| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"quibbler" |
| Date: |
26 Aug 2006 12:56:43 PM |
| Object: |
The Babel Fable |
When fundies try to argue for the Noachian flood, they often cite
the fact that many cultures, all over the world, have stories about
floods. Well, of course they would, just as they probably all have
stories about fires and lightning and many other fairly universal
phenomena. However, if the events described in the Babel fable of
Genesis 11 were true, then, by the same standard, why wouldn't cultures
all over the world have stories about an abrupt event in which they
could no longer communicate with their fellow man? After all, this
event supposedly happens quite a bit after the Noachian flood. Fundy
idiots like Josh McDuhWell actually have attempted to date this
linguistic event, via various biblical chronologies, to around 2050 BC,
despite overwhelming evidence for independent languages all around the
world at earlier times than this.
Now then, if idiots like McDowell were right, what would we expect
to see? They often cite the fact that there are language families and
many curious coincidences of similarities in one language or another.
But is this what we would expect if divine intervention purposely
confused languages? Why would Gawd make some words in one language
sound similar to words in another language. That would actually help,
rather than hinder understanding. OTOH, we would expect language
families to naturally evolve over time. Indeed, a thorough mixing is
precisely what we would expect would occur if there were many languages
among tribes who eventually grew bigger and came into contact with each
other.
It may also be useful to think of this from the other way round.
What would be necessary in order for the whole world to have a unified
language. Surely people in different parts of the world would need to
develop different vocabulary to describe conditions, like Eskimos
needing many words for snow and ice, while Bedouins would need no such
words. Furthermore, in a pre-literate society where things like
spelling and pronunciation were far from standard, it's inevitable that
drift would happen quickly over the centuries. Just look at how
different Shakespearian English is from modern English today and that
was with the benefit of much higher literacy, printing and a variety of
standards.
It would appear that nothing short of a miracle could keep the
world all speaking one language for any length of time. But why would
God purposely try to use his miraculous magic powers to keep the world
speaking the same language when he knew he would have to confuse it one
day anyway, to punish the pridefulness of some Babylonian potentate?
Why not just let it drift naturally, so that it wouldn't have been such
an issue?
Furthermore, why would the whole world need to speak one language
just so the babylonians could build one dinky tower? Wouldn't a local
language be more than sufficient? Even if they had forgeign workers,
there are construction projects today where dozens of languages are
spoken. How much of a standardized language does one need to build a
fucking brick tower? You need words like "brick" and "mortar" and
"level" and that's about it. It doesn't strike me as particularly
onerous that workers could have learned a basic vocabulary, or used hand
signs, pictures and miming to to communicate about primitive building
processes even after their languages were allegedly confused. Even if
they spoke different languages all of a sudden, surely they would still
share a common cultural view and the common goals of doing things like
building the tower in question.
Then there's the issue of all the wars and hatred which have been
spawned over miscommunication and language differences. If god is said
to be responsible for purposely confusing languages, then he must bear
responsibility for the strife, mischief and evil that have resulted from
language differences over the years?
--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
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