Science vs. the Religious Right: Part Two

The religion vs. science debate should have been settled and confined to the dustbin of history multi-generations ago. The fact that it still rages today sits squarely on the shoulders of those diehard never-give-in right wing religious fundamentalists who just keep on keeping on about how the ‘goat-herders’ who penned the Bible deserve all the Nobel Prizes for getting the science really right. No doubt the non-existent validity of the debate will continue to rage for generations to come.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

IN ADDITION

The Earth is the centre of the Universe (or firmament) and the Sun goes around the Earth and that religious point of view got lots of people who suggested otherwise into lots of trouble.

Scientists can’t determine the age of the Earth, nor can they determine what the origin of life was, for the extremely simple reason that they weren’t Johnny-on-the-spot and therefore actually present at the exact time and place of the happening.

Homosexuality/lesbianism is a free-will choice and has nothing to do with genetics or biochemistry or neurochemistry. You aren’t born gay any more than you’re born an astronomer or a criminal. Homosexuality is encouraged by the powers-that-be as a ways and means of population control. Satan also inspires and encourages homosexuality to cause the participants to be in direct disobedience and in defiance to God and God’s laws. Further, there are clear connections between homosexuality and paedophilia and bestiality, etc.

Fossils are a deliberate deception by Satan; or a deliberate deception by God in order to test your faith; or proof of that universal flood – take your pick.

Non-avian dinosaurs and human beings coexisted, religious fundamentalists citing fossil dinosaur and human footprints check-by-jowl embedded into rocks (in Texas). Dinosaurs were therefore on Noah’s Ark (which means Noah’s Ark had to have been just a tad larger than the Bible says it was).

There was no evolution by natural selection, just intelligent design and creationism by a Creator God. God created all species as is. Humans did not evolve from apes. Teaching and accepting evolution is apparently an evil Jewish plot according to some! Further, evolutionists support abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

There are no ‘natural’ disasters only acts of God (as in displays of God’s wrath). It’s been claimed by those Right Wing religious fundamentalist types that whenever God is pissed off, He sends His wrath via a ‘natural’ disaster. So, any tornado or hurricane or blizzard or earthquake or wildfire, etc. isn’t really ‘natural’, rather its an Act of God’s punishment. However, it’s rather amazing that tornados tend to happen in roughly the same areas at roughly the same time of year; ditto hurricanes; ditto blizzards; ditto wildfires; ditto floods. You don’t tend to get massive earthquakes other than in well known fault zones and thus earthquake prone areas. You don’t get volcanoes erupting in areas not known to be tectonically active. Now if ‘natural’ disasters were really Acts of God, you might expect God to produce the occasional blizzard in Southern California in July; or how about 40 straight days and nights of rain in Death Valley; New York City becoming ground zero for a massive earthquake or volcanic eruption; a tornado outbreak in Alaska in January; or wildfires in areas of high rainfall and high humidity. If ‘natural’ disasters are Acts of God, why doesn’t God have an asteroid striking Chicago or a comet spanking Las Vegas or for that matter institute a massive solar flare or coronal mass ejection to blanket the entire US of A?  Even more central, why does God have to hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts in the first damn place? Why doesn’t God take a leaf out of His earlier wrath-filled up-yours and smite the first born?

Environmentalism (i.e. – the Green Dragon) is out to destroy Christianity, destroy America and replace it with fascist tyranny! In fact, the ultimate objective of environmentalists is to kill off 95% of humanity! After all, didn’t God say to humanity to “be fruitful and multiply” and subdue the earth and take dominion over the earth (and basically rape and pillage – Genesis 1:28) which has any greenie spitting chips!

Stem cell research is equivalent to Nazism.

We’re well aware that some fundamentalists reject vaccinations and blood transfusions and will allow their child to die rather than allow any medical procedures that they see as ungodly and against Biblical teachings. 

Anything fundamentalists don’t like, like say birth control, will be linked to anything and everything nasty, like AIDS, and by extension, all disease is caused by sinful activities. In a similar fashion, if you accept any ungodly tenants, like evolution, you are way more prone to be antisocial and of criminal intent. Mass murderers are all Darwinists.

In a variation of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, one finds fundamentalist Christians supporting Islamic fundamentalists (otherwise strange bedfellows) since the latter do not accept and undermine Darwinian evolution.

Any normal museum that exhibits anything on physical or cultural anthropology that doesn’t reflect and give credit to the Almighty and God’s holy word is just asking for trouble.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

There’s more that you probably didn’t know.

According to Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association:

* The laws of thermodynamics are detailed in the Bible although Fischer tends to muddy the waters by mixing up the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

* Jesus is the entity that holds together the nucleus of an atom. [What held the nucleus together before the birth of Christ isn’t related by Fischer, assuming there even ever was a supernatural Christ of course.]

* Only God can alter the climate. Humans have nothing to do with any global warming. Global warming is pure junk science. Further, God created fossil fuels for the benefit of mankind and so to refuse to use them (in favour of renewable sources like wind or solar energy) is an insult to God. Trying to prevent climate change is anti-Christian.

If you have a spare couple of weeks, tune into the Right Wing Watch (RWW) website, or his videos on YouTube for tons more Fischer idiocy.

Bryan Fischer isn’t the only rather fishy fundamentalist going.

Just touching a very few of the highlights (via the RRW) from the patriarch of the extreme religious fundamentalists, Pat Robertson, and so-called self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs, is more than enough to make any scientist turn in their lab coat and head for the hills. Again, you can few more of them (if you must) on YouTube – far better on an empty stomach however  

PAT ROBERTSON

“[Robertson’s] 700 Club: Climate change helps environment and civilization, SUV owners treated like witches.”

“Robertson: Expect natural disasters and divine wrath over Middle East peace talks.”

“Robertson: Environmentalists may cause the deaths of ‘a couple billion people’.”

“Robertson lashes out at ‘doctrinaire’ environmentalist ‘fanatics’.”

“Robertson dismisses ‘nutty,’ ‘true believer’ climate scientists.”

“Pat Robertson blames drought on Americans who ‘ignore the laws of God with impunity’.”

“Robertson: Scientists ‘can’t speculate about the origins of life’.”

“Pat Robertson says Satan is behind homosexuality and abortion rights.”

“Pat Robertson says people could have stopped deadly tornadoes through prayer.”

“Robertson calls Oklahoma earthquake a sign of the end times”

“Robertson suggests crack in the Washington Monument was a sign from God.”

“Robertson: Asteroid will destroy the Earth.”

CINDY JACOBS

“Cindy Jacobs heals broken cheek bones and her own tumours.”

“Cindy Jacobs’ prayers can cure insanity.”

“Cindy Jacobs’ five-year-old daughter can stop tornadoes.”

“God miraculously made a pair of Cindy Jacobs’ shoes last for years.”

“Jacobs warns Obama’s ‘anti-Biblical’ policies have led to ‘floods and fires and more’.”

