I've suspected for a while that really bugs you, js1138 -- that I don't contradict people whose sense of the Holy Scriptures differs from my own, and in particular YECs.
The fact is, I don't have a quarrel with anybody who takes spirituality seriously, and follows whatever spiritual leading they may have in the matter according to their best lights. I also don't quarrel with Jews or Buddhists: I respect their spiritual traditions. As to whether they shall be saved, I simply leave that up to God. (Saying that will probably draw fire, for the Holy Book says no one comes to the Father but through His Son, Jesus Christ. And I believe that, heart and soul. Yet the Good Shepherd Himself tells us that He has many sheep and many [sheep]folds. So I humbly leave the issue to Him: God knows His own, and He will call to them in His own good time....)
Plus there is the "small matter" of the Logos of the Beginning: It is one and the same Logos for the entire universe, and one and the same Logos for each and every human person, whether he recognizes it or not, accepts it, or rejects it. God the Father is father to all human beings, regardless of whether they accept or reject the patrimony.
My quarrel is with people who deny God and their own spirituality, people who think such things are illusions, or fictions, or hallucinations that "the brights" (i.e., people affiliated with the progressive intelligentsia in some fashion or other) have "evolved out of" and therefore are ever so much more "fit" and intelligent than "the dims" (i.e., religious believers). My quarrel is with proselytizers of atheism, the "God is dead" crowd. You've known me a long, long time now, js; so I won't recite the list of my particular betes noir in this regard, because you probably already know it by heart by now. :^)
As for the Great Flood: We do not and cannot know the future. That being the case, I don't think the book is closed on anything. The Creation is not yet fully revealed....
I haven't studied the issue for a long time, but I seem to recollect that many cultural traditions have a flood myth, not just Christians, telling of an event that occurred in primaeval times. The universality of the myth is puzzling to me; you either have to think early man was subject to a global, contemporaneous mass hallucination, or there just might be something to the story.
Plus there is the "small matter" that God put the Flood in the Old Testament. You have to wonder why a God Who is Truth, and therefore cannot lie, would do that, unless it were true in some fashion.
Anyhoot, I hope this explanation helps.
Thank you so much for writing, js!
That's pretty close to the way I see you.