No Bullshit Bible Lesson #3: The Flood

Genesis, Chapters 6-8:

So, after much begetting, there were lots of people around, and they decided to marry one another and probably beget some more. And God looked upon this and decided that he would cut the human life span to a little over 1/10th what it previously had been, because the flesh can’t sustain the soul for that long, despite the evidence from the previous seven generations. Also, there were giants then. It doesn’t matter to the story, just thought I’d mention it. Randomly. For no reason.

So, looking down on the thriving community he had started with some mud and a rib, God saw that every thought from every person was, at every moment, a thought of total evil, and he wondered why he’d ever made us in the first place. Then he decided that he would kill everybody. And all the animals while he was at it because, apparently, they were also total assholes.

But Noah was a decent guy and God liked him. If he killed Noah, why, he’d have no one to play lawn darts with. So they went for a walk together and God said:
        “Noah, here’s the deal. I am going to wipe all flesh from the Earth.”
        “So...cutting the life span by 90% wasn’t enough?”
        “Don’t sass me, boy. I’m letting your family live. But you have to build a big-ass boat and put two of each animal on it, male and female. Actually, get seven pairs of the clean animals. And chickens...seven pairs of chickens and other fowl. And just the one pair of everything else.”

So Noah built a boat to God’s specifications and, in seven days, gathered up two of every animal upon the Earth and loaded them up onto the boat with provisions. Noah and his wife and sons and sons’ wives got on the boat. Then it started raining. Forty days later it stopped raining, but the water continued to rise anyway, somehow. And the water level got so high that the mountains themselves were underwater. And the water stayed high for 150 days.

After 150 days, God suddenly remembered that he’d left his buddy in a boat with a shit-load of animals and he made the water level go down with wind. Which, as anyone who’s ever been in a hurricane can tell you, totally works. Also, he stopped the rain at this point, despite the fact that he had already stopped the rain 110 days prior. Anyway, the boat came ashore at the top of Mt. Ararat, where it sat, still stuffed full of Noah and the animals, while they waited for the waters to abate.

After Forty days of waiting atop the mountain, Noah sent out a Raven, who was never heard from again. So he sent out a dove who, finding no place to land, came back. He waited another week and sent the dove back out, and when the dove returned, the olive leaf it carried let Noah know that the water had abated and there was land. So, having been cooped up in a boat with thousands of animals for nine months, Noah, upon finding out that land had returned...waited another week. And he sent the dove out again, and this time, it didn’t come back. So Noah waited in the boat another 95 Days before finally venturing out of the boat after a grand total of one year, ten days cooped up.

And God said to Noah: “Get on out of the Ark, man! You and all the animals have some serious begetting to do!”
Upon leaving the boat, Noah built an altar and, seeing as how there were seven times as many of some of those clean animals and fowl, he felt it would be a good idea to pointlessly kill and burn a few in the name of God. But God thought it smelled so good that he decided that, even though humans were evil even as little kids, he was done with genocide and proclaimed that he was done playing “wipe every trace of life off the face of the planet.” Which was much appreciated by later people who did not find themselves suddenly underwater.


Tomorrow: Propagation of species!