“Cindy Jacobs: I have the power to revive dead children.”

“How Cindy Jacobs reversed a hysterectomy.”

“[Jacobs]: We are seeing natural disasters ‘because sin has reached Biblical proportions.”

“Jacobs: The DC earthquake is a sign from God to share the gospel.”

“Jacobs: God is using earthquake to break Japan’s pagan idolatry.” 

“Jacobs: Birds are dying because of DADT [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] repeal.”

“Jacobs and Pierce issue warning that CA [California] will be destroyed by earthquake if Prop 8 is struck down.”

“When Cindy Jacobs caused Washington DC to flood.”

On that note, I might just head for the hills myself!



Science vs. the Religious Right: Part One

The religion vs. science debate should have been settled and confined to the dustbin of history multi-generations ago. The fact that it still rages today sits squarely on the shoulders of those diehard never-give-in right wing religious fundamentalists who just keep on keeping on about how the ‘goat-herders’ who penned the Bible deserve all the Nobel Prizes for getting the science really right. No doubt the non-existent validity of the debate will continue to rage for generations to come.

There are those religious fundamentalists who claim that all you need to know about science is contained within the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible. Not only is the Bible a religious text, an historical document, but it’s a science textbook too chock full of astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, medicine, etc. And should there ever be a disagreement between nerdy white-coated scientists in jeans and God Almighty’s holy word, well it’s a no-brainer; no contest – God always wins – in God we trust not nerdy Einstein-types. Any science that undermines your faith in God, etc. is a false science. Real science proves the bona-fides of the Bible.

The fact that such Right Wing Christian fundamentalists say this with a straight face and sincerely (apparently) believe this claptrap is actually a tad frightening. In any other context they appear to be intelligent, articulate, sane and rational beings! But then again, how many people have been taken aback to find out that their wonderful and lovely next door neighbour was a serial killer, kidnapper, paedophile, or a closet white supremacist pseudo-Nazi.     

Fundamentalists though in general, when pressed, admit they aren’t scientists, but that doesn’t stop them from bucketing any science that rubs their personal worldview the wrong way. One common argument is that science is fundamentally limited since it can only explain the natural, whereby supernatural philosophy (i.e. – Right Wing Christianity) explains all. The natural in their opinion or belief is just a minor subset of all things supernatural.

SCIENCE vs. RELIGION

There has been quite a number of various religious vs. scientific issues hotly debated over time.

The Earth is (religion) or is not (science) the centre of the Universe. Science won that issue.

The age of the Earth is less than 10,000 years old (religion); way, way, way more than 10,000 years old (science). Science won that debate too though diehard religious fundamentalists haven’t conceded any ground.

Most recently, starting with Charles Darwin in 1859 (“The Origin of Species”) down to the Scope’s (Monkey) Trial in 1925 and ongoing today is that Homo sapiens were made in God’s image (religion) vs. Homo sapiens were the product of natural (Darwinian) selection and evolution from primate ancestors (science). Creationism is pure science; evolution is junk or false science according to the religious right. The names that fundamentalists call evolutionists would make many a blue-water sailor blush!

It’s that most recent issue, evolution (science) vs. creationism/intelligent design (religion) that mainly dominates the debate today. You could make a journalistic career just following, covering and reporting on the ever ongoing battles between creationists, educational institutions and authorities, politicians, and scientists over whether science curricula and textbooks should be giving equal space to God and intelligent design vis-à-vis Darwinian evolution.

But intelligent design is absolute nonsense upon reflection. God, the so-called intelligent designer, places the female sex organ sandwiched right between the two waste elimination orifices. That’s intelligent? And the male sex organ does double duty sharing a common tube as a liquid waste elimination apparatus. That’s intelligent? Speaking of tubes, how often has the food/drink you inputted ended up doing down the wrong tube – the windpipe instead of the oesophageus? Painful, isn’t it? It’s also potentially lethal – people have choked to death. So, is that intelligent designing in operation? 

And if humans are God’s personal favourite intelligently designed creatures, why create other creatures and natural scenarios than render that intelligently designed human into a prematurely dead intelligently designed human? I mean if the Godly created bacteria and viruses don’t get you, the puffer-fish, scorpion and snake venom might instead, assuming the sharks, lions and tigers don’t have you for a midmorning snack first. And if life doesn’t end your life, there are tornadoes, earthquakes, lightning bolts, tsunamis, and a whole host of other meteorological, geological and even astronomical phenomena just waiting to put you six feet under. Conclusion: so much for a loving God looking after His favourite intelligently designed flock.

BIBLICAL ‘SCIENCE’

But let’s go back to the Biblical truth about all things scientific. We all know the standards:

The Bible is literally true; scientifically accurate. Science according to the Bible requires that:

* Life, the universe and everything was created in just six days somewhere roughly around 4004 BCE and any evidence to the contrary of an earth billions of years old (i.e. – radioactive dating; geochronology) is the work of that great deceiver, Satan.

* Adam was created from the dry dust of the earth despite that fact that a human is roughly 70% water.

* Eve was created from Adam’s rib which means Eve should have been, genetically speaking, a male.

* There was a universal flood which requires the creation (and later destruction) of an additional and massive inventory of water out of nothing in defiance of conservation laws.

* Noah’s Ark carried two (or sometimes more) individuals (male and female) of every (presumably bisexual) species. Okay, that’s fine, but that must include the New Zealand flightless kiwi bird; every species of Antarctic penguin; the Australian koala; and the dodo bird of Madagascar. Am I the only one who sees a problem here?

* Some Biblical characters lived in excess of 900 years, but such longevity hasn’t been observed in recent post-Biblical times so don’t get your expectations up, no matter how religious and God-fearing you happen to be.

* A bush refused to be consumed by fire, an obvious case of the application of high-tech fire retardant in use thousands of years ago.

* The Red Sea parted over a rather lengthy time period in order to allow hundreds of thousands of pedestrians to ‘cross with the green’ and then un-parted so that another set of pedestrians got run down by trying to cross against the sudden red traffic light. Such a phenomenon has never been witnessed since so a one-off report doesn’t have much credibility.

* The sun and moon stood still in the sky and thus for the duration the Earth ceased rotating on its axis.

* Unicorns exist (and no doubt so do Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy).

* Life actually begins before conception according to Jeremiah 1:5!

* Jonah lived undigested for three days in the belly of a large fish. Jonah must have had on hand an extraordinary supply of antacids in order to prevent being dissolved and turned into or assimilated as fish food.

* Mary reproduced asexually – the virgin birth – which means Jesus should have been born a woman, again, genetically speaking.

* Jesus walked on water in defiance of gravity. Newton and Einstein are not amused at this parlour trick!

* Loaves and (dead) fishes multiplied – the creation of something from nothing yet again.

* Presumably the lion will lie down with the lamb (and also presumably if the lion isn’t hungry).

* There were resurrections (life after death). That’s no big deal any longer in this modern age of medical ‘miracles’.

