Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a joyous Christmas and happy New Year.  May this be a time of peace and good will for you and yours, and may 2012 be a year of good health and prosperity.

Setting up

I haven't been around much to blog lately, and now I'm off for nearly two weeks. I've finally given in and am setting up mobile blogging. Hopefully this means I will be able to post more often.

A tragedy made worse.

(cross posted with my main blog)

I haven't had much chance to post here lately (if you visit my home school blog, you'll read why, though I do warn it might fall into the category of TMI!).  On top of that, it was just really hard to make any of my usual posts in light of what's been going on in Japan in the last while.  First the shock of an earthquake large enough to affect the earth's axis.  Then the horror of the tsunami.  Finally, Japan continues to struggle with containing their damaged nuclear reactors.

What has made this event unique is the prevalence of cameras and videos in Japan.  We've been inundated with images that have made us all eyewitnesses.  They are astonishing beyond belief.



Ten's of thousands of people are dead or missing.






Countries from around the world have offered aid.  Some offers have been accepted, while others are on standby, ready to move should they be asked.

Meanwhile, around the world, people are offering their thoughts and prayers - as well as making donations and finding other ways they can help.

Yet no tragedy seems to go to waste without someone trying to use it to spout their own agenda or spread their own hate.

The first I saw was on someone's facebook status. This was a "gamer friend" - someone I know only as a "neighbour" in a game I play.  The first was a status update that started off sending sympathies to Japan, then quickly devolved to a rant about how they were the richest country in the world and would be able to rebuild in months, because they'd taken so many US jobs.  I challenged her on her claims, but she never responded.  Instead, I saw a new update.  Here, it started as a warning against scams claiming to raise donations for Japan - followed up by another rant on how no one should be sending donations, because they were so rich from all the jobs stolen from the US.

She is no longer on my friends list.

Then you had the people trying to tie the earthquake to climate change.  No surprise there.  After Katrina, Indonesia and Haiti, they're no strangers to dancing on the bodies of the dead to push their AGW crusades.

Next on the list were the anti-nuclear crowd.  They, of course, are expecting the worst - are almost eager for it, for all their claims to the contrary - and don't believe any of the official reports.  Of course, those reports are changing so fast, there's no way to know anything right now.  We shall see how that evolved.  I find it quite disturbing, however, that they are so quick to ignore the thousands of dead while fretting over the nuclear plants and preaching their anti-nuclear message.  Some, if you can believe it, are even planning to stockpile iodine.  Which would make more sense if they were actually in any danger, but we're talking people who live in central North America. 

Just now, however, was the worst of the worst.

A certain group of people I know have started sharing a YouTube video.  I'm not going to link to this pathetic piece of garbage here, and hopefully enough complaints will have been made against it to have it removed completely.

The video is of a young woman who's going on about how "God is so good" for answering prayers.  The prayer in question was to "open atheists eyes."  The prayer was answered, according to her, through the earthquake in Japan.

Now, within the first minute of this video, it was obvious to me that this was a troll.  For someone who claimed to be a Christian, she didn't talk or act like one.  I've encountered a few whacked out extreme Christians in my time, and they don't act or talk like her, either.  A quick search revealed that this person is a member of a satirical, spoof "Christian" forum, where she's known to post under another alias as well.

For a troll, this one is particularly dedicated.  There's a year's worth of videos on her YouTube channel.  All stupid and obnoxious.  She was obviously an anti-Christian playing herself as a Christian extremist.  It didn't help that she did things like call Lent, lentil.

This particular video, however, was disgusting beyond belief.  If she had been a real Christian spouting this, it would be disgusting beyond belief.  What makes it worse is that we've got an anti-Christian troll using the horror and tragedy of Japan to troll against Christians by posing as one and spewing her garbage.

It only took a few minutes of searching to find out her double identity, and that she was a fake.  The people sharing her video (and giving her channel hits in the process) fell for it.  They're the usual bunch of anti-Christians, and they shared it with comments such as this.

PLEASE GOD, Save us from the Christian Right!!!

I don't recall this woman's political views being mentioned, but then I didn't waste time watching the whole thing.  This crowd always assume Christian = political right, and it's a common phrase.

This is why I hate organized religions.

Because apparently, this video is what they think organized religion is like.  Nothing like painting millions of people worldwide with the same brush!

This will make your hair stand on end.  To quote my source for this: "... and people are afraid of Muslims?"

Okay, aside from the hyperbole in the first sentence, the second one is just plain ignorance.  People are afraid of Muslims because they see all those videos and read news about radical Muslims teaching their kids that Jews are dogs and pigs that need to be wiped off the face of the earth, and that the greatest thing they can do is blow themselves up while killing as many infidels as possible, or go around shooting US soldiers after watching a fake video supposedly showing atrocities by US soldiers but were actually taken from a movie, or murder families in their sleep.  People can't tell one type of Muslim from another.  It's not like the extremists walk around with signs taped to their foreheads reading "I am a radical Muslim!"  Comparing this woman's ignorant blathering doesn't exactly fall into the same category.

