It is freeing to recognize that I have never sinned and it pissed Christians off when I say this. To clarify, in Christianity sin is not simply “the bad things we do” it is specifically an offense against god. God does not exists so i have never sinned against him.
I’ve been an atheist for for 16 years but it was only recently that I realized this distinction. It short-circuits the guilt based evangelism. It forces the christian to first demonstrate that god exists before they can convince me I have sinned and need to be saved from that sin. And to say the least, they are ill equipped to demonstrate the existence of god.
I don’t think you’ll ever convince me the Noah’s Ark story isn’t hot garbage. It’s like the shittiest knockoff version of the flood myths from thousands of years prior because someone wanted to shoehorn it into the Bible. Even if we accept it as myth, the water didn’t form the earth or give birth to any primordial gods or anything, it was just Yahweh having a childish ecocidal tantrum.
I don’t know, I think the childish ecological tantrum part of the story is part of what makes it interesting, divorced from the religious context. Angry gods are more interesting than benevolent ones, at least to me. And sure, it was a derivative story, but so what? So was much of Shakespeare. I would suggest to you that the very fact that it was derivative is evidence that people think it’s a good story.
Sure, but that’s also in some of the older, better versions. Noah’s flood has the extra tacked on crap about the boat and gathering two of each animal, as if somehow any of that is plausible or sensible. This isn’t Shakespeare putting an interesting new spin on the tale of Julius Caesar, IMO it’s just sad.
I don’t think you can look to Iron Age mythology for plausibility and sensibility.