To be continued…



The Ancient Alien’s Bible: Part Two

Since the idea of supernatural deities is nonsense IMHO, perhaps there’s another explanation behind the more likely as not reality molehill hidden inside the traditional religious mythological mountain. That explanation could revolve around an extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood alternative.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

WHERE’S WHERE

Heaven: The name of God’s spaceship, or starship if you prefer.

Hell: The brig, located off-ship, probably on Earth, where one could be exiled to if need be.

Eastern Mediterranean (Israel; Land of Canaan; the Levant; Near East; Palestine): That part of terrestrial geography assigned to the officers and crew of the Spaceship Heaven as their area of responsibility. Contrast that with Zeus and company assigned the Middle Mediterranean; Odin and company responsible for the Norse lands; and the Great Spirit who looks after the North Amerindians; and so on.

Garden of Eden: Paradise was actually a terrestrial R&R spot for officers and crew of the Spaceship Heaven. God first had to expel human trespassers after they learned or overheard too much extraterrestrial knowledge forbidden to terrestrial ears. Later on however God gave Adam an interstellar ride in his Spaceship Heaven.

Towel of Babel: To disperse in quick-smart fashion the local population to the four corners of the globe, or even within the region, would have required considerable transport infrastructure.

Sodom & Gomorrah: The twin cities were destroyed via fire and brimstone from above, leaving no trace whatever after-the-fact. The obviously high tech weaponry might have been incendiary bombs or even nuclear weapons, but it certainly wasn’t any sort of destructive weapons technology common to that era.

WHAT’S WHAT

Miracles: High technology in action. As the late Arthur C. Clarke tended to put it, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, at least to those not technologically savvy. Among the high tech examples are the medical ones – healing the seriously sick and handicapped; resurrecting the very recently deceased; enabling very elderly women – over the hill and off the pill – to become fertile and bear offspring.

Food: Speaking of high tech miracles, what does one make of manna from heaven; loaves and fishes that multiply; wine from water? This almost makes you think of the food replication device used in Star Trek.

Noah’s Flood: A whole textbook could be written about the impossibilities of the Biblical tale of the flood and Noah’s Ark. The amount of water required can’t be produced. The boat isn’t near large enough to house and feed every species that would need to be given shelter. The crew isn’t sufficient to look after their charges. But, with just a bit of high tech tweaking, what if the Ark wasn’t for an actual universal disaster but a potential one, a real possibility given those high tech star wars, or wars between the various factions of deities (think of the ten year battle between the Titans and the Olympians; or what must have raged between God and Satan or will rage as per the forecast of Revelation; or the battle between the Frost Giants and the Norse deities; or all those aerial wars depicted in those ancient Hindu texts). Now instead of having entire forest worth of plants and all those animals requiring food and waste disposal, on board, substitute a botanical seed bank and a zoological equivalent, a repository of frozen eggs and sperm or embryos or genetic materials, etc. No need for food; no waste products; not much maintenance (crew time) required, and easily room for everything in the space allowed for the Ark in the Book of Genesis. The issue of course is that all of this is high tech way beyond the capabilities of the great unwashed of that era, the locals or natives. 

Burning Bush: This is an example of extraterrestrial hologram technology in action, employed to awe the local primitives, in this case Moses.

The Ark of the Covenant: Apparently a high and rather dangerous technological device, purpose not really well explained, but obviously more than just a storage box for a couple of stone tablets.

Clouds; Pillars of Fire; Flying Rolls; Star of Bethlehem; Aerial Chariots; Whirlwinds; Ezekiel’s Wheel, etc.: A UFO by any other name is still a UFO, and in most of these depictions, the object, say a ‘cloud’, is an actual vehicle that carries a passenger, more likely as not a Spaceship Heaven shuttlecraft. 

Germ Warfare & Biological Weapons: There are numerous examples in Biblical texts where high tech biological weapons were used against populations (i.e. – the Egyptians, even God’s Chosen People) and individuals like Job.

Transfiguration: Jesus led three of his followers up a mountain, and behold his face had a rather disquieting and unnatural glow about it (much like Moses after his CE3K). In fact Jesus, and/or his clothing, shone with some sort of bioluminescence. To add to this anomaly, Jesus had with him both Moses (long since considered the late Moses who had once been abducted) and Elias (otherwise known as Elijah, the abducted). Further a ‘cloud’ that hovered over this gathering ‘spoke’ to them, one and all, with words that implied that this was God himself doing the speaking. Then the ‘cloud’ vanished like a bat out of hell. Wow! There is surely something strange afoot going on here. By the way, in common with a lot of other Biblical tales, this is repeated several times, in the Books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In fact, I’d suggest that if you eliminated all of the duplications, the Bible would be 10% thinner!

The Ascension: Jesus departs Planet Earth to take up his new job as First Officer on the Spaceship Heaven, sitting at the right hand of her captain.

Hologram Technology: A very useful ways and means of inspiring awe in the great unwashed. Examples that spring to mind include the ‘burning bush’ and Jesus ‘walking on the water’ and appearing in the ‘flesh’ post execution.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

There have been no verified and documented sightings of the main Biblical players (God, Satan, Jesus, angels, etc.) in way over 2000 years. Where are they? I suspect they have gone away. I further suspect God and crew were recalled to home base to stand trial for crimes against humanity, though many, like Jesus, were exonerated, having played no part or role at Sodom & Gomorrah or in the use of biological weapons and waging germ warfare. Satan and his fallen angels were recalled too, probably picked up from exile, to give account for their original mutiny. Perhaps as we read this Captain Jesus of the Spaceship Heaven (or some other interstellar vessel) is boldly going and finding new Garden of Eden locales to R&R in throughout the cosmos.  

CONCLUSION

It is clear that not everything in the Bible can be easily interpreted in an extraterrestrial context, probably because much of the text’s content tends to be rather mundane soap opera of a humans-only nature. That aside, after you take into consideration all the versions, all the translations and associated issues with that, translation and copying errors (deliberate and accidental), embellishments, artistic license, human imagination needed to fill in the gaps, plus the multiple authorship of all the Biblical texts itself, not to forget that the texts weren’t written down till decades, even many generations after-the-fact (it’s like nobody recorded and wrote down today’s news until the year 2112 – many an error would be made), I conclude that the Bible can largely be interpreted not in a supernatural way but rather an extraterrestrial one.

Unfortunately, if I am right, then all your theological baggage of an eternal life everlasting goes right down the drain – maybe not a bad thing if you thought you were Hell-bound, or even if Heaven-bound as the concept of eternal life is actually hellish as you would rather quickly be bored out of your afterlife skull, and you still have infinity yet to come.

Jesus of Nazareth: R.I.P.

Assuming that the Christian religious figurehead known as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, and that is not a given by any stretch of the imagination, then the odds are, IMHO, that he was just another mortal human and not an immortal supernatural deity, the alleged ‘Son of God’.