Here's the thing.  Of the many thousands of Christians around the world posting, sharing and otherwise articulating their caring for the victims of Japan's triple tragedy, sending their heartfelt prayers and organizing ways to send help, this group of Christophobes (and it's a very specific group only) is busily sharing this disgusting video, giving the troll who made it more traffic on her YouTube channel in the process, and using it to spew their own anti-Christian bigotry.

I wonder how many of them bothered to go to the YouTube page and flag the video as offensive?  Somehow, I don't think a single one did - just as not a single one bothered to do a simple google search to find out if this sicko was for real, or the troll that she turned out to be.

Which, as far as I'm concerned, makes them every bit as disgusting as the troll who made the video.


update:  Well, that was fast!  The woman who made the video I've been talking about has admitted her videos were all fake, and her YouTube account is now closed.

Let's see how many of the people who shared this will apologize for spreading their hate.

Thoughts on the Flood, Part Two

In 1922, archaeologist Leonard Woolley and his team began a dig.  The site was a huge mound of rubble; the remains of the Biblical city of Ur. Like many old cities, Ur consisted of buildings built on top of the remains of older buildings.  By digging trenches down through these layers in different places, Woolley hoped to gain insight into 6000 years of continual habitation.

What they found over the years exceeded all expectations.  Not only did they find a treasure of artefacts that helped us understand how these ancient people lived, but they found the earliest inhabitants actually predated the Sumerians, taking us back farther than anyone imagined. 

Then Woolley and his team found something else that caught everyone by surprise.

Modern science, as we recognize it today, emerged during a time when Catholicism was the predominant religion of the "civilized" world.  As the church of Rome grew in power and wealth, She was able to pay for scientific and academic exploration in ways few others could.  The world view of the time was that the Earth was only about 6000 years old, and people assumed they already knew and understood a great deal about the past because of the historical events recorded in the Bible.  No one really thought to question these assumptions.  So as early geologists saw rocks in places they didn't belong, or found huge beds of fossilized bone, and studied layers in the earth, they generally accepted these as evidence of catastrophic events such as Noah's Flood. 

In time, however, it became increasingly clear that these easy answers couldn't explain what was being found.  As is typical of academia, new notions for things like continental drift or glaciations were met with great resistance.  When the evidence eventually mounted to the point that it could no longer be denied, ignored or mocked away, there was another typical response; in accepting the new interpretations of evidence, there was a backlash against all previous conclusions.  Once these new geological ideas were accepted, anything that once was attributed to Biblical interpretation was now summarily rejected as being nothing more than religious nonsense.

Unfortunately, this meant that perfectly correct observations were rejected with the wrong ones.  As the new dogma replaced the old, observations and evidence that seemed to corroborate the old dogma were rejected as thoroughly as evidence for the new dogma had been for so many years.

Enter Woolley's discovery.

Having dug for many years through layers of Sumerian culture, then finding an even older period Woolley named the  "al-'Ubaid period," Woolley and his team reached a layer of clay and silt.  Usually, this would be seen as evidence that they'd gone back as far as they could; that they had already reached the very first group of people that lived in this region.  His workers thought they had reached the end of the dig.  Woolley, however, decided to keep going.

Much to everyone's shock, after digging through eight feet of water-laid sediment, they found more remains of people living at this site, with pottery matching the al-'Ulbaid pottery found above the layer of sediment. 

The sediment layer turned out to extend not to not only the depth of eight feet (10 in some areas), but covered and area some 400x100 miles.

What Woolley had found was physical evidence of a colossal flood; a flood he believed to be the flood described in the Bible.

The sediment layer, consisting of billions of tonnes of material that had clearly been laid down in a single, rapid event, was dated to about 3000 BC.  Sumerian clay tablets dating back to 2000 BC contain records of a great flood.  Not only was this evidence of a flood greater than anything previously known, but it was witnessed and recorded as history by humans.

The resistance to evidence confirming the existence of a single flood of colossal proportions continues.  Few are willing to publish such evidence, nor entertain it in discussions.  Of the few that do, they often come with disclaimers or attempts to explain away the evidence into something more acceptable to the current dogma.  Of course, the few places that are willing to publish this evidence as what looks to be a global event (especially online) are those that tend to be completely rejected  by opponents for being religious in some way.  A convenient way to reject evidence one doesn't want to entertain.  Of course, believers in the Biblical account of the flood don't agree on all the details, either.  This is often used by opponents as proof that the Biblical account must be false, though why this should be so escapes me.  Why does the fact that people disagree on how something happened have to mean it didn't happen at all?

As I've mentioned in Part One of this discussion, I am not a Bible Literalist.  I am not a Young Earth Creationist, either, however in my more recent studies about radiometric dating and its challenges, I've come to the conclusion that we don't actually have any idea how old the earth is, and that it may be far younger than the 4.5 billion years currently stated (to be discussed another time, but for now I'd recommend reading Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by Richard Milton as a backgrounder).  So whether someone is arguing for the Biblical flood from a literal interpretation, or against it based on old earth theory, I'm going to have arguments against both points of view.  Overall, though, I work with what we have, knowing that any conclusions currently accepted by either side can be overturned at any time with new evidence.

I'll leave you to read the links I've added above and encourage you to explore elsewhere to draw your own conclusions about the geological evidence of a flood.  For now, I'll explore a few thoughts I've encountered and entertained over the years.

