When I express the dubiousness of the worldwide flood as a reason to duubt the Bible as absolute truth this is often the answer they give.
There is Gilgamesh, but the Bible story is probably derived from that. There may be some other flood stories in different places, but universally? I don’t think so.
The people you are talking to (or whoever they got their information from) have probably heard, correctly, that there is one other version of the flood story (Gilgamesh) and have extrapolated wildly from that.
Wiki says many, but not all, do., as does this site.
There is a very well written article by Stephen Jay Gould about floods. He is in an US valley somewhere, and he notices gigantic flood ripples, much like the ones on a beach. The article then points to remains of a nearby ice dam, that would break every thousand years or so under the pressure of the water build up behind it, releasing a truly Biblical flood on the whole valley behind the dam. There are also similar stories to inland seas where the outflowing rivers were blocked and the water levels rose dramatically in a very short time. Gould uses these examples to show that not all developements in nature are gradual and slow in character, but that evolution is a mixture of slow developements, long times of things staying the same, and sometimes enormous quick change following a natural disaster.
Also think tsunamis.
So yes, floods are real, many civilisations have stories about them, they mostly are local (but how are local cultures to know that? As fas as they know, their whole world is submerged).
Aztecs, Incas, and the Hopi in the Americas all had flood myths. Various Middle East cultures had flood myths that may have influenced one another. And another flood story arose in China.
It may be an overstatement to say it is absolutely universal, but there are many such stories that appear to have arose independently.
The thing is,it makes no difference! If the Bible story is true, all those people would be DEAD! No story to pass on!
Some researchers, e.g. Witzel of Harvard, postulate that common threads among ancient mythologies allow partial reconstruction of very early prehistoric mythologies like “Laurasian mythology”. Witzel has recently published a book on the topic. If I understand correctly, a common great flood theme applies from North Africa to the Americas, so must predate events like the huge Black Sea flood 7000+ years ago.
Mainly tsunamis.
I believe it is only found in cultures who lived on flood plains or islands. You know, places where floods occur.
In the 2010 Pakistan Floods
[QUOTE=wiki]
Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan’s total land area was underwater, approximately 796,095 square kilometres (307,374 sq mi)
[/QUOTE]
I was caught in the floods, and I can attest that, yes it did look like the whole bloody world was under water.
Many of the flood stories in modern culture originate from the fertile crescent or the surrounding areas. Possibly the various stories are folk memory of many floods or perhaps one truly massive flood.
All which people?
I would think what Bible literalists had in mind is not that the people who had been living in all those various parts of the world survived the flood and made up stories about it, but that the descendents of the Noah’s Arc survivors spread around the whole world, carrying their own stories about the Flood, which changed over time. Except God made sure that the stories that were passed down through Abraham to Moses weren’t corrupted, so that he could write the truth down in the Torah.
Try to be more specific about why you are doubting the story.
Express the specific “dubiousness” that about 5,000 years ago the entire earth was covered with a flood which rose beyond the height of all mountains, killed every living land-based creature except what was on a wooden boat, and caused the extermination of all humans except for a single family. Subsequent to that world-wide flood, all the water disappeared and the earth was repopulated with land-based plants and animals from a point near modern-day Turkey.
The fact that nearly every civilization based near water (and that’s pretty much most of 'em) has a “flood story” is hardly corroborative evidence the Bible is absolute truth.
Actually, the first reference doesn’t say that, nor do the parts of the second I skimmed.
In any event, it’s what I’d say about not only flood myths, but other common tropes as well (like the Gorgon-face, which I’ve found all over the world). One can certainbly say that examples of such myths are found all over the world. It’s harder to assert that “not everyone does”. Even if you don’t happen to find an explicit example from one culture, it might simply not have been recorded. One is on safer ground saying that some myths are very widespread, without asserting that not everyone has it.
In the 1990s archaeologists discovered evidence that the Black Sea flooded the Near East some 7500 years ago. This would account for flood stories in Genesis, as well as in Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian mythologies.
Here’s a link to the article from Scientific American: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm
The Hindu veda Shatapatha Brahmana contains a deluge myth that’s remarkably similar to the modern translation of the Biblical flood story. Manu saves a fish (which in this version is an avatar of Vishnu) from a predator fish, and keeps it in a jar. When it’s fully grown, he returns it to the ocean. Vishnu decides to rid the world of people because of their wickedness but returns to warn Manu and other devout/goodly people to build boats. He protects plants and animals from the flood too, but it never really says how, IIRC. In other vedas the story appears without the divine connection; the fish is just a fish (which happens to speak Sanskrit).
Or near large rivers, or near mountains. IOW, most of early human settlements. Ice ages at their ends would also have provided proto-humans numerous experiences of floods.