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January 14, 2005
Holy Shit
Holy: A classification which supercedes any attempt to investigate or disprove, lest one earns the wrath of a higher being in case one proves it wrong.
I've got to hand it to my loyal readers, they certainly know how to strike up a debate—well, a debate of two. Yesterday's entry about the creation story in the bible prompted one remark about the finding of Noah's Ark.
Let's examine the impossibility of that particular story being true. First off, the laws of genetics would preclude two of anything being able to produce more than a few generations before they problems of inbreeding would wipe that particular species out. Then, there are about 3,000 species of land mammals alone, and add to that the 20 or so flightless birds that are around or even recorded in living history, such as the Dodo. Let's just say by some miracle (God is good with those) the reptiles all managed to survive submerged for 40 days, no need to add them onto the boat. But we are still dealing with a quite a few kilotons of weight, moving around, eating each other.
All right, so God had a hand in keeping the boat afloat, and the animals passive and the genetics diverse afterward, including those of Noah's sons and sons' wives. God even led those creatures off into their own continents. But if it was Mankind that had become bad and nobody was good anymore except Noah and his wife and his sons and their wives (what about their families?), then why did God bother flooding the entire earth at all and kill all those poor innocent creatures? Why didn't he just send a particularly nasty plague like that one they had in 28 Days Later, and tell Noah to go lock himself away for about, say, 28 days? Or had God not developed that level of technology at the time?
And, c'mon, did nobody else had a boat in those days?
Isn't it far easier to believe that at the end of the last ice age, some time after mankind had begun to commune in groups and villages and tell stories, water moved vast distances in very short periods of time. There's physical evidence the Black Sea was landlocked and much smaller at some point during the Ice Age and as soon as the waters of the Mediterranean rose high enough to come pouring into the Bosporus and decimate villages all over.
Isn't it just possible that 10,000 years ago, such a flood occurred—and a flood story began. Somehow people passed it down, generation-to-generation, and it grew and changed as it moved from village to village, father to son, mother to daughter, culture to culture. To the Jews, it became a story about morals, and about a mean, vindictive, indulgent and not very intelligent God, and at some point, someone who claimed he was Moses took it and wrote it down, thus beginning the practice of waiting centuries before committing something to a holy book.
Wait until there's nobody alive who can remember it and then say it's the truth. I am not a faithless man, but I don't need mythologies and fantasies and misogynistic, belatedly-written Gospels to believe in a higher being. My question is how can so many people declare such illogic to be God's word, and claim it's the basis of their faith? It seems to me most of them use it as the basis for their bad behavior, picking and choosing the passages they want to read and understand and forgetting the true message of Jesus' words about loving one another and being all of us children of God.
Throughout history, these Holy Texts have been used to deny others life and liberty. Starting off the twenty-first century, is the case of Amina Lawal, a woman of Northern Nigeria who had a child out of wedlock, was sentenced to be buried in rocks up to her head and stoned to death. This because 12 states of Northern Nigeria are governed by Shariah law, which is based on Islam's holy book, the Quran. Of course, they only use the angry parts of the Quran, and leave out the kinder words. Thankfully, Lawal was freed last February.
I think the story of Noah was an allegory. Miracles do happen, even today. I have encountered one or two in my time, in spite of the fact that I engage in behavior that is inappropriate according to the events not too long after the flood (where did all these people come from in so few years?).
Floods happen too, and I would not call them miracles. One would have to blame the recently devastating tsunami on God. Maybe it was those Swedish tourists in Phuket that made God angry.
And now they've found the ark. In Iraq. But nobody can see it, because it's been declared "holy ground." Just like the Constantine and his Council of Niciea declared the "holy book." Untouchable, pristine, and undeniable. By its holy virtue, it cannot be proven false. To do so would go against God.
It's all just Holy Shit.
Posted by Bastique at January 14, 2005 11:59 PM
Comments
Hmmm. Another problem with the flood story is the same problem as earlier in Genesis when God supposedly brought every species to Adam to be named (2:19). Climatically speaking, samples of every living creature could not have been brought to any point in the Middle East; many would have died due to climate and environmental differnces. Ah well. Mythology will be Mythology, not reality.
Posted by: Aaron at January 15, 2005 1:55 PM
I wish you could have seen this documentary on Noha's Ark! It was just fascinating.They also had a discussion w/ one of trhe REALLY old men that actually saw....and described in detail how it lookerd(the pice sticking out)....well,as weather and erosion attacked it,it broke the Ark in half,and then you could see what was INSIDE the Ark,and it described it to a "T"....just exactly how God ordered Noah to build the Ark.It was simply amazing!!
T.
Posted by: tammi at January 17, 2005 12:01 AM
oopsey...scuse the spelling.....T.
Posted by: tammi at January 17, 2005 12:02 AM
Lots of people remind me of my grandfather, grat guy, but the thought the WWF was real and man landing on the moon was a govt. trick.
What would be so wrong if the Ark were real.
We build big old rocket ships, what would be wrong if a person or family built and big old boat many years ago. My guess is the Democrates don't like it because it was not govt. funded.
Posted by: Stan at February 15, 2005 4:54 AM