The first major discussion I had about the Biblical flood goes back some twenty years (so any resources I had back then are pretty much gone).  The company I worked for was owned by a couple of guys who happened to also be dedicated Christians - they did much to counter my own jaded views about Christianity, just by their high level of honesty and integrity.  For a time, they hired a young man from their church who was studying to become a pastor.  This led to some very interesting discussions while we worked together.  At one point, he told me of a fellow student who was working on a scale model of the ark. Though the Bible gives some details about how the ark was to be built that are quite precise, in the end, we don't actually know much about it.  Even the measurements that are given are a problem.  A cubit, for example, is supposed to be the distance from the tips of the fingers to the end of the elbow.  Well, whose arm are we measuring?  As such, I've seen people claim the ark to be anywhere from 450 - 600 feet long.  We don't actually know.  There is a group in the US working on building a full size replica, however, and I think it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Many drawings of the ark, especially in children's books, show the ark as a big boat with a deck and a house-like roofed area.  Not a particularly useful design for the conditions the ark was supposed to be made for, nor one that really matches the Biblical description, which seems like it would have looked a bit more like a football.  The student working on a scale model I was told about felt it was a design meant to roll over completely and be able right itself, which makes perfect sense (as an aside, some of Canada's old destroyers were designed to do the same, though they would lose their guns in the process, allowing them to stay out in weather that would force other ships to return to port.  Yes, it worked).  His view was that it was more like a modern submarine in design.  Early artistic renderings of the ark showed something more saucer shaped, as if one elongated plate were inverted on top of another. 

As my old co-worker and I talked about the flood mythology, he mentioned something that struck me, more because I just happened to have read a paper perhaps a week earlier that corroborated his comment.  His assertion was that, prior to the flood, there was no rain.  The atmosphere itself was very humid.  Water was acquired either from lakes and rivers, or from the heavy dew left behind in the mornings.  The paper I had read had described an early earth that had very warm climate, no rain, and an atmosphere saturated with humidity until finally, triggered by volcanic and seismic events, the atmosphere lost its moisture in what would have been a the world's most massive rainstorm ever.  Likewise, large reservoirs of water trapped underground were breeched, adding to the amount of water from the atmosphere.  The main difference was that the paper I read placed the date of this event to perhaps millions of years ago, though the length of time was based on the assumption of the earth being over 2 billion years old (an age that has had a couple of billion years added to it since then).

This brought up a few notions about what the geological, climatic and atmospheric conditions of the earth was during the days of Noah.  Among the claims made against the Bible is the extremely long life spans recorded.  How could people really live for hundreds of years?  In truth, our bodies are essentially replaced every 7 - 9 years or so (with the exception of certain cells, such as some of those in the brain), as our cells regenerate themselves.  Perhaps the real question should be, with our cells continually replacing themselves, why do we age so quickly?  Or at all?  With a heavily saturated atmosphere to protect us, combined with a warm climate and geological stability, it may indeed be possible for human life spans to be far longer than after those conditions are lost, though perhaps not as long as claimed (after all, the average person for much of human history didn't really keep track of years and often had no idea how old they really were; circumstances that are still true in some modern day cultures.  My own mother didn't discover her true age until she was in her 30's - it was quite a shock for her to discover she was actually older than she'd believed).

This notion brings up an interesting scenario.  Imagine living in a world where rain doesn't exist.  You are nowhere near any large, open bodies of water.  Then there's this weird old man who tells you that, sometime soon (with "soon" being a relative statement - it is supposed to have taken Noah 120 years to build the ark), water is going to fall from the sky and the whole world will be covered with so much water, it would cover the mountains.  Then he starts building this giant boat that doesn't look like any boat you've ever heard of - on dry land.  No wonder the Bible describes people mocking Noah and his family.  Who wouldn't?

Though the typical story of Noah's flood describes 40 days and nights of rain, there was more to it than that.  Among the statements made to claim impossibility for a global flood is that there's no way the mountains could be covered - especially not by the 15 cubits described.  This presumes the mountains were as high as they are now, or even close to what they are now.  Uniformitarianism demands that the rise of mountains be a slow and steady thing, a few inches a year, as observed today.  Yet some of those highest mountains contain deep layers of sedimentary rock and marine fossils at their very peaks in quantities uniformitarian theory cannot explain away, as well as the bone beds found all over the world, and various areas that show deep layers of sedimentation that could only have occurred in short periods of time, among other geological finds that confound our abilities to explain.  Evidence abounds that our earth has gone through periods of inactivity in between periods of cataclysmic changes, lurching back and forth between calm and chaos.  Pillow lava (formed underwater), for example, on mountainsides suggest significant upheaval.  It appears that more than flooding happened, but massive underwater volcanoes and earthquakes as well.  One thing's for sure; the world would have changed utterly and completely once the survivors left the ark a year after the rains.

Interestingly, the one flood myth I wrote about in Part One that didn't involve a boat involved our survivors hiding out in a cave - and that as the waters rose, so did the mountain top.