There's this concept or character of Jesus Christ (JC), or Jesus of Nazareth (depending on religious philosophy), the alleged Son of God. JC is probably the most famous or most well known character in all of recorded history, even if in his own time he was as unknown and unheard of as 99.9% of rock and film star wannabes are today. But did Jesus actually exist? It would really be a bummer if JC had all the reality of other famous and well known but fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Santa Claus. Yet for someone so famous after-the-fact, there's damn little documentation outside of religious texts to support his reality, and all of that 'reality' was penned many decades after-the-fact. Not only that, but the four main New Testament gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that detail the life and times of JC don’t always agree on various key points.

While there is relatively little doubt in my mind that there really was an historical figure that went by the name of Jesus, there are those scholars who would, and do, argue that Jesus was as totally a mythological figure as Zeus and Apollo, or for that matter Santa. That aside, I suggest that JC was a person who was very human, born in the normal way, died as any human eventually does, and has remained dead ever since.

If JC is indeed an historical figure, I suggest that while he existed he was seen as a very charismatic character, but one who alas, would most certainly have been mentally ill. Our mental institutions or asylums are full of people who sincerely believe that they are this person, or that person, or a reincarnation of this or that historical figure, but in reality, are totally delusional. I'm sure this syndrome is not unique to this era. I just mean that I'm sure mental illness existed some 2100 years ago - then as now - and it's possible that JC could have suffered from delusions of grandeur to some greater or lesser degree assuming he made some extraordinary claims about himself.

There have been lots of charismatic religious figures over the centuries, which, in another time and place, if claiming to be the Son of God, would have attracted a massive following, and a near mythological aura. Perhaps JC just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right personality to pull the charade off - in fact JC probably sincerely believed his own story. I'm no expert on what exactly JC said about himself, or has been alleged he said (if any of his quotations can be taken a face value). Perhaps he made relatively few claims at all and it was only others who embellished him as something he never really claimed to be. If that's the case, then of course maybe he wasn't mentally ill. Regardless, the bottom line is that JC, whatever he and/or others thought he was, was the son of a man and a woman, not the Son of God. To accept JC as a deity is to, IMHO, accept one of Alice’s White Queen's pre-breakfast impossibilities.

Biblical History: Fact or Fiction?

The Bible is apparently one of the best, if not the best selling books of all times. Why it isn’t for sale though in the mythology or fiction section of bookstores (or available in similar locations in libraries) is beyond me. Simply put, the Bible isn’t believable as non-fiction and as a historically accurate record of those ancient times.

Is Biblical history fact or fiction? Well, it's probably a mixture of both but the emphasis is weighted heavily on the fiction part - say by a ratio of 99% bovine fertilizer to 1% wheat among the chaff. I mean the Bible was written by a multitude of authors, with hidden agendas (who never had to take a polygraph test), over eons of time, and has suffered through dozens of versions and translations and mistranslations. I like an analogy of a row of twenty people - whisper a sentence into the ear of person number one and have that person whisper that sentence to person number two, hence person number three, and so on down the line. Have person number twenty then relate the sentence back to you. Odds are that there will be little similarity between what you originally whispered and what you ultimately heard after the twenty translations.

Since the texts of the Bible weren't written down until many decades after the 'fact', what does that tell you about the reliability of the texts being literally accurate? History is a very inexact science, written by the winners, patchy at best, and the farther one goes back in time, the patchier it gets. Historians often have a hard time documenting and agreeing on who, what, where, when and why of happenings 200 to 500 years ago. So how can we put faith in the literal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding events 2000 to 5000 years ago?

Anyone can make up or embellish stories and write them down and frequently do. Our bookshops and libraries are full of books labelled 'fiction'. Further, no one believes that all of those non-fiction books lining the shelves are without any shade of doubt always literally non-fiction from first page to last. One can easily find two non-fiction books on the exact same topic that are totally opposite in content and in context. Can anyone absolutely state that those who authored the various Testaments, those books, chapters and verses of the Bible weren't sort of making it up as they went along, or at least padding things a mite and slanting things according to their own worldview? In fact I've seen one book title that alleges that most of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament are downright fraudulent*. Humans at best can make mistakes in copying or in making translations; they like to embellish stories and tell little white lies (even whoppers), and at worst invent pure fiction (in the guise of truth) for their own purpose(s).

As has been often pointed out, including by me immediately above, history is written by the winners. Perhaps it would be interesting to have had Adam and Eve's side of the story, or Satan's side of history instead of just God's version of events!

So is the Bible literal history? There's no other historical or archaeological evidence for most of the people, places and events in the Bible: people, places and events like Noah and the Ark, Jonah, Solomon, Samson, David, the Exodus, the Battle of Jericho, Sodom & Gomorrah, or the Garden of Eden. Why isn't the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments tablet(s) in a museum - if they really exist? Does any rational person really suggest that a virgin birth happened; that there were literally giants in the earth; that angels are historical (or should that be hysterical), that the Star of Bethlehem, whatever it was (if it was) guided wise men; that all of the above reflect really real reality? All those Biblical tales read like modern sci-fi stories. There are just no independent sources, outside of the Bible, that verify any of these, IMHO, rather tall tales. The historical bona-fides of the Bible are seemingly impossible to independently verify and thus believe in. That said, I've often maintained that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. Still, the Biblical mountain as being an historical mountain and not a mythology, regardless of the hidden molehill, is an impossibility to swallow hook, line and sinker.

For a specific example, I’ve read quite a few dozen books on or about ancient Egyptian history over the years, and I have to note that certain words tend to be conspicuous by their absence in both text and index. I mean words like Joseph, Moses, Israel, Israelites, and Hebrews. Also, I have noted a lack of references to anything akin to all those plagues of frogs, locusts, boils, etc.; references all those firstborn kicking-the-bucket simultaneously, or pharaoh losing a hell of a lot of his army, horses and chariots by drowning in the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds). The King James Version of the Bible states that Rameses was the kick-off point in the N.E. Nile Delta for the Hebrew Exodus, yet all the maps of ancient Egypt fail to show any such place. Even my ancient Egyptian dictionary fails to note Rameses as a place. There is noted on the map a Per-Ramesses in the Nile Delta in ancient Egyptian history, but that’s not what the Bible mentions. Per-Ramesses, a.k.a. Qantir, which is right adjacent to Avaris, but those place names don’t get a Biblical mention either. The next stop off location according to the Bible was Succoth but that’s not a location noted on the ancient Egyptian map. Then the next Exodus location, according to the Bible was Etham. Guess what? That’s not on the map either!  Doubt my word? Kindly consult your own choice of scholarly texts dealing with ancient Egyptian history. In short, the Exodus and all associated with it is fiction pure and simple and any belief in it as an historical event is a purely delusional one, along with all the associated baggage, like the Passover.

*Ehrman, Bart D.; Forged: Writing in the Name of God: Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are; HarperOne, New York; 2011.

