Long gone are the days of Galileo when science took a backseat to religious conditioning. Today, science, or the accumulation of predictable results based on known variables, is religion, at least for many. Even the most “spiritual” among us have grown accustom to the certainty intrinsic in science.
Visit any courtroom in the western world today and little doubt can remain as to the growing confidence society has placed in modern science. With its less ambiguous results, forensic evidence has left less room for “reasonable doubt” in the minds of jurors who prefer it to the muddled testimony of eyewitness'. The Biblical story of Noah and his Ark, generations removed from remaining witnesses, is by its very nature ambiguous, and therefore somewhat disconcerting. It requires faith without the scientific proof our society has grown so comfortable with.
Assuming your motivation as an author is to confer the absolute power of God, while demonstrating his intolerable contempt of sin and simultaneously illustrating his unwavering love of mankind, what better story than that of Noah? In this Sunday school saga, natural laws cease to exist as God literally rains down destruction on the world for its unspeakable corruption.
Along with animals enough to restore the beasts of the earth, Noah and his family are spared God's judgment. This children's story effectively ratifies the Christian God as powerful, contemptuous, yet merciful. And if you still need proof, well…look no further than the rainbow-filled sky.
Admittedly, the story of Noah and his summons from God, is more than a fascinating Biblical anecdote, it is a powerful story that conjures images of a God powerful enough to deserve worship. Although the majority of mainstream scholars view the Earth's flooding as impossibility, none would argue that oral traditions of torrential floods exist throughout many different cultures.
The simple explanation is that most cultures have experienced floods of such enormity as to inspire generations of repetition. In an age of geographical isolation, a deluge of waters expanding further than a few days travel might very well indicate global flooding, at least for all practical purposes. Another possibility, one that assumes less about what our predecessors might have known about the scale of the earth, suggest that any mention of total inundation, was strictly allegorical.
While we may never be able to know with certainty the extent and usage of this literary tool throughout the Bible, it does seem likely, if not probable, that this method would be employed not only to create a nail-biting tale, but to astound the reader with the supremacy of God.
Many consider this the most probable explanation for a story of such grandiose magnitude. Still others feel stories such as these to be matters of faith, far-removed from the parameters of “scientific” possibility.