Among the other problems with the Biblical story is the supposed contradiction of just how many animals Noah took along.  I'm not sure the two "versions" are contradictions, so much as they are one providing more detailed information than the other.  Other flood myths give even less information, or don't include having animals and seeds at all.  In the Biblical version, Noah was to bring along mated pairs of all "unclean" animals, with 7 mated pairs of "clean" animals.  "Clean" animals were those with cloven hooves and chewed a cud - ruminants that tended to live in very large herds, for the most part.  For birds, these were pretty much any bird that wasn't a bird of prey or scavenger.  How many pairs would that be in total?  Who knows?  They certainly wouldn't need to bring, for example, one pair of every dog breed, just one pair of dogs.  We don't even know how many different types of animals there were at the time; certainly not the same number we have today, as it's a number that is constantly changing.  One of the points made to attack the Biblical story is the concern with genetic diversity.  A curious objection, in my view, since the people making it tend to be Darwinists.  Which means that they believe all life on earth, plant and animal, on land, underwater and in the air, are descended from a single cell that sprung up spontaneously, fully capable of reproducing itself, and managing to survive long enough to do so.  If a single cell can lead to the genetic diversity of all living things on earth, why is it so difficult to believe complex creatures can to do the same?

Another objection I've heard made against the Biblical version of the ark is that it would be impossible for Noah to know enough about engineering and shipbuilding to build a vessel to withstand flood conditions.  Curiously, I only hear this argument made against Noah's ark, not against other flood myths.  A Native American version I recall involved people tying a bunch of canoes together, enough for people (an entire village's worth), animals and seeds, and using hides as a roof.  Hardly a combination one would expect to withstand the torrents of a global flood. 

No matter. 

The easiest and most flippant answer to this objection would be that Noah didn't need to know - he had God telling him how to build the art.  Personally, I'm not fond of that answer.  Part of my reasoning against both the objection and the flippant answer is that they both presume ancient humans were somehow less intelligent or capable than we are today.  What hubris!  Why wouldn't Noah be able to figure out how to build such a structure?  After all, these were the people who developed civilization; they are the ones who figured out how to domesticate animals, develop agriculture and written languages. They were the ones who figured out how to take indigestible things like grain and process them into a valuable food source.  They figured out what foods were safe to eat, what herbs could be used as medicines (some of which are the basis for our pharmaceuticals today), and how to prepare and store food for future use.  These are the people who developed tools and construction techniques, art and culture, law and tradition.  How many modern structures do you think will still be around for a millennia or two, like the Roman aqueducts, or the Egyptian and Mayan temples and pyramids?  Our ancient ancestors were just as intelligent, creative and capable as we are today.  Why couldn't Noah or his contemporaries be engineers?  These are the people who invented engineering.

Looking at all the different flood myths, it seems to me that there must be something real behind them.  Looking at the geological finds, it seems to me that there is reason to believe there was a flood of epic proportions that is recorded in sediments and boneyards around the world.  The writers of these myths could only write about what they knew; I don't think they'd be so stupid as to mistake small, regional floods for a global one when they so consistently refer to floodwaters deep enough to cover mountains and express the need to save seeds and animals for the future.  I also see no reason to wonder that Noah and his descendants might write about being the only surviving humans, while some other group of survivors on another continent records the same belief; why would they know about each other?  Why would they need to?

In the end, it's doubtful we'll ever know the full nature of the Biblical flood or the existence of Noah and his family.  The existence of the ark itself might be proven, perhaps.  We know there's worldwide evidence of an epic flood, corroborated by flood myths shared by some 250 cultures around the world that show this flood happened within human history. 

To dismiss all this over petty details seems silly enough.  It seems to me to be even sillier to dismiss it all simply because one refuses to accept evidence that happens to corroborate something in the Bible.

Thoughts on the Flood - Part one

The following is a discussion that broke out into something that needed more space than wall posts.  More specifically:

...you suggested that there is evidence of a global flood. I would love to see it, because in all my years of discussing this issue, none has ever been presented. Well, lots has been presented, but none has ever stood up to any scrutiny.

There are a few things I want to cover in the process, but before I do, when I read the above, questions come to mind.  What does the writer mean when claiming "none has ever stood up to any scrutiny"?  Who decides, to the writer's satisfaction, what evidence passes muster?  Why does the writer choose to believe one side's evidence over the other?  That sort of thing.

I would never have asked those questions in the past.  If someone made such a statement, on any subject, I would have accepted it at face value, unless I had already had previous independent information on the subject.  Today, having spent years examining the evidence of various subjects people have made such statements about, I no longer take anything at face value.  It turns out that, in most cases, such conclusions are based, not on actual evidence, but on personal bias (if you haven't read the On Bias tab above yet, now's the time to do it).  Discussing this with Eldest, she reminded me of one example.  I don't remember what the topic was at all anymore, but something had been said and I'd responded by sharing an article with a counter point of view.  This person shot back that this source was invalid.  The reason?  The link was sourced at a Conservative website, therefore it was biased.  The actual topic discussed or the points made in the article were, to her view, unworthy to even look at, simply because of where it happened to be published.

This exemplifies a problem that I see everywhere.  People who are sold on AGW accuse anyone who disagrees with them as being shills for Big Oil.  People who are whole hog for "alternative" health products brush off those who question the efficacy of those products as just stooges of Big Pharma.  When talking to people who are anti-GMO and pointing out how the use of these foods have not only kept millions of people around the world fed and healthy, but have improved the environment, they refuse to listen at all and accuse anyone who questions their views as being part of Big Agro.  On it goes.