Six More Impossible Biblical Things

The Bible is apparently one of the best, if not the best selling books of all times. Why it isn’t for sale though in the mythology or fiction section of bookstores (or available in similar locations in libraries) is beyond me. Simply put, the Bible isn’t believable as non-fiction and as a historically accurate record of those ancient times.

We all like lists: The ten best this, the top dozen that; the five worst ranking next thing. That’s why the popularity of the Guinness Book of Records. In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were isn’t stated. Instead here are a half-a-dozen more of mine that reside in the La-La, Never-Never Land of the Biblical.

1) One Bible or Multi-Bibles? How can the Bible (let’s say the King James Version) be considered a unified whole when not only are there two testaments that are radically different in tone, but all up it’s been cobbled together with various bits and pieces included and excluded in a totally ad hoc fashion. No two scholarly or Biblical experts will agree on exactly what texts should be THE Bible.

Then too there exists dozens of English language versions of the Bible, from the Good News Translation to the New Living Translation to the American Standard Version to the New American Standard Bible to the Common English Bible to the English Standard Version to the English Standard Version Anglicised, and that’s just for starters.  Then there’s the King James Version, the New King James Version, and the 21^st Century King James Version, not to mention all those other languages the Bible is published in with unavoidable losses and uncertainties that must arise in translations from one language to another. It’s like your favourite novel was amended or tweaked every couple of years. In conclusion, the Bible as one unified word-of-God text is an impossibility to accept.

2) Biblical History: Fact or Fiction? Well, it’s probably a mixture of both but the emphasis is weighted heavily on the fiction part – say by a ratio of 99% bovine fertilizer to 1% wheat among the chaff. I mean the Bible was written by a multitude of authors with hidden agendas (who never had to take a polygraph test), over eons of time, and has suffered through dozens of versions and translations and mistranslations. I like an analogy of a row of twenty people – whisper a sentence into the ear of person number one and have that person whisper that sentence to person number two, hence person number three, and so on down the line. Have person number twenty then relate the sentence back to you. Odds are that there will be little similarity between what you originally whispered and what you ultimately heard after the twenty translations. 

Since the texts of the Bible weren’t written down until many decades after the ‘fact’, what does that tell you about the reliability of the texts being literally accurate? History is a very inexact science, written by the winners, patchy at best, and the farther one goes back in time, the patchier it gets. Historians often have a hard time documenting and agreeing on who, what, where, when and why of happenings 200 to 500 years ago. So how can we put faith in the literal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding events 2000 to 5000 years ago?

Anyone can make up or embellish stories and write them down – and frequently do. Our bookshops and libraries are full of books labelled ‘fiction’. Further, no one believes that all of those non-fiction books lining the shelves are without any shade of doubt always literally non-fiction from first page to last. One can easily find two non-fiction books on the exact same topic that are totally opposite in content and in context. Can anyone absolutely state that those who authored the various testaments, chapters and verses of the Bible weren’t sort of making it up as they went along, or at least padding things a mite and slanting things according to their own worldview? In fact I’ve seen one book title that alleges that most of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament are downright fraudulent*. Humans at best can make mistakes in copying or in translation; like to embellish stories and tell little white lies (even whoppers) and at worst invent pure fiction (in the guise of truth) for their own purpose(s).

As has been often pointed out, including by me immediately above, history is written by the winners. Perhaps it would be interesting to have had Adam and Eve’s side of the story, or Satan’s side instead of just God’s version of events!

So is the Bible literal history? There’s no other historical or archaeological evidence for most people, places and events in the Bible. People, places and events like Noah and the Ark, Jonah, Solomon, Samson, David, the Exodus, the Battle of Jericho, Sodom & Gomorrah, or the Garden of Eden. Why isn’t the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments tablet(s) in a museum – if they really exist? Does any rational person really suggest that a virgin birth happened; that there were literally giants in the earth; that angels are historical (or should that be hysterical?), that the Star of Bethlehem, whatever it was (if it was) guided wise men, reflect really real reality? All those Biblical tales read like modern sci-fi stories. There are just no independent sources, outside of the Bible, that verify any of these, IMHO, rather tall tales. The historical bona-fides of the Bible are seemingly impossible to independently verify and thus believe in. That said, I’ve often maintained that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. Still, the Biblical mountain as being an historical mountain, not a mythology, regardless of the hidden molehill, is an impossibility to swallow hook, line and sinker.

3) The Quotable God and Jesus: The Old and New Testaments weren’t written by God and Jesus respectively. In fact the texts of the Bible were written down many decades to centuries after the fact. For example, in the case of the New Testament, the Gospels weren’t penned until four to ten decades after Jesus left this mortal plane. Now both God and Jesus are quoted extensively in the Old and New Testaments respectively. Seeing as how nobody had access to tape or other sound recording devices back then, how can exact quotations from these Biblical deities be taken at face value? Perhaps the authors who penned the Biblical chapter and verses just made it up as they went along! It wouldn’t be the first time that someone has put words in someone else’s mouth! Sometimes making things up results in legal action – perhaps God and Jesus should sue for libel and slander or being quoted out of context. Anyway, the next time your local clergy preaches that “God said” or “Jesus said”, just pipe up with a “hang on a minute, how do you really know what God or Jesus said – you weren’t there and neither were those Biblical scribes.” In fact the next time anyone, anywhere, anyplace, anytime quotes you God or JC, demand to know how they know that, and if they say “well, the Bible says so”, read them the riot act about Biblical accuracy. In other words, quoting God, Jesus or any other Biblical character is just impossible in terms of spot-on historical verbatim accuracy.

4) Did Jesus Actually Exist? Then there’s the concept or character of Jesus Christ (JC) or Jesus of Nazareth (depending on religious philosophy), the alleged son of God. JC is probably the most famous or well known character in all of recorded history, even if in his own time he was as unknown and unheard of as 99.9% of rock and film star wannabes are today. It would really be a bummer if JC had all the reality of other famous and well known but fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Santa Claus. Yet for someone so famous, there’s damn little documentation outside of religious texts to support his reality, and all of that was penned many decades after-the-fact.

While there is relatively little doubt in my mind that there really was an historical figure who went by the name of Jesus (but there are those who would, and do, argue that Jesus was as totally a mythological figure as Zeus and Apollo, or for that matter Santa), and who was executed, I suggest that JC was still a person who was very human, born in the normal way, died, and has remained dead ever since.

If JC is indeed an historical figure, I suggest that he existed and was seen as a very charismatic character, but who alas, would most certainly have been mentally ill. Our mental institutions or asylums are full of people who sincerely believe that they are this person, or that person, or a reincarnation of this or that historical figure, but in reality, are totally delusional. I’m sure this syndrome is not unique to this era. I just mean that I’m sure mental illness existed some 2100 years ago – then as now – and it’s possible that JC could have suffered to some greater or lesser degree assuming he made some extraordinary claims about himself.

