Genesis VI-IX: Noah and the Flood

In these books of the Bible, we learn that God carried out the greatest mass murder in history. He destroyed every living creature besides Noah, his family, and a pair of every animal. Strangely enough, God did not have Noah preserve any plants on the ark, only animals. I am baffled by the fact that there are still any plants at all. I wonder how thorough the preservation of the animals actually was. Did he preserve insects - even tiny ones? What about asexual organisms? Were they still brought on board in pairs? More unnerving, how did roughly 10²⁰ gallons of water simply "recede" from the Earth? It seems like God had to go through a lot of trouble defying the natural laws he himself created just so that he could permanently ensure the weakening of the immune systems of the human race for all of eternity through generation upon generation of horrible incest. Why did Noah live so long after God changed the rules on that? Or was there a clause that accounted for his being born before the rule change? This event seems to serve no purpose whatsoever outside of assuring us that God won't simply get mad and kill everyone again. Cool?

The world will end in fire during the Sun's transition from main sequence to RED GIANT. But it's unlikely that the human race will even last to witness this event. The Earth will be consumed by the expanding star so quietly that it won't be clear that anything really ended. Therefore, we are responsible for our fate, whatever it is, and we ought to put consideration into that fact.

Fiery destruction! B^)