When it comes to the publication of evidence, bias is a huge problem.  The AGW fiasco is a prime example.  There is plenty of evidence that humans have very little influence on climate, and the evidence put forward that supposedly proves to be the opposite has often turned out to be bad science, if not outright fraud.  These pass "peer review" because the review process has shown itself to be utterly biased in favour of anything that "proves" AGW, while rejecting anything the "disproves" the theory, not because the evidence of one is any better than they other, but because only one side of the issue is allowed to pass inspection.  The result is that many researchers are forced to publish their results on blogs or in various alternate publications.  Opponents of their view then get claim that these views can't possibly be any good, because if they were, they would be in publications they determine as legitimate. 

Association is also used to reject evidence.  If someone who points out the fallacies in the AGW position happened to once have an oil company as a business client in the past, this is reason enough for alarmists to reject their points.  Accusing people of being part of some vast conspiracy of Big Oil, Big Industry, Big Pharma, the Military and Industrial Complex, or whatever they feel like throwing out is a handy way to justify unwillingness to consider the evidence put forward by those who hold opposing views.  There doesn’t even have to be any real association; just the accusation is enough to dismiss opposing views.

This problem shows up when it comes to sources of physical evidence of various Biblical themes.  Some publications will outright refuse to print any such evidence.  The circular reason is so common its cliché, and a favourite tactic of the anti-theist.  They have already decided that the entire Bible is a piece of fiction (a problematic notion I've already discussed somewhat in my What is God? post).  Since the Bible is fiction, there can be no evidence to prove anything within it really happened.  Therefore, anyone claiming to have evidence proving certain events did happen can be safely rejected as false.  This is made easier by dismissing them as being religious, creationists, and so on.   Being religious, all by itself is enough for the anti-theist to dismiss a person of opposing views.  After all, they have already decided that the only logical conclusion is that all religion is (wrong, evil, false, brainwashing, etc) while their anti-religious views are always positions of (logic, reason, and so on), therefore anyone who holds a religious point of view must, by their definition, be wrong, and nothing they say or present can be right; a very convenient, self-edifying and circular rule of (false) logic.  If nothing else, it eliminates any need to think too hard while at the same time allowing them to be smug about their own superiority.  This also gives them permission to insult and offend anyone with opposing views to their heart’s content, since anyone who disagrees with them is unworthy of consideration.  Very few atheists, I’ve noted, including the more moderate ones, break this mould.  The proselytizing anti-theists, on the other hand, revel in it.  It is rare, indeed, for a respectful discussion to take place, so when they do happen, I appreciate it a great deal.  Especially when someone manages to show that they’re not just following the script and actually think independently.  Such people are astonishingly rare, it seems.

Now back to the topic at hand.  Before I begin discussing physical evidence of a deluge, let’s discuss flood mythology.

I am not a Bible literalist.  For reasons I will get into another time, I find such a notion quite illogical.  The oldest parts of the Bible in particular are from an oral tradition that has been passed on for centuries before anyone wrote them down.  Such oral histories of events that go back centuries can be defined as myths or legends.  While many like to dismiss all ancient stories as fairy tales, special disgust is reserved for those of the Bible.

What those who dismiss ancient tales so easily tend to forget is that they have often proven to be based on reality.  Archaeologists frequently search these ancient stories for clues that, they hope, will lead them to digging sites.  The most famous example is the city of Troy.  The myth of Atlantis is believed by some to be rooted in fact, and several possible locations are thought to be the site of the legendary city. Similar searches are being made to find, not lost cities or civilizations, but evidence of creatures.

Of course, the older the story, the more difficult it is to prove archaeologically.  Especially when discussing individuals, rather than places and events.  Having said that, not finding physical evidence does not prove that something never existed.  I'm amazed, sometimes, at just how much physical evidence of our past manages to survive at all.  The circumstances necessary for such things to be preserved really don't happen all that often.  For all the bits of fossilized or buried artefacts we find, they can only be a tiny fraction of what actually existed at the time, particularly when it comes to items made of organic material, such as woven baskets, hide clothing and the like. 

When it comes to written events, it's even more remarkable that we can find what we do.  First, something has to be important enough for someone to make the effort to write it down in the first place.  Then the writing, whether its on a clay tablet, a leather scroll, or carved into a wall, has to be somehow "lost" in ideal circumstances that preserves it through the centuries.  Then whoever finds it needs to be able to recognize it for what it is and not accidentally destroy it.  In some cases, archaeologists have to deliberately destroy artefacts into order to find out what's on them.  Can you even imagine taking three years to unravel a scroll?  Archaeologists are a remarkably patient lot!

For some, they don't need a whole heck of a lot to decide there might be something in a myth that makes it worth looking into for a source.  The story of Atlantis being one example. There's very little to go on, yet plenty of serious researchers are out there, trying to figure out if there really was such a place, while others have already identified places they believe to be the original Atlantis, despite the flimsy background of the legend.  True or not, the search for Atlantis has lead to some amazing archaeological discoveries.