There have been lots of charismatic religious figures over the centuries, which, in another time and place, if claiming to be the Son of God, would have attracted a massive following, and a near mythological aura. Perhaps JC just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right personality to pull the charade off – in fact JC probably sincerely believed his own story.  I’m no expert on what exactly JC said about himself, or has been alleged he said (if any of his quotations can be taken a face value). Perhaps he made relatively few claims at all and it was only others who embellished him as something he never really claimed to be. If that’s the case, then of course maybe he wasn’t mentally ill. Regardless, the bottom line is that JC, whatever he and/or others thought he was, was the son of a man and a woman, not the Son of God. To accept JC as a deity is to, IMHO, accept one of those White Queen’s impossibilities.

5) Is the End of Days Prophecy Believable? Tea leaves and chicken entrails. He who knows the future controls the world, such is the common theme in sci-fi time travel to the past since once in the past you know the future and can make a killing on the stock market! However, when it comes to the Bible, for all the prophecies therein, and all the prophets that pontificated, there’s only one prophecy that ultimately matters – the end of days, the apocalypse, Armageddon, etc. There are only two points that need to be made here. The first is that 100% of scholars, even the great unwashed reading the Bible, who have predicted the end of the world have got it wrong! 100% is not a trivial percentage!

So, what are you to believe when the next soothsayer comes along and says on such-and-such a date Armageddon will be here? My response would be a swift kick in the privates! The second point, for those who take the Bible literally, is that Jesus told any and all who would listen that there would be those hearing his utterings about the end times that those times would happen within their lifetime. Alas, there is no one alive today who heard Jesus speak, so Christ’s own prophecy has to be graded as an “F”. In short, if you are eagerly awaiting the apocalypse, have a good supply of reading material and DVDs on hand, because it’s going to be a VERY LONG WAIT! It’s just plain impossible for any rational person, given the historical track record, to accept that the ‘end-of-days’ is not only near-and-dear but will happen at all.

6) God’s Policy on Population Growth: God’s not a Greenie or an environmentalist! We all know the passage from Genesis 1:28 (King James Version): It goes something like this: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Now that’s ultimately a Biblical impossibility because it is unsustainable, as should already be bleeding obvious. God may well want more and more and more humans to bow and scrape to Him but at what ultimate cost to the Earth He allegedly created; all those plants and animals He allegedly created; and His ultimate alleged creation, humanity?

Apart from mice and rats (which have a low ecological footprint), there’s probably no wild mammal species still in existence that outnumbers us anymore. There’s something seriously wrong when there’s threatened and endangered species, some species that only now total 500 to maybe (if lucky) 5000 individuals left when humans are seven billion strong and ever accelerating in numbers, especially in Africa. What hope is there for God’s animal creations? We’ve living in an era of mass extinction right now, and we’re the cause. What lifestyle for humans when there’s no more fit air to breathe; no fit water to drink; all natural resources depleted; disease and hunger rampant. God may enjoy all those billions of humans here and now with billions more to come worshiping and praying to Him, but those “fish of the sea” are a fraction of what once was; ditto the “fowl of the air” and ditto, ditto “every living thing” – well, maybe not cockroaches, not yet at least (until they become a food source of last resort and you’d eat them if it were down to a choice of that or starvation – besides they’re rich in protein). Revelation maybe impossible nonsense, though the end of days (for humans) might not be, thanks to Genesis 1:28.

*Ehrman, Bart D.; Forged: Writing in the Name of God: Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are; HarperOne, New York; 2011.

Ten Impossible Biblical Events

We all like lists: The ten best this, the top dozen that; the five worst ranking next thing. That’s why the popularity of the Guinness Book of Records. In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were is not stated – so here’s mine, plus four more, that reside in the land of the Biblically ridiculous.

One hardly knows where to start there are just so many Biblical absurdities to pick and choose from, so I expanded the White Queen’s six impossibilities to a Biblical ten. That aside, here are my ten of the best of Biblical impossibilities, a quintet each from the Old and the New Testaments.

Now imagine if your next door neighbour, work colleague, fiend, relative, spouse or partner told you that he (or she) had…

1) Been swallowed by a large shark and lived to tell the tale. You’d have to conclude that there are fisherman’s tall tales, and then there are the real whoppers! This would be a Whopper squared! (Jonah and the Whale)

2) Haircuts which made them go as weak at the knees as a newborn infant. You might conclude that they had some sort of physiological condition that made them prone to fainting spells, but that haircuts had no logical connection at all to those spells. At least that’s what I would conclude. (Samson’s Haircut)

3) Practiced their trumpet at home, endured near neighbours wanting to stone them to death due to the noise, but to add insult to injury, their house came tumbling down around them. If they played a trumpet and as a result their house did indeed come a tumbling down around them you’d have to conclude that the architects and builders were slipshod indeed, in fact downright fraudulent. You certainly wouldn’t make any connection between a well built brick home collapsing and playing the trumpet. (Joshua and the Battle of Jericho)

4) Followed their MD’s advice to the letter; getting the right amount of sleep and exercise and eating all the right and proper foods in the right and proper amounts; having an ideal body weight while refraining from smoking or drinking alcohol or caffeine. Their MD now promised them they will live to be as old as Methuselah at over 900 years! What do you think of that?  I’d suspect that you’d think that the MD in question was deluded, practicing snake-oil medicine, probably a downright fraud and that your neighbour had Buckley’s of hitting 90-plus far less 900-plus. (Biblical Longevity)

5) Commanded the Sun and Moon to stand still (or stop the Earth’s rotation – same difference), and it was so, a kind of do-it-yourself daylight savings. The obvious question, how come you didn’t notice or benefit by this one-off daylight savings event? (Joshua at Gideon)

6) Been born to a virgin. The date in question clearly has to be the first of April – right?

(Virgin Birth of Jesus)

7) Existed in the wilderness for 40 days and nights without food. I’ve heard of fad diets, but this is bordering on the ridiculous! I suspect that if you could survive 40 days without food that you must have been pretty flabby at the start; lots of fat reserves from which to draw off of for your energy requirements. (Jesus in the Wilderness Tempted by Satan - though I don’t recall ever seeing illustrations of Jesus being obese or even flabby)

8) Walked on water since they didn’t want to get their “itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow poke-a-dot bikini”, wet. Since the average human isn’t so sweet as to have to worry about dissolving if emersed in water, what’s the problem in getting wet, especially if your friendly neighbour has a backyard swimming pool? (Jesus Walking on the Waters)

9) A supply of bread rolls and fish fingers that, at their snap-of-the-fingers command, resulted in a near infinite supply all without ever going to the supermarket to restock. Now if that got around, you’d think the supermarkets would press charges against your friend for practicing witchcraft! (Loaves and Fishes Multiplied by Jesus)

10) Kicked-the-bucket but had been resurrected. Might I kindly suggest that you’d suspect your neighbour of inhaling the good stuff or putting some magic mushrooms into their stew! (The Resurrection of Jesus)

Now what would you really think of you neighbour’s sanity if he or she uttered such statements? I imagine that you might be inclined to call all those nice young men in their clean white coats and have your neighbour carted away to the funny farm! If you wouldn’t tend to believe your friends and neighbours, even family about such extraordinary claims, why would you put faith in an ad hoc cobbled together text (the Bible) written millennia ago by people you’ve never met and who have never been subjected to a polygraph test?

