Thursday, November 16, 2006

Punishing Humanity the Rube Goldberg Way - Part 1

Rube Goldberg, as many people may know, was a well-known cartoonist who was best known for his cartoons featuring absurdly complicated devices for accomplishing the most simple of tasks, hence the phrase “a Rube Goldberg contraption.”

In one of the most well-known stories from the Bible, the tale of Noah’s Ark, God takes a Rube Goldberg approach in punishing humanity for the wickedness of men. God is so angry with mankind that he decides to wipe out every person on the face of the Earth, except for a man named Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives. You see, Noah was a righteous man who “found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Apparently, Noah’s righteousness did not rub off on his brothers and sisters, because Noah does not utter a peep of protest when God informs Noah of his plans. We are also informed that Noah was 500 years old before he had his first child. In other words, Noah was the 500 year old virgin. How’s that for a movie title? His father Lamech, on the other hand, only had to wait 182 years before he impregnated his wife and fathered baby Noah.

Now, we are told to believe that the God of the Bible is the creator of everything in the universe and is omniscient and omnipotent. Therefore, when it comes to punishing mankind, God surely had a lot of options available to him for striking down the wicked. For starters, God could have cause every evil person on the Earth to spontaneously combust. Poof! Everybody is dead and vanished except for Noah and his family. The human race can start over again. Alternatively, God can make all of the wicked people sterile (after all, if he can make a virgin pregnant, surely he can cause men to have low sperm counts) and after a few hundred years, all of the wicked people die out and there is just Noah and his family still standing. Again, the problem of bad people is solved.

But no, we’re talking the God of the Bible here, which means nothing is ever simple and efficient. You see, God has decided that he will punish mankind by flooding the Earth so that it resembles Kevin Costner’s ‘Waterworld’. Unfortunately, this means that not only are all of the bad people going to be killed, but just about everything else as well. For some strange reason, in his anger, God is resolved to destroy not only all of the wicked people, but the “animals and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air.” Why animals have to suffer because of God’s anger with the human race is unexplained.

However, since God has decided to spare Noah and his family, along with two (or seven) of each living thing in order that life can start anew after the flood waters have receded, he has a number of options available to him as he is omniscient and omnipotent. As the flood waters arise, he could form a protective bubble around those he intends to save so that they do not drown, sort of like Jean Gray in X-Men II holding back the waters of Alkali Lake to protect her comrades on the jet. Nope, fat chance there. God could also send Noah and pairs of every living thing to dwell at the top of the highest mountains and cause the flood waters to stop rising just shy of those mountains. Tibet comes to mind as an ideal place. Sorry, can’t do that either.

God’s solution to save Noah and the fortunate few is for Noah to construct a vessel called an ark. God gives Noah very specific instructions as to how the ark should be built, from the type of wood to be used, the height, width, and length of the ark, even where to place the doors. You know right away though that there is going to be trouble on the ark, because there is no mention of God consulting with Noah’s wife about where to put the curtains. After all, you can’t expect a woman to be holed up in a stinking putrid wooden vessel for a year without trying to lighten the place up a bit.

God then commands Noah “to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” (Genesis 6:19). But God must have altered his plans slightly, because in Genesis 7:2-3, he tells Noah to “take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate (seven being an odd number, some animals are going to be stuck on the ark without a date), and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.” Noah has seven days to perform this task, whereupon God informs him that he will cause it to rain for forty days and nights.

According to Genesis 7:15, “pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.” How these creatures got to the ark is left unexplained. Did Noah and his sons go off and capture them when they weren’t busy building the ark, or did the lucky creatures embark on a mass migration across the Earth? This is a very important question. After all, many creatures subsist on a diet that is particular to the geographic location where they live. Koalas, for instance, eat the leaves of the eucalyptus tree. Did the koalas on the ark bring their own stash of eucalyptus leaves with them, or did Noah make a trip to Australia in his spare time? And then there are some animals and insects that live only in the canopy of a tropical rain forest. How could they be expected to survive the journey to the ark?

Regardless, the seven days passed and when Noah was a sprightly man of 600 years, “all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.” The ark, we are told “floated on the surface of the water”, and so began the odyssey of Noah and his family, as they realized to their consternation that in all of their planning for the flood, they forgot to bring with them a deck of cards and Monopoly®.