The point being that it's not unusual for archaeologists to use ancient texts, including the Bible, and seek out cultural myths and legends for clues that might lead them to various discoveries, and that these myths have lead them to real discoveries. 

 

Which brings us back to the flood myths.

One thing that's different about the Biblical flood and stories such as The Illiad and myths about Atlantis, is that there are so many other cultures that have similar myths.  It is, in fact, what is referred to as a universal myth, because it is shared by so many disparate cultures.  Those who wish to dismiss the Bible like to say that the story of Noah is just a retelling of even older legends - nothing more than plagiarism, really.  This cannot explain, however, the many other cultures that the writers of the Old Testament could possibly have known about.  Here are a few examples.

In South Tanzania, legend tells of a time when the rivers began to flood, eventually covering the mountains.  Two people were warned by God to get on a ship, with seeds and animals.  After the flooding stopped, they eventually released first a dove, then a hawk, to see if the water had receded.

In China, the Fuhi family, a man with his wife, three sons and three daughters, were the only people to survive a global flood and repopulate the world.

Babylon tells us of Gilgamesh who met an old man, Utnapishtim, who told him of how he was warned of a flood, to build a ship and to take on male and female animals of all kinds, together with his wife, family and provisions.  After the rains and flooding stopped, he used a dove to find out if the floodwaters receded enough to leave the ship.

The Chaldean legend tells of a man named Xisuthrus, warned by the god Chronos, who builds a boat and, together with his family and male and female animals, survives a flood.  He, too, uses birds to determine if the floodwaters have receded enough to leave.

India shares with us the legend of Manu, warned by a fish that a great flood was coming and would destroy the earth.  Manu builds a ship and survives.

Greece tells us that Zeus decided to flood the earth, destroying humans for their excessive pride.  Prometheus warns his human son and daughter-in-law, Deucalian and Pyrrha, saving them by placing them in a large wooden chest.  As the floodwaters receded, the chest came to rest on a mountain.  Provisions in the chest kept them alive until the waters receded, then they repopulated the earth.

While one could argue that these legends could all be different versions of the same thing, and that the Biblical story of Noah is just another version, there's no accounting for the ones writers in Biblical times could possibly have heard, such as these.

In Mexico, Toltec natives tell of a world destroying flood with only one family surviving.

The Aztec tell of Tapi, a man warned by the creator to build a boat, then take his wife and a pair of every animal alive with him into it.  The flood that came covered mountains.  Tapi also released a dove to check if the flood had dried up enough.

Ojibewe Natives tell of a time when people began to quarrel and disrespect each other.  The Creator, Gitchie Manido, gave them time to correct their ways, but eventually decided to purify the earth by flooding the earth, with only a few survivors remaining.

Delaware Indians tell us the flood was caused by an evil spirit, with the few people who survived doing so by climbing onto the back of an ancient turtle.  A bird guided the turtle to the only dry land left.

South America has its tales for us as well.  The Inca tell of a time when all the people, save those of the high Andes, became corrupted and evil and neglected the gods.  Two brothers were warned by their llamas that a flood was coming.  They took their failies and animals and found a high cave to live in.  Here, we are told it rained for four months.  The mountain grew during the rains, keeping above water level, returning to its normal height when the water receded.

None of these legends, of course, prove that an actual, global flood happened.  The fact that so many unconnected cultures share flood stories, however, gives us more to suggest the reality of catastrophic flooding than, say, the Illiad suggested the existence of a real city named Troy.

In my next part, I will discuss geological evidence for massive flooding.

What is God?

I find my self in the difficult position of too much to write about, but not enough time to write!  Where do I begin?

Well, I suppose I ought to go with something basic.  What is God?

Usually the question is “who is God,” but I think it better to establish “what” before we can even try to answer, “who”.

One of the most common things I hear from the anti-theists is the dismissal of God with derogatory and insulting terms such as “sky fairy”, “invisible man in the sky”, “imaginary friend,” and similar mockery.  This serves two purposes for the anti-theist.  On the one hand, they get to pat themselves on the back over how smart they are by reducing God to the equivalent of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.  On the other, they get to pat themselves on the back over how handily they’ve put theists in their place; namely that they’re idiots.

There are, of course, several problems with this.  To begin with, it’s not possible to have a rational discussion with someone who’s already a) defined for you what you believe in (even though it has no basis in reality) and b) essentially reduced you to a deluded idiot for believing in something you don’t actually believe in, in the first place.  They’ve created a logical fallacy for themselves that allows them to “win” no matter what evidence is provided or what argument is used.  (Argumentation is another area the anti-theists fail at.  No surprise, since few even understand what argumentation is anymore.)

Here’s another problem with the use of mockery by anti-theists.  The anti-theist insults and degrades those who believe differently than they do, and they justify it by claiming that their position is one of logic, rationality and evidence.  After all, if one believes in the Bearded White Guy in the Sky, they must be fools.  When you challenge their claims of logic and rationality, they never respond in kind.  Instead, they troll around with circular bluster, insisting that they know what theists believe more than the people who hold theistic beliefs, explaining nothing yet claiming to have disproved their opponent’s views, then fall back on insults. 

If the only position the anti-theist has is one of insult, in reality, they have no position at all.

