Reply to thread

I do not think that many people take these stories literally.

That said, interesting note on the Noah story.  If you read the Bible in Hebrew, the story does not say the world flooded, it says that the "land" flooded.  In ancient Mesopotamia and all along the Nile River etc, this would have been a very common theme.  It is not unreasonable to argue that the story was simply speaking to a people who understood the flood concept.

The flood concept is interesting as well, because the flood waters rise and take away all of the bad "evil" soil etc and then when they are gone all that is left is the fertile soil "good".  Much the same as the Noah story.  Added to that, there are civilizations in South America and around the world that do actually have their own versions of "flood" narratives, but there is also a good argument to be made that there was trade between Egypt and South America, and it is not unreasonable for these stories to follow as well. 

I think if we look at the context in which the story was written and who it was written for, we would see it as a metaphor of the flood being the washing away of evil by God who in turn replaces it with fertile soil that people back then needed to survive.