(To be continued.)

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

There were eight people on board the ark, and they are (allegedly) the progenitors of the human race as we know it today.

In contrast, the last living ancestors of the Nueva Germania disaster descended from a whopping one hundred people. And most of them are horribly inbred.

Tommykey said...

Actually, according to the Bible, we are descended from six people, not eight, as Genesis does not mention Noah having any more kids after the flood.

It's interesting that Noah is said to have lived for 350 years after the flood, and yet after he curses Ham's not even yet conceived son (to be addressed in Part 2), we never hear anything from him again.

BTW, how come you dropped the Hanumizzle moniker?

The Jolly Nihilist said...

This is a really nice post.

The Bible is so incredibly ridiculous (i.e., talking snakes, resurrected corpses, etc.) that I really find it incomprehensible that otherwise intelligent, sane people accept its ludicrous mythology as a literal truth.

People cannot live to be hundreds and hundreds of years old. Possibly at some point in the future, but certainly not long ago in the past. We simply don't have the physiological tools to live 600 years.

And, of course, you ably highlight Yahweh's repellent and destructive behavior. Richard Dawkins makes much of this, and rightly so. Few mythical characters are more bloodthirsty and vengeful than Yahweh. He also apparently doesn't discriminate between the righteous and the villainous when he's unleashing a torrent of bloodshed.

Christianity is unscientific, internally incoherent, irrational, unreasonable, contrary to history and biology, and morally questionable in a deep and irreconcilable sense.

I've often said that, even if Yahweh were to exist, I could not bring myself to worship. The Old Testament, in particular, presents a strong case for condemnation and rejection.

--Jolly

Anonymous said...

" I suggested that bacterial conjugation was the evolutionary forerunner of modern sexual reproduction. In other words, there were a lot of steps in between; biologists believe that sexual reproduction began 2.5 BILLION years ago. A lot of time passed since then, and a lot of different $*@t happened. Only a simpleton would think one segued right into the other immediately." TP

That's how some Evolutionist try to explain how we got to male / female sexual reproduction. Some how with enough time we developed the ability to evolve separately, yet together.


You didn't consider that there are other forms of sexual reproduction than the crude method of copulation used by bacteria. Pollination, for one, is a relatively simple mechanism compared to sexual organs. It essentially works at a fairly unsophisticated, cellular level. And then there are sea creatures who emit sperm and fertilize eggs, but don't have penes (presumable plural of penis?). They just use the water as a medium, and there it is.

I have no formal qualifications in biology whatever, but even I can name a few of these intermediary steps, still in use today. I suggest a sabbatical at the library.

Creationists have also cited the bombardier beetle as another such evolutionary improbablity. Kent Hovind gives a laughable---and WRONG---explanation of its unique defense mechanism in one of his lectures. The talk.origins website gives a rather detailed account of a possible sequence of events that could produce such a change. Granted, it's not as hard as one would hope, but nowhere near as bad as uninformed speculation about waste management on the Ark.

But that's all besides the point: I shouldn't have even dignified a red herring such as this. Still left unexplained is how all Mankind descended from eight, no, six people, and rapidly met the incredible genetic diversity it has today in just a few thousand years, without becoming hopelessly inbred.

Your brother in Parabramhan,
Theerasak

Anonymous said...

I've often said that, even if Yahweh were to exist, I could not bring myself to worship. The Old Testament, in particular, presents a strong case for condemnation and rejection.

<aol>me too</aol>

He'd kill me just for working on Sunday (Saturday?).

Anonymous said...

BTW, how come you dropped the Hanumizzle moniker?

People need to have a mental image of the snivelling bantamweight Twinkie that's gleefully trolling them.

The Ridger, FCD said...

Re the seven clean animals, you're not thinking logically. The clean animals are the ones we can eat, so obviously we want extras of them on the ark. And probably we bring one male and six females, so we can get more faster afterwards...

If you assume any of this makes even the least little bit of sense, then that does.

The Ridger, FCD said...

Also, it's five people. Don't forget that three of the six are children of the same two, so it's Noah and the unnamed women ... We're all not only descendents of Adam, we're all descendents of Noah. One big happy family...

