The story of Noah and the ark, now revitalized through a semi-awful movie with the otherwise wonderful Steve Carell, is ground into the subconscious of anyone who was raised in a Christian household (like I was). I think that parents tell it repeatedly to children because of the great rain/flood imagery, coupled with the good intention of teaching their children to be moral. It's one of those stories that is very easy to illustrate with vivid pictures and colors, and so the tale makes its way into many christian story collections for kids.
To recap: god creates man (see last post), then there is a rather large blank spot in biblical history with no explanation, then suddenly there is full blown civilization with bustling cities, ethnicity (or tribes or whatever), large agricultural system in place with domesticated animals, etc. Yet, despite all the advances brought by civilization, mankind has become completely evil, up to the point where only one man on earth is worth saving. That would be Noah, enter stage left. The rest of his family's good or evilness isn't really up for question, since really only the male head of the household counts as anything at this point in biblical history. SO, god has the brilliant plan to wipe out all of humanity and start over with this one family. Apparently he is into recessive genetic traits and incest.
Let's analyze this. Apart from rather pointless, scientific questions such as how could water flood the whole earth, couldn't people escape by going to higher ground, why were there no other boats on earth since lakes clearly existed as well as the sea, it was only for 1 1/2 months for god's sake, couldn't anyone get off their butt long enough not to drown in the water? can't anyone swim?
Okay, besides those obvious questions, I want to consider the meaning behind all this. First, I have a big problem with the statement that every human on earth was evil. What about the children, babies, and mentally handicapped? Were they also evil? Oh, maybe god hadn't created genetic mutations yet. I guess this could fall into the same category in which the whole household is to be judged by the male patriarch. Fine. What is significant about that particular point in history? why not decide everyone was evil 25 years earlier? or 25 years later? Emotionally, I guess god had waited a long time and was finally fed up. He just couldn't take it anymore. So much for his limitless patience and godly quality of immortality/timelessness.
Why destroy everyone? Why start over? Why leave anyone behind? What was the point of letting Noah live? IF the main reward of being a good person in the bible is heaven, eternal life, then what purpose did it serve to save the one good family as a reward, and to make the whole rainbow pact about never destroying the earth by flooding again? Maybe as reward for Noah. Maybe, god really thought Noah's family was attractive and wanted to restart the human race with good lookers. At any rate, people must have either loved or hated him after the whole flood thing. "Oh, there's god's favorite human. great. here comes that jerk Noah!"
That gets to the part about how a god should act. If I created something, such as an omelet, and it got messed up, meaning that I screwed it up (not to imply that it was god's fault HIS creation became so EVIL. I would never say something so blasphemous), I would probably pitch the whole thing and start over from scratch. Unless, I had limited resources, or I didn't want to feel bad that i wasted my time, or I wanted a reminder to learn from my mistakes (hmm, what were god's motivations?). Then I might save one corner of the omelet and keep it on my bedside table for all eternity and form a rainbow pact with it.
Second point is, once he killed everyone off, why start over? Why not make something else? Project human: failure. Next project: really cool blue space lightning. So, if god is the creator, by the way, what is he doing now? Waiting to kill us all off again when we become evil? He clearly isn't spending his limitless time creating things right now. wait a minute...maybe the whole creation thing was a one time thing. God used up his magic creation powder, and therefore he can't create the world again. Maybe that's why he saved noah, just out of necessity. Also, if god had killed everyone on earth off, and then created humans from scratch, then it seems like that would have cancelled the whole Adam-and-eve, mankind doomed to be mortal and suffer for all eternity curse. And god wouldn't want man to get out of that punishment. Also, then god would have to come up with something else to fill up the beginning part of the bible. And how could he come up with a better first chapter than the downfall of man? there's no way he could top that.
Basically, the story of the flood seems completely bogus just in philosophical terms. Even as an interesting fairy tale, I can't quite wrap my head around the lesson I'm supposed to take away from the tale. I think the lesson is just like "Aenima" by Tool: "Learn to Swim!"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment