Yeah. Zeus is kind of a dick. It’s like, who he was. He screwed around with anything with a pulse and got yelled at by his wife and threw his own son out of Olympus in a temper and ate the mother of one of his children, but it’s not like people are saying how great he is. Or accusing people of being blasphemous. But when you say the Old Testament god is a douchebag, people get bent out of shape. Jesus is love, love is good, etc.
For various reasons, I'm going to have to get around to telling my kids the Bible Stories eventually
There were a few alternate Christianities back before things got stabilized which decided that Jesus’ God was the real God and the Old Testament God was actually the Devil.
You’re skipping the bit where as part of the big thank you Noah kills a bunch of the last surviving animals. 
The Nephilim are apocryphal. The word appears a grand total of once in the OT. “The Nephilim were in the earth in those days”. That’s it. Stories of the Grigori(Watchers) and the Book Of Enoch are not canonical.
Well, my knowledge of the flood story comes from the Madeleine L’Engle story “Many Waters.” And if it’s all a bunch of made up stories anyway, why not believe in the parts I like the best?
Ackchally…
If he was sacrificing animals, they would have been of the “clean” variety, and in the story as told in Genesis*, he brought 7 pairs of those instead of just 1.
*This is a little obscure, though, because there are at least two different versions of the story being interlaced with each other at this point in the book and only one of them has the bit about the clean and unclean animals.
I’ll take logic and skepticism over faith any day. It helps cut down the number of Brooklyn Bridges you get sold among other things.
The mountaintops came out after the flood waters receded, which makes where the dove got that waterlogged olive branch a bit of a puzzle.
Now, if you’ve studied Flood physics like I have you’d know that some people claim that there were no mountains before the flood, which cuts down on God’s water bill quite a bit, and they all grew during the flood, I suppose being of the “just add water” variety. None of this of course eliminates the problem that the energy released by water in the vapor cloud falling to the earth in either of these cases would cook Noah, the animals and the ark. Not surprising that the people who swiped the Gilgamesh story wouldn’t know that, but we do.
Just play them the Bill Cosby version.
“How long can you tread water? Hah-hah, hah, hah, hah.”
Given your personal interpretation of these stories, which seem to teach a whole different set of lesson than those your minister might try to impart, why bother with these stories at all?
Personally, I think you can teach the same lessons using Itchy & Scratchy, and Rocky & Bullwinkle as your source material.
I prefer Eddie Izzard’s version in which Noah (played by Sean Connery) wants to build a “shpeedboat”. And punches a baboon.
Also, all the evil ducks survive the Flood.
Right …
You and me, Lord, you and me.
Please don’t pollute your children’s minds with that crap.
Pfft. Curious George Makes Pancakes isn’t true, either, but that won’t stop me from reading it to them.
I believe the point is that, by telling them to embrace logic, one is telling their kids what to think, not just how to think.
Maybe you didn’t read the small print. Inspired by actual events.
Only to the extent that teaching them to think better means that they will be more likely to reject things that make no sense. That’s like saying that teaching a kid drawing stifles their creativity, because they’ll be more likely to draw recognizable shapes instead of scribbles.
The wording of this opening suggests that you feel some slight hesitation about doing so. Is that the case, and, if so, why is that?
(I ask only out of curiosity. I don’t think I have any standing to offer Biblical interpretation or parenting advice.)
Well put. I’ve always expected that my kids would have to make a living with their brains. The eldest is well on the path to proving me right. When the youngest got mad at me sometimes, she said she was going to become a Christian. I just laughed. Neither ever got prevented or even discouraged from exploring religion. It never took. if anyone thinks that it is dreadful that my teaching them logic prevented them for being religious, I’ll just have to disagree.
Especially nice - the youngest one seems to attract atheist boyfriends. 
Bathshebalet when I finally decided I had better git her some Bible:
smiles and shakes her head like I’m trying to tell her a tall tale, um, which I probably was
and then,
“Nah, that’s not true. There was a star and a bang. We learned about it in school.”
About the time she started to look concerned and puzzled was about the time the Bible Stories for Kiddies went into the Goodwill box. Which was a shame really because it had a rocking picture of John’s head on a plate.
Again, this is fine and all…but it negates a big part of religion.
There’s nothing wrong with logic, and frankly there’s nothing wrong with skepticism (if you believe it is healthy to question your faith). But you have to realize that if you go the entire thing with logic, you will clearly not believe. You have to have faith to make it work.