Anonymous said...

And by the way statements like,
"He'd kill me just for working on Sunday (Saturday?)."
Show that as well as having no formal qualifications in biology you also have done no study of biblical exegesis.


"Six days my work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death." -- Exodus 31:13-15

Well, that's tough luck for me because I work EVERY Sunday.

Besides why does it seem that after fe-fi-gazilla years the world has had NO problem evolving into all differant kinds of life forms...but all of a sudden we can't observe any thing more than small changes within a kind of animal. It is almost like we are de-evolving at this point or hit the point of inbreeding.

Scientists have observed speciation, yes, 'macroevolution' as cretinists would call it, even in a laboratory setting, on a number of well-documented occasions.

Plus there's all the SPECIES that we don't even know about yet.

Your ignorance is showing again. This reminds me of the time I had to post an excerpt from a Scots Gaelic poem to prove to you where the 'F word' came from.

I don't want to predigest basic linguistics for you anymore, and I'm not going predigest basic biology for you either.

Anonymous said...

Recent political developments in Denmark were inspiring: Christian, Muslim or otherwise, NO, fundies do not belong in the West, NO, they should not feel welcome here, and NO, they should not be allowed to run anything.

Anonymous said...

It's really not such a stretch when you consider that God made us genetically perfect from the start.

But this was ten generations after Adam.

Anonymous said...

Those aint steps just differant kinds, unless you think every thing is going to eventually evolve in to humans.

Yes they are. They so obviously are.

Anonymous said...

Show that as well as having no formal qualifications in biology...

Neither does Kent Hovind. The difference is: I'm not a pompous ass and I'm honest about it to boot.

Anonymous said...

And I'm just going to believe this because you said it. Come on.

This just scratches the surface.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

Enjoy.

" (You're) not a pompous ass and (You're) honest about it to boot."
Ha HA HAAA!!!


I don't brag about my (lack of) credentials, and I don't think experience in animal husbandry, no matter how extensive, automatically entitles me to a doctorate degree in biology.

And when all is said and done, animals of all kinds practice homosexuality, God wants to execute me for the egregious sin of working on Sunday, Ezekiel ate turds and barley like the aforementioned non-existent friend in the sky told him to, and the 'F word' still comes from Scots Gaelic.

Look in the mirror and don't be surprised when you see a hypocrite looking back at you. (Please, just stop. It's embarrassing.)

Your brother in Parabramhan,
Theerasak

Anonymous said...

And I'm just going to believe this because you said it. Come on.

I'm not going to believe anything just because of some random hippie named Yehoshua ben Yosef.

Anonymous said...

Then he (Jesus) said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

Well, the Bible is full of inconsistencies like that.

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." -- Proverbs 4:7

"For I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." -- 1 Corinthians 1:19

I could rattle them off for days. Does God want to execute people who work on the Sabbath or not?

First off you are not a believer, when you die where are you going to go? The Bible says that all have sinned and will die. Christianity is the vehicle for hope. So that if you except Christ as your payment for sin, you can be forgiven for ALL your sins.

vim tricks. Watch this:

:%s/Christianity/Mahayana Buddhism/g
:%s/Christ/Buddha/g
:%s/Bible says/Sutras say/g

First off you are not a believer, when you die where are you going to go? The Sutras say that all have sinned and will die. Mahayana Buddhism is the vehicle for hope. So that if you except Buddha as your payment for sin, you can be forgiven for ALL your sins.

Mahayana Buddhism offers me the same shit, up to and including salvation through faith alone. So what's the competitive advantage? None, other than someone else's say-so.

So lets say you just began to believe in God right now, and you want to start living your life in a way that would be pleasing to God. How would you change? Would you ever be good enough?

That would be a big change of routine. You see, when I get up every morning, I drink a martini or six, then I woozily drive down to the local abortion clinic in my Pimpmobile and eat fetuses out of the biohazard container for breakfast. I then take a few leisurely hits of crack in the parking lot and head back home to collect my six fraudulent welfare and social security checks and then spend the rest of the day eating bon-bons and trolling the Internet. And I have to take rohypnol just to hit the sack because of my multiple addictions to powerful stimulant drugs.

