Now this is something that could start a good derail!
That would not be a very new idea; that comparison and discussion has been vigorously ongoing ever since Gilgamesh was first discovered. Indeed, when George Smith produced his final annotated translation, he titled it "the Chaldean Account of Genesis". You might find the classic exegetical textbook "Old Testament Parallels" interesting; it contains an exhaustive review of those sections of the Hebrew Scriptures that are linked to other ANE manuscripts either by topic or genre, from cover to cover.
Planet spores. Star seeds. Spontaneous inneresting elementalism.
Depends on what you look on myths to do. Are they meant to be history books? They are often treated that way, and not just by Christians certainly, but do those who see them that way profit by that perspective, or miss the point of storytelling altogether? There's more than one way for something to be true. With something as enormous and world-spanning as the Flood motif, I think it is more interesting to ask why so many peoples find meaning about near-complete but not quite complete global destruction compelling. There is, in my opinion, room for more than one "correct" answer to this question, and the motif clearly has not outlived its applicability, because traditional religion in the Euro-American sphere is seemingly on life support but our taste for apocalyptic narratives has in no way diminished. Observe half of our popular films at any given moment. Who lives, who dies, what is forgotten, what survives? A given Flood narrative is a snapshot of its patron culture's answer to that question. The Hebrews used it to kill off their demigods...
Have you actually looked into this? There are no shortage of explorations of the Flood narrative by non-literalist and literalist scholars alike. I note that even those who see the Bible as a literal account frequently read symbolic and allegorical meanings into the text, not all of which are contingent on historical claims being validated. They claim as a matter of professional distaste to eschew symbolic interpretations, but if you actually listen to a sermon from these folks, symbols and allegories are just as rife in the explanation as they would be at a UCC of a Sunday. Does a rainbow have to literally be seen for the first time in 4004 BC in order to have symbolic weight as a representation of paired destruction and protection?
If someone does not understand that "the Bible" is a borrowing from at least two other cultures, they can't have read it. Most of it is set in ancient Judea and Israel. What is inherently wrong with being borrowed? I know that aesthetically we have a wicked cult of novelty going these days, but it's actually not all that "Biblical" a perspective to say that a thing must be new in order to be valuable. The stories in question imply quite the opposite in fact; most of the heroes of the narrative after the end of Genesis are priests, prophets, or kings who rediscover old truths, not invent new ones.
oh, yeah, don't get me wrong! Explosions, or the threat thereof is my career. But when WE install a glass parking lot, we can point to the chain of choices we made to make that happen.
Oh, intercourse the Penguin.
because a molecule of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in a covalent bond is what water is. You were expecting kumquats?
No. These are questions that scientists understand quite well. You not understanding it is quite another matter.