Seriously, if someone you knew made any one of those claims and therefore as a result you questioned their mental bona-fides, why not question the sanity of those Biblical scribes that made those above ten claims, and many more besides? And if you do that, a logical extension would be the assumption that nearly all parts of Bible lore are indeed suss, and if some parts are highly suspect, then odds are all Biblical texts are equally whacko.

The Biblical Flood: All Washed Up, Left High and Dry: Part Two

Everyone loves a good end-of-the-world disaster story and the one about the global flood as related in The Bible is a case in point. The trouble is that like most of the Bible it's pure mythology. Unfortunately, way too many people take the tale literally.

I find it quite amazing there are certain sincere, albeit misguided, individuals who spend thousands of dollars on expeditions chasing up, in search of, something and an event that doesn’t exist. Amazingly, every few years you’ll get a press report that the object (and thus the event) has been found. Alas, there’s never a follow-up story that confirms and authenticates the discovery. It’s always a case of ‘oops, goofed again’; ‘back to the drawing board’; ‘better luck next time’. Oh, what’s the object? The object in question is Noah’s Ark of course; and the event, the story of the Biblical flood.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

There’s also a few other quirks. Actually in some cases you need more than two per species. You can’t have just two dogs or two cats, but two of every dog breed and two of every cat breed. Multiply that by all other species that have various distinctive breeds. Speaking of breeds, where did all our genetic racial diversity come from if there were only a few (Noah and crew) survivors of this Biblical (global) flood?

In fact, since some animals only eat live (animal) food, I guess more than two of some species had to be on board to serve as appropriate snacks. I mean there wasn’t any tinned or dry cat food available for the moggies, no means of refrigeration of raw meat or fish, so extra live mice had better be on hand. That sort of example could be multiplied many times over.

After-the-fact, when the flood waters receded, what food would the herbivores eat? It would take some time for the grasses and bushes and trees and forests to regenerate. Further, immediately after-the-fact, wouldn’t the predator-prey ratio be all screwed up? I mean in a healthy population, prey vastly outnumber predators. If there are 200 deer and 2 lions, both survive. If there are two deer and two lions, both go kaput pretty quickly, the deer killed for food, the lions then starve.

And isn’t it strange that there were no other boats in existence that would have carried other survivors? I mean apparently every other boat in Biblical time’s existence sank, apart from the Ark! Rather inadequate boat building skills back then apparently or perhaps the whole story has all the reality of a Twilight Zone episode.

Now God may have a bone to pick with humans, but not with innocent animals. Although God dos the right thing by ‘saving’ a pair of each species, God also exhibited extreme cruelty in murdering (drowning) untold multi-millions of innocent animals.

There’s that concept of murder which God perpetrated on the human race en masse despite his or her own commandment about not killing.  Thou shall not kill is one of the Ten Commandments I believe. So you’d think that God would practice what he (or she) preaches, but doesn’t, according to the Old Testament. Because the Biblical flood was God’s flood, God was the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world, a murderer that puts tyrants the likes of Hitler to a status of rank amateur! I mean there are not only the Biblical flood story, but what about Sodom and Gomorrah? You can’t trust a god who basically says ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

The logic of it all is illogical in the extreme. And even if the Biblical flood were only a localized affair (which makes far more sense and explains some of the above problems), that still doesn’t absolve God from being a mass murderer.

If God – assuming a God exists and being all powerful and such – really wanted to wipe out all but a very few of his or her originally chosen people, those made in God’s image, humanity in other words (but please spare the innocent animals), he or she certainly picked a complicated way of doing it. A really all powerful God could have just snapped his or her fingers and instantaneously all of the humanity bar those very few special ones (Noah and company) would have become the dead dust of history. But why be quick and merciful (‘snap’) when you can drag it out and make them suffer!

Now the tale of the global flood is in fact global! Cultures from around the world tell similar tales to the Biblical flood. The argument is that therefore the story must be true as these diverse cultures had no contact with each other. My answer to that is related to bovine fertilizer! End of the world tales, or myths, the concept of Armageddon, punishing the wicked with total catastrophe was as common and popular then as now. We all love a good ‘end of the world’ story that has a moral attached. Alas, the choices or mechanisms available for said end of the world stories to myth makers’ way back then were rather limited. They had no knowledge of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts or massive solar flares or nuclear war and resulting holocausts or killer asteroids smacking into Planet Earth, etc. All they had to work with was the day-to-day sorts of routine natural events part and parcel of their daily lives. In fact, many tale-spinners might not have been familiar with, say, volcanoes, and while most relatively violent weather phenomena, like tornadoes, may be destructive, they aren’t destructive enough to wipe out the wicked that populate a wide area.  However, everyone would have experienced rain, heavy rain, even torrential rain say from hurricanes, etc. that resulted in minor flooding, or say witnessed storm surges from the sea that inundated the land, and/or witnessed rivers, ponds and lakes overflowing. It doesn’t take that much imagination to notch up minor real events, in the guise of story telling, to mega disaster proportions. If it rains heavily for one day and there’s some local flooding, up the ante to 40 days. It’s difficult to imagine any story teller from 5000 years ago coming up with any other sort of end of the world scenario!

The one point to end-of-the-world, mega disaster stories is that there must be at least one survivor to tell the tale! I gather in this case that includes survivors such as Noah and kin.

Another possibility, perhaps complementary to the above or perhaps as a standalone in its own right is that many regions, high and dry, often arid, give rise to rock strata that contain fossilized sea shells, fossilized fish, and other marine organisms. Now natives seeing these anomalies, knowing nothing of historical geology and palaeontology, would obviously conclude that there must have been a massive body of water here at one time, which they interpret as a relatively recent giant flood, so gigantic that it must have been universal. Of course it was a ‘flood’ of sorts. As the configurations of the continents have changed, invasions of the sea have created vast oceans eons ago where now stands dry land. The natives couldn’t have known that – the concept of deep (geological) time didn’t exist for them.

I have read of one other explanation for universal flood stories. If I recall correctly, a student of Freud came up with the idea that the tellers/inventors of flood tales got the idea from dreams in their sleep. And they dreamed the dream all because they were asleep with relatively full bladders. Personally, I think that’s a piss-weak explanation!

