I’d like to point out to Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) that if you believe in the Bible, then you believe that Noah lived to be 950 years old.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said you can have “an honest difference of opinion” of what’s causing climate change without “automatically being either all in that’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural,” BuzzFeed reports.
Barton then cited the biblical Great Flood as an example.
“I would point out that if you’re a believer in in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”
Now, the reason that God decided to flood the world was because he had determined that mankind was wicked. And the reason that he decided to spare Noah and have him build the Ark is because Noah was the only righteous man of his generation.
I don’t think Rep. Barton is all that righteous. But, more than that, the thing is that if you believe in the Bible then you have to believe that God has no responsibility for people dying in floods in today’s world.
Why?
Because he promised not to ever do it again.
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Okay, if you want to quibble, God could argue that the people and animals that drown in tsunamis and floods and superstorms are only a portion of the total population. Still, he promised not to drown people and animals as retribution for wickedness. However, he didn’t say he wouldn’t destroy Texas with droughts and hurricanes if their dumbassery grew to levels he found intolerable.