Assumption: that the Bible was written by humans, with human goals in mind (even if those goals were to sincerely offer a “better way” to those around them).
So, they have the Earth flood. “God splash!”–great, it shows his power, and reminds us not to be bad. Plus, it explains fossils and stuff. There’s wild conjecture that this “flood” had something to do with rising sea-levels after the Ice Age and the Red Sea.
But then God says “I’ll never do THAT again.” One perspective is that he’s being merciful. Awesome. But it seems like a bad idea to have your deity promise something that might happen again. What if there is a big flood? People start doubting their God, who’s promised not to do that.
I’m not sure if there’s a factual answer to this, since I don’t know if this kind of stuff is actually an area of much conjecture. If this is a poor forum choice, sorry!
If the common Flood myths were based on a real event, perhaps the social engineering opportunities offered by still holding the possibility of another flood if you don’t do exactly what the Flying Pink Monster tells you to were overridden (for once,) by the empirical observation that that sort of Flood hadn’t occured for hundred of years, so therefore the desert deity must have promised to not do it again.
Maybe God is one of those “Been there, done that” type of beings. Or perhaps he’s more into “Wait until you get a load of what I have in store for you next time” type of gods.
Because he had already decided that the world would eventually go under by fire. Flooding out the entire world would be a repeat and he just don’t roll that way.
Are you sure that isn’t the Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Flying Pink Monster is a heretical spinoff sect and they would be greatly offended to be included with the splinter group.
Not to mention the Flying Pink Unicorn, which broke away from the mainstream church over a debate on how many horns was the sacred number…
Big flood? God promised He would never again flood the whole world, so by the time it looks like he’s welshing, it’s a little late for starting to doubt Him.
Why “never again”? Perhaps we needed the first time to answer the question “Why doesn’t God just kill all the bad people?”. A second Flood would be superfluous. (And moist.)