What the anti-theists don’t seem to realize (or don’t care to) is how much these derogatory insults backfire on them.  They’re not making themselves look smart, except perhaps to their fellow anti-theists.  They seek to build themselves up by tearing others down, which ultimately serves only to display for the entire world that they are little more than closed minded, unimaginative bullies.

Unimaginative may be an understatement.  The scripted nature of comments made by anti-theists is perplexing.  I’d be more willing to accept these points if they were able to better demonstrate why they’ve come to believe them.  A typical example of the “logic” involves the anti-theist mocking people for believing in invisible men in the sky, then when someone objects to the definition, they come back with, “but that’s what you really believe, so I’m right, you’re an idiot.”  Hardly an example of intelligent and rational thinking.  This from people who claim exclusive use of rationality and intelligence (because clearly anyone who believes in sky fairies is neither rational, nor intelligent).

The targets of such attacks are almost universally Christians, even when they blather on about how “all religions” are (evil, stupid, deluded, myths… ) and make token references to other faith based systems.  You just don’t see anti-theists launching these sorts of attacks against beliefs in Hindu deities, for example.  Non-Judeo/Christian religions are generally not even on their radar.  It is the Judeo/Christian faith that they are most threatened by.  For now, I will discuss my own conclusions regarding the Judeo/Christian god. I’ll have to save talking about the generalizations for another time. 

Despite what the anti-theists insist, theists don’t believe in invisible men in the sky.  What seems to be happening is that the anti-theists have taken metaphors literally – but only some of them.  The Bible uses a lot of metaphors for God and more of them are maternal metaphors than paternal.  God as Mother is hardly mentioned by anyone, on either side of the theological divide.

Let’s first go back to the Old Testament.  Here we’re looking at what, for centuries, was an oral tradition.  The Bible is a collection of these oral and written histories, poetry, song, parable, and so on that spans thousands of years.  It’s also a collection of records, laws, traditions and more.  This makes dismissing The Bible as nothing but myths and fables rather silly.  The Psalms and Proverbs, for example, aren’t histories to be proven or dis-proven.    

Humans have always sought out something beyond ourselves.  We have within us an innate urge to worship.  Some cultures and traditions held that all things, living or not, held spirits.  Others created pantheons of gods and goddesses.  During the time of Abraham, polytheism was the rule of the day.  Humans viewed gods and goddesses as human-like beings (sometimes with animal attributes) that had a lot of power.  They tended to be fickle, and to interfere with humanity at a whim.  (Yes, I’m making some generalizations here, though I do recommend looking into historical belief systems.  They’re really quite interesting.) In some cases, humans were deified.  Pharaohs were both kings and gods by birth.  Roman Emperors were decreed deities by the senate. 

The God of Abraham, however, was completely different.  For starters, there was only One, not many.  Even more unique, this One God actually cared about each of us individually and personally.  For another, the God of Abraham wasn’t made in the image of Man or animal, but rather we humans were made in His image.

Just what, exactly, was that image?  Certainly not our physical selves.  God is described as a light, as Truth, the Strong One, the Word (with Jesus described as the Word made flesh), and as “I am,” meaning eternal and self existent.  He appears to Moses in the guise of a burning bush.  He appeared to St. Paul as a blinding light. There are other descriptors, but the main thing you’ll notice is that none of these things involve any sort of physical, human-like being.  God is not a material Being at all, but something that exists outside our material existence.

At this point, I need to clarify something.  I use male pronouns when referring to God.  There’s a few reasons for this.  One is habit.  I grew up Catholic, and God described in male gender terms is just the way it was.  Two, male gender terms tend to be my default, whether it’s in reference to deities or in reference to the car that cut me off in traffic, but whose driver I couldn’t see.  Three, the English language doesn’t have a suitable gender neutral term.  In the original language of the early Hebrews, the word for God was gender neutral.  Their description of God was neither male nor female, yet both, so terms like “it” don’t work very well.  Typing He/She all the time gets clumsy and I’m not quite ready to start using the new "xe" as a gender neutral term to replace he or she.  And finally, as we go into the New Testament and the birth of Jesus, God takes on the descriptor of Father.  This sort of had to be, since that whole pregnancy and birth by a human kind of requires that human to be female. 

So while I use male gender terms, one thing we can say about God is that He is actually gender neutral, spiritually encompassing both genders, rather than being non-gender. 

How else can we define God?  He appears to be a being that exists outside of time and space, since time and space did not exist until the Big Bang.  One of the biggest objections to the Big Bang theory has been that it requires the existence of a creator.  A material universe with a beginning and an end requires a non-material source.  Since many physicists are materialists who refuse to entertain the notion that such an entity might exist, they go through amazing intellectual gymnastics to try and find some other explanation.  Nothing is too unrealistic, so long as no God is involved, which has lead to such notions of 26 dimensions and a whole bubbly froth of alternate universes.  Or an egg in a sac filled with nothingness that exploded into something-ness.  

Seriously.

This leaves us with a God that is non-material. He is unaffected by space or time because He does not exist within space or time; He exists outside of our material world, yet is capable of interacting with it. Interestingly, we’re seeing similar interactions in the quantum level.

