Dear Judy,
The non-believers you are dealing with don't really want answers; they want to argue.
The answer to all these questions is the same.
God was executing Divine Judgement on sin and unrepentant sinners. Jesus didn't bust up tables in the city square. He overthrew the tables of the money changers in the Temple, The House of God, in other words, His House, because the money changers were ripping off the pilgrims coming to make sacrifices.
The same with the Flood and Noah. God gave these people, chance after chance to repent. They refused and they received Judgment.
Finally, we are commanded not to commit murder. All killing is not murder. Executing a criminal is not murder. We try to avoid it today as Catholics but the Bible authorizes Capital Punishment. That's just one example of killing that's not murder. There are others.
The person you are conversing with is wrenching texts or narratives out of context and actually distorting them, in an attempt to justify his refusal to accept the Gospel.
John
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