Noah’s wife was on the boat. She was in charge of the cooking, cleaning, and shit clean up. Problem solved.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
In other words what is the least amount of woo God could use to accomplish that story.
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It would take a considerable amount of woo and of twisting to make it happen, unless we are talking about radically changing the story. If you want to posit that what REALLY happened is that some guy on a barge with his family and some grain and a few animals he was herding got caught in a local flood and survived after getting washed downstream, then the story was written on some clay tablets, retold and eventually picked up by some nomads, well…that would be the least amount of woo needed. But no God is needed either. If you want to posit local floods all around the world at different times happening, and they being so devastating that they are handed down as stories, again, no woo needed…and no God needed either. But if you want to posit a global flood, then you are going to need a hell of a lot of woo. If you want to posit some guy building a ship out of wood (in the freaking Middle East) of the dimensions listed and at the time listed (and with the technology available then in ship building of even the most advanced ship wrights of the time…let alone of some desert nomad), well, you are going to need a hell of a lot of woo for that as well. The story just doesn’t work without significant woo all down the line…including the fact that there is zero evidence of such a flood.
But what you ARE doing is trying to twist ‘facts’ to suit your basic premise (I won’t even call it a ‘theory’). You are starting with God and the core elements of the story having to be true and real, then attempting to work things out to make it to that basic premise. I could start with the idea of rabid mutant space monkeys visiting the earth 8000 years ago, building a huge civilization based on monkey worship and squirrel sacrifice, and then suddenly deciding that humans weren’t worth saving, packing up and leaving for some other planet…and taking literally everything with them, including any random air pollution, bodies of their fellow mutant space monkeys, evidence of squirrel sacrifice and everything else, then work things out so that this was the obvious conclusion based on fitting any sort of ‘fact’ to fit my conclusion. That’s exactly what you are doing here.
-XT
Exactly, and furthermore, your new version of the flood story is complicated for brand new reasons that the original wasn’t, because you’re adding stuff to it.
To answer what is truth…truth is what is!
The more one looks into the flood story the more one can see the impossibilities, if there was 30,000 feet of water covering the earth, so it could cover Mt Everette, and evaporate to 15,000 feet to Mt. Ararat It would have to evaporate so fast that it would be impossible for the beings in the Ark to breathe. and where a palm branch could grow after almost a year would be quite a feat in itself.
Reported!
It’s sad, but it does seem the “logical” way out of the moral trap. It’s a pretty clear train isn’t it:
God exists > god is good > god hates evil > god drowns babies = babies must have been evil. Quod erat whatsit.
Least amount of woo, but still involving god? I would suggest: “Inspiring someone to write down the story in a convincing manner that led to many people believing it”, as this avoids the need for the entire diluvian escapade while achieving the exact same result.
(Arguably god may also have had to kill of the dinosuars to help with the cover-up). 
The story says more about a monster being that knew what he created would not be perfect, then punished all living things (except for a few) and didn’t care what happened to the majority. I would imagine there was more innocent children and babies that was supposed to have drowned than the one’s that were saved! It would state( spiritual) or factual that this God would not be a loving being, but a cruel monster, that were it human he would be put in jail for life.