devil. Even though science has helped out a great deal for us to understand our own world. Not to mention medical science. But they will still believe what they read in certain books are absolute truth. Blind faith plays a huge roll in this.

Edit @ No Chance Without Jesus- Most xtians and other religious people get what they call evidence from a book. So how is that any different? Try to make sense when you answer if you can. It really helps.

Edit#2 @ primoa- And try as you might, you can never prove the scripture. And just because you say we will have to answer to god does not make it so. Here, I"ll use your logic. My Superman comics show the life of Kal-El, and what he does and says is true. In the end, you will answer to the son of Krypton.

Edit#3 @ Franhusda-There most certainly is evidence of cultures older than that. http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/anth3/courseware/Chro...

"And to those of you saying Noah's 3 sons restarted all those cultures, or started new cultures: how quickly they grew from 3 couples to whole complex cultures filled with people! How old to you think Egypt is? Do you really think Egypt was composed of just one, two, or three couples 4000 years ago? And what of all the surrounding cultures? Even if you believe it all began with Noah's 3 sons and their 3 wives, how could they possibly have repopulated, migrated, built up all the cultures that quickly? Were the women popping out hundreds of babies with each pregnancy? Were the children born full grown?"

Well just for arguments sake. You have 3 couples. The partners in these couples love each other. When a man and a woman love each other, they typically have sex. That's how babies are made. Now lets say each one of these couples has a baby, on average, one per year. Then in 15 years, the population jumps from eight to 53. Now lets say the oldest of these children have gone through, or are currently going through puberty. You could possibly have around three to five new couples (not an appealing thought by our standards to day, but biology is biology). So these new couples start having babies ( not like theres anything else to do right?) I'm sure you see the trend. The population could increase exponentially.

Stay tuned for my water damage explanation.

I like your question on one level, but the manner it is worded gives the false implication that all cultures were wiped out around that time..giving them leeway to come up with some of the convolutions we see here.

The Egyptian culture wasn't wiped out nor was their historic record and it does not reflect the story of a world wide deluge.

China...far away from the Middle East, has a culture going back in unbroken archaeologic record for more than 7,000 years without mention of a world wide deluge. (There was even an exhibit that toured many major cities displaying such artifacts in the U.S. just a couple of years ago) There are floods, and massive floods at that, in many cultures. Do their dates and stories support one another? Investigation reveals they do not and are hundreds, if not thousands of years apart from one another with the exception of stories originating in the areas of the middle east that gave birth to the ancient Hebrews, Babylonians and a few other ancient peoples of Mesopotamia and around the Black Sea.

It is most likely that a massive regional flood that killed off what was the known world to those ancient peoples gave rise to a world destroying flood story found in the histories of those peoples. Oral tales later written down included myths from the peoples who told them from their perspective. Archaeologic, dendrochronologic, geologic and historic evidence negates that there has been a world wide deluge in the known human record.

What I've often found ironic is that many of the same people who declare that the Genesis stories of the creation and of the Noah's flood must be literally true as the stories read will deny that the commandments and covenant of that same Torah are no longer applicable despite the words within it that God declares many times as an eternal covenant. The choice to view something as inerrant appears to be extremely narrow in it's selectivity for those people.

While there is no doubt in my mind that a flood of epic proportions did happen, I happen believe it was local to those who reported it and was reported from their perspective.

For those interested in Biblical Chronology, the wikipedia article is a good place to start.

Edit: I have to wonder where you got the idea that certain cultures had a continuous history through the dates attributed to the flood. It is generally accepted that Noah and his sons' families brought their social mores with them, which could explain a continuation of several different cultures.

In examining the expansion of civilization(s), it flows outward, time-wise, from the middle east, where Noah is claimed to have landed.

2nd Edit: I've done a quick check and yes, there is a 400 year difference between the rule of the person attributed to the first pyramid and the flood dates -- in favor of the Egyptian ruler. See my second reference for the dates involved.

Even though the difference is likely more than 600 years, it is entirely possible that because we have no solid history for either the Bible or external civilizations, that dating inconsistencies explain the difference (I know that it is a stretch, but the ruins now attributed to ancient cities are dates much further back than typical Bible chronology provides - and I'm talking about several thousands of years!).

My personal feeling is that the Bible chronology is likely in error, since most of the events are best guesses based upon a rough chronology that could very well skip numerous generations. We can't line up Bible chronology with externally dated events for anything going back more than about 1500 BCE.

To people who claim the dating is inaccurate, the Egyptian civilization has written records dating back that far. Unless they purposefully invented the entire old kingdom, including the pyramids (the Great Pyramid even predates the flood), the flood didn't happen.

The Bible explains that Noahs three sons. Ham, Shem, And Jephath became the father of different people groups and their subgroups came from there. The Bible even gives their descendants and what peoples and cultures came from them. Read it in Genesis

You reject the infallible word of God for the words of fallible men and women. Why not look at the following websites for answers, instead of trying to get answers from people like me, who despite KNOWING the Bible is God's infallible word, do not have the scientific training or computing and financial wherewithal to show you the evidence you need?

The sites are:

http://www.christiananswers.net/ (http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-radioac... (http://www.christiananswers.net/archaeology/home.h...

http://www.answersingenesis.org/

http://biblicalgeology.net/2006/The-dating-game.ht...

You can also ask your questions of several organisations connected to these, which are run by scientists. Will you do so, or are you scared your new-found 'freedom' from being a 'fundie' will be destroyed?

Incidentally, if you are no longer a Christian, then you never were: you simply followed a religious path until something you preferred came along.

Don't be a fool; get back to Bible study, and believe God, not Dawkins, Attenborough, Sagan, Christopher Hitchens et al, ALL of whom refuse to debate with scientists whose Christian faith is actually STRENGTHENED by seeing the sheer impossibility of evolution, and the evidence that shows dating systems are completely unreliable (even some SECULAR scientific publications have been honest enough to admit this, including either 'Science' or 'Nature', I forget which; but they published the results of C14 tests on living animals which showed them to be 5,000 years old -- yet many were known from their laying!

May God bless all who trust Him and His infallible Word not the fallible scientists, none of whom were there.

They did not.... but, sadly Noah's sons, and daughters-in-law, brought many bad habits with them. So the same bad behaviors regenerated...

The exact date of The Flood is not known... but certainly a bit longer that 4,000 yrs ago... as evidenced by the Egyption and othere remains not being water damaged.

I personally don't have an answer for this, but every culture, including south american and Aborigine have in their oral history a massive flood which gives credence to the claims.

They didn't, however Noah's kids remembered the days before the flood and their descendants carried on some ancient practices. See the tower of Babel story in Genesis.