The Biblical God is also described as a trinity, a notion rejected by some.  Here we have an amorphous entity that transcends our material world that somehow manages to be three entities in One, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.  Metaphorically, St. Patrick is famous for using the clover to explain how this can be – the clover’s three petals being distinctly separate, yet still part of the same plant.  In the past, I’ve equated it to the sacred union of marriage (note that I am referring to Biblical marriage; a statement that needs clarification that will wait for another time), where two people become one.  Obviously, they are still two, autonomous individuals, yet they are united spiritually as one – soul mates, if you will, who complete each other.  At least one would hope to have such closeness with their life partner.  In a non-metaphorical sense, we’d have to delve into the realm of particle physics, a fascinating subject all on its own. 

So what is God?

God is an amorphous, intelligent being that exists outside our physical realm, including time, yet capable of interacting with our material world.  For this reason, God is eternal and unchangeable.  God is a single Being consisting of three autonomous entities. There are also limitations to God.  He cannot lie and He cannot change (though He can certainly change His mind).  As we are created in His spiritual, not physical, image, and have free will (something atheism insists we don’t have), He cannot force us to believe in Him. 

It is up to us to either choose Him or not. 

An Illustration

"Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B* after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology."

hahaha I think envisioning Mary and Joesph [sic] as the ultimate swingers is awesome. Joe probably liked to watch while God tapped that, he's dirty like that.

It's actually pretty funny when you think about it... God raping Marry [sic].... That's hilarious. Considering how hypocritical so many Christians are.... Really... It's a SIN... and the son of God is born from this SIN... It's fucking hilarious.

If you have read the "About Us" and "About this Blog" tabs above, you know that I have noticed an increase in what I call "proselytising" atheism and an increased anti-theism.  The quotes above are an illustration of the sort of anti-theism I've been encountering.

The first quote is actually quite old.  This "joke" was written by a blogger named Amanda Marcotte, sometime before she was hired on by the John Edwards campaign back in 2007.  (Plan B, by the way, meant ending the pregnancy)

The second two quotes were cut and pasted from facebook comments recently made in response to this article 'God Raped Mary' posters 'Hate Crime.' The person who shared this story condemned the Christians in the story for thinking these posters were a hate crime because, in his view, it was the truth, and went on to promote a facebook group called "God raped Mary, who gave birth to a bastard son."

There are a few reasons why I chose these quotes to illustrate the anti-theism I've been seeing.  One is to show that it's been around a long time (the first quote is 4 or more years old).

Another is because, in so few words, they demonstrate so much about anti-theists.

One of the things demonstrated is the deliberate offensiveness.  They are taking something that Christians view as joyful and loving into something crude, lewd, violent, obscene and even criminal.

I've noted a particular obsession with anti-theists and crude sexuality, deviant sexual behaviour and sexual violence.  No term is too vulgar or vile for them.  In fact, the more offensive, the more vulgar, the more gleeful they are about it. (har har... I just offended a bunch of Christians!  I'm so much smarter than they are! lolz) It denotes a singular immaturity as well as an obsession with sex.  Other examples I won't quote here involve condemning the Catholic church in regards to sexual assaults by priests (which I would normally agree with) by using sexually explicit descriptions of those assaults and blanket statements that condemn all priests as raping pedophiles, implying that these assaults were fully supported by the Catholic church.  It's an interesting thing to note that they automatically associate sexual assault - which can include everything from inappropriate hugging to violent rape - by priests, with gay rape.  That so many do so while explicitly describing gay penetrative sex tells me more about their own minds.  While I would agree with condemning sexual assault by priests, it should be noted that some of these accusations did not involve rape or violence, and some may not actually be true.  In one case I remember reading about, the accuser, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, was visiting a priest and happened to note the priest was looking at images on his computer that the accuser interpreted as child porn.  He then claimed seeing these images on the priest's computer was damaging to him, because of his own history as a sexual abuse victim.  It should be noted that whatever the pictures were the priest was looking at, there were no charges made against the priest in regards to child porn.  In another case that made the news fairly recently, a woman suddenly remembered, during therapy, sexual assaults she's suffered at the hands of a priest 20 years ago. She had apparently blocked these memories from her mind.  There has been no actual evidence of this priest sexually assaulting anyone, nor any other inappropriate behaviour, either 20 years ago or today.  The problem with repressed memories that come out in therapy is that, far too often, they have turned out to be false memories implanted, sometimes subconsciously, by the therapist.  This is not to excuse actual abuse at the hands of priests, but to point out that sexual assault may not actually be true, and of the ones that are, sexual assault does not always equal penetrative rape, but the anti-theists not only jump to that conclusion, but they do so using terms and descriptions that would be more appropriate for a porn magazine than public forums.

This brings up another curious thing I've noted about the anti-theist attacks on religions in general and Christianity in particular.  For a group that denies even the possibility of the existence of an omnipotent deity, they seem to believe themselves to be remarkably omnipotent.  Not only do they know exactly how all those priests sexually assaulted their victims (in lurid detail), not only to they claim to know what "the church" (meaning everyone who is a member of said church) thinks, what the Pope thinks, how all these people feel at any given time, but they claim to know what people thought and felt thousands of years ago.  Even more remarkable for a group that denies the existence of God, they claim to know what this non-existent God thinks and feels. 

Remarkable, indeed!