tmspartan:It makes perfect sense. I don't see the connection between the Precursors and the Flood other than the fact that they can travel between galaxies.
Well yes there is that, however we do not know how many different galaxies the Precursors have actually been to. And more to the point what galaxies they actually have a significant if not total presence in. For all we know they may have just jumped from galaxy to galaxy taking one quick look and then moving on.
And there also is the issue of people being blind to other life in other galaxies. In 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope gave a view of 3,000 different galaxies. Those were the only ones visible at that time. And after that observation they gave an estimate of around 125 billion different galaxies in the universe. Since then that estimate has risen to hundreds of billions of galaxies. Recently a German super-computer spat out an estimate of up to 500 billion galaxies.
Thats alot of room for different races to achieve that same technology level as the Precursors or even exceed it.
tmspartan: The Flood could have gotten here even by stealing a Precursor ship as they moved to a different Galaxy. It is far more likely than assuming an all-consuming parasitic infection is the next step in evolution and that this same infection passed down to the Forerunners their belief that they need to protect all life in the galaxy.
Again it doesnt even have to be a Precursor vessel. There are so many galaxies out there that there are too many possabilities to fathom.
tmspartan:The Flood has always been a parasite as it is not small enough to undergo micro-evolution, this means that for at least millions of years the Flood has been in its parasitic form and has always fed on organisms of sufficient Biomass to survive. This means that when they absorb something it wouldn't have automatically changed its mindset from "good" to "evil". Besides the Flood are driven by instinct, they absorb sentient beings and take their knowledge but they don't take on their characteristics and thought patterns.
Thats my point. The Flood show every characteristic of a virus or parasite. That means first and foremost it is going to feed and replicate.
Absorbing people doesnt change their behavior from good or bad. There is an equal amount of good and evil in all of us. Its our choices on which path to follow that reflect that good or evil. If a being was absorbed those polar opposites wouldnt come into play. Otherwise we would just get a gray neutral blob of matter that doesnt do anything.