Is there another solution? Well, here’s one possibility. What if God, she, he or whatever, were in reality a very ‘flesh and blood’ extraterrestrial (E.T.) computer programmer, who has written a software package called, say “Planet Earth”. Maybe it’s a computer or interactive video game – maybe a homework assignment for a smart E.T. student. Anyway, computer software easily explains all the Biblical miracles (virgin births; the resurrection, etc.) or anomalies (like where did the entire Biblical flood’s rain come from; where did all the water go; how did Jonah survive inside a large fish, etc.) or inconsistencies (like Cain’s wife, the discrepancies between Biblical time and geological time). Regarding the Biblical flood, no humans actually died; no animals suffered and drowned, and so on, because the humans and animals were never real to start with, just as you and I aren’t real, just part of – for want of a better analogy – a computer game simulation. Now that’s pretty outlandish, but probably no more so that actually spending time, effort, energy and your hard earned dollars in search of the mythological and IMHO nonexistent Noah’s Ark.

But if you still believe in the physical reality of Noah’s Ark., then I guess it is logical to believe that the Ark must of carried unicorns, fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden, dragons, centaurs, leprechauns, elves, sirens, Bigfoot, griffins, werewolves, trolls and just for good measure, the Cyclopes (plus a host of others).

The more obvious conclusion or implication is, if the Bible – the alleged word of God – gets this alleged event so wrong – it fails on any level of logic you care to apply – then how much faith can you put in the rest of the Biblical text? What sort of credibility does the Bible have? My belief is that it has absolutely none. So, potentially then the entire Bible, judging by the tale of the global flood, is a farce – just a collection of myths and fairy tales for grownups.

The Biblical Flood: All Washed Up, Left High and Dry: Part One

Everyone loves a good end-of-the-world disaster story and the one about the global flood as related in The Bible is a case in point. The trouble is that like most of the Bible it's pure mythology. Unfortunately, way too many people take the tale literally.

I find it quite amazing there are certain sincere, albeit misguided, individuals who spend thousands of dollars on expeditions chasing up, in search of, something and an event that doesn’t exist. Amazingly, every few years you’ll get a press report that the object (and thus the event) has been found. Alas, there’s never a follow-up story that confirms and authenticates the discovery. It’s always a case of ‘oops, goofed again’; ‘back to the drawing board’; ‘better luck next time’. Oh, what’s the object? The object in question is Noah’s Ark of course; and the event, the story of the Biblical flood.

In terms of  Old Testament tales, the Biblical flood story makes for a great science fiction read, even makes a grand (but fictional) epic film spectacular, but that’s about as far as it goes. The accent here must be on the word ‘fiction’. In fact, this has just got be the greatest crock of bovine fertilizer I’ve ever read about. How any thinking person can swallow this fairy tale is beyond me. Just consider.

Where did all the water come from? There’s certainly not enough water vapour in the atmosphere to precipitate out for 40 days and nights! And would 40 days and nights of rain even be enough to cover the highest mountain peak? I doubt it. And where did all the water go after-the-fact?

Then there’s that minor detail of actually building the Ark. Given the size it would have to be (room for all those multi-tens-of-thousands of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and millions more invertebrates), just using a very few labourers without modern power tools, it would have to take decades, if not centuries to complete the task. And that’s after you have gathered all of the raw materials and transported them on site. From an engineering point of view, there is a limit to how big you can make a viable, sailable wooden boat using only materials and technology available at the time. Too large, as the Ark would have to be, it would at best leak and slowly sink; at worst break apart and rapidly sink, sailing on a rough and stormy global sea. With no land masses to get in the way, can you imagine the force the winds could get to? Cape Horn would be a smooth pond comparatively speaking.

After taking mega-years to build the damn ship, your work isn’t finished. Somehow you have got to find, collect, gather together all the supplies needed as well as find, collect and gather all the animals required for the voyage. That would take quite some considerable time – as in more mega-years. How long would it take you to round up two of every animal species on Planet Earth along with all the resources required to keep them in the style of life to which they have become accustomed for forty days and nights? Don’t forget that many animals have very precise dietary, etc. requirements. I think most pet owners find it quite daunting enough to deal with the time and energy to look after just a few animals, far less several hundred thousand!

And just how did all those thousands of species of animals not native to the region happen to make it to the Ark if they weren’t collected by Noah and friends? I mean like polar bears and penguins and animals native to the Americas? I assume koalas and kangaroos went along for the ride. How did they get to the Holy Lands? How did these animals get returned to their native lands after-the-fact? Then too, there’s been lots of new species discovered since Noah’s time. Presumably they were unknown to Noah too back then, so how did they survive the Flood?

There are the logistical and manpower issues that need to be looked at after the building and gathering together aspects. There’s the need to load and store all those supplies for the adequate care and feeding of at minimum a hundred thousand animal species (times two – one of each sex), and that’s excluding all the insects and other invertebrates (so add several million more). What sort of manpower is needed to care for, feed, exercise, clean (especially clean) and dispose of the organic refuse of all those animals? Let’s just say that a typical zoo has way fewer animals and lots more staff. Noah and crew would never have gotten any sleep. Since there are only 86,400 seconds in a day, each animal would have rated less than a few seconds a day even multiplying allowable seconds in a day by all the available manpower for said care and feeding and exercise and cleaning. Perhaps Noah and crew were born on and came from Krypton!

Was Noah and crew (family) qualified in the care of wildlife? Were they certified veterinarians who could look after a sick animal? After all, if one of the two-by-two of a kind died, then it’s curtains for that species. It goes extinct! I’d guess they probably weren’t so qualified, which was a major oversight IMHO.  How did Noah, etc. know the animals (and even plant seeds) were actually fertile?

Relatively few life forms would have survived in a global ocean. That includes most fish as all that additional fresh water would have diluted the oceans enough, and the rising sea water levels contaminate fresh water lakes, etc. such that nearly all marine and fresh water fish would have died. Therefore, I guess the Ark had to have been a floating aquarium in addition to everything else.

And just how did all those dry land plants survive after being submerged for weeks on end? Well, I guess the Ark had to carry a lot of plants too! Of course fresh water for all the plants wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but what of sunlight since everything had to be stored below decks? Of course perhaps all plants were stored as seeds, but how do seeds (or the actual plants for that matter) native to Australia, New Zealand, or Hawaii say get to the Middle East?

And how could the Ark maintain all those proper environmental conditions on board to sustain the lives of such a diversity of wildlife? From polar to tropical, desert to rainforest, how? And how could the Ark carry hundreds of thousands of animal species (including nearly all the birds), millions if you include insects (which you’d have to do), along with appropriate food for all, all for a minimum of 40 days and nights (plus additional time for the waters to entirely recede)? Do you realize how entirely inadequate the Biblical accounting of the Ark is for such a mission? It’s like trying to house and feed a human population of thousands in a bed-sitter flat!

Speaking of proper environmental conditions, you have got to pity the poor human occupants on board – the crew. I mean between the massive animal stink and animal noise and the constant wet and constant seasickness from the rolling global ocean, plus very poor ventilation and what with no electric lights, inhaling the smoke and fumes from whatever oil-based light source(s) they had – well there sure was no occupational health and safety back then!

To be continued…