(Just kidding.)

Who the hell knows what lifestyle is 'pleasing' to God? No one, really. Maybe God would rather save an honest, hard-working atheist than a televangelist whose word is God, God, God and whose deed is foul, foul, foul.

So if I have a Modern Game chicken and a Cochin chicken...both came from the jungle fowl 4000 years ago and now I can't breed them with one another....but are they still not just chickens?

No. They are separate species, by the definition of the word species. Use of the term 'kind' will get you laughed off of most university campuses, unless the university in question happens to be a suburban home with vinyl sidings called Patriot University.

Theerasak Photha, I didn't fine any good information that evolution does anything but slowly lose genetic information, no new genetic information being gained.

Your continued ignorance isn't my fault, now is it? Not all of those examples are infertile (there are others beyond the talk.origins page as well).

Furthermore, biological species were only catalogued from a few hundred years ago. Biologists have dated most evolutionary events to thousands of years at the very least. A pot of phở takes several days to cook. A creationist is someone who expects it to be done in several minutes.

Anonymous said...

Question: why did you Christians co-opt Eostre?

Anonymous said...

Come on.....in Buddhism they don't even believe that there is a god.

Notice that I mentioned MAHAYANA Buddhism, which has a very clearly defined God concept. Not that you know the difference between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism anyway. (Even some practitioners of Theravada Buddhism have their own deities.)

How can I not revile such a deep and abiding ignorance? It's impossible.

That should answer your Easter question too.

No, it doesn't tell me why Christians co-opted pagan Anglo-Saxon and Norse traditions. Way to compromise your integrity.

"Notice for residence relocation
To all those who dwell within this tree that is all ghosts, spirits, and other living beings:
All living beings who dwell in this tree are hereby notified that this tree has been designated to be cut down for the purpose of protecting the way-place of the Triple Jewel.
You are hereby requested to move to another location before that date. You are hereby given eight days advance notice, so that you will have time to find another place to dwell. Your cooperation is very important and meritorious."


Smells like a bunch of bull to me.

What a rip off, only 8 days to move. How does a nesting bird or a ghost stand up to such kind demands to leave ones home? Do bugs read? When the tree falls on this poor little illiterate being, is it his fault or the tree cutter's fault? And what about the guy that has to cut down the tree...what will his carma look like in his next life...where is this hope you speak about?

Don't shed crocodile tears for little insects unless you're willing to shed tears for the Samaritans God slaughtered for practicing a religion He didn't like.

You (almost) got one thing right: all religions are extremely sucky and unfair. I see Christianity the way you see Buddhism; I just believe in one less God than you. Not much of a difference. This is because I refuse to be biased by my culture and upbringing. Nu?

Still unaddressed:

Why is the Bible riddled with inconsistencies from Genesis onwards, which offers two conflicting creation stories?

How could six people produce a race of Men not horribly inbred?

Exactly what lifestyle pleases God? How can you know for sure?

How does a modest suburban home constitute a University, which, by definition, must consist of multiple buildings?

Anonymous said...

So this is what I have found out about MAHAYANA Buddhism. Interesting that this change takes place about 2000 years ago....around the time of Jesus. I think that it is a compliment to Christianity that they would copy from it. Or is this just more proof that Christianity is far reaching.

The Mahayana scriptures were written AT LEAST a century before the Common Era. It is Christianity that 'draws from' Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, not the other way around.

Nice try, anyway.

It's perfectly true. I couldn't believe it myself, so I found a notice that fell off the tree because of the rain and brought it home as a souvenir. I like to visit the Buddhist to watch the peacocks. I don't need to make stuff up.

I want color photographs. You can use ImageShack, you know.

Come on, you sound like a Dawkin's clone

I have never read anything by Richard Dawkins.

"Why is the Bible riddled with inconsistencies from Genesis onwards, which offers two conflicting creation stories?"
You think that because you don't want to understand.


Genesis 1:25-27

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image."

(God creates the beasts, then man.)

Genesis 2:18-19

"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

(God creates man, then beasts.)

Which one is true, and which one is false? They can't BOTH be right.

This would be a good place to start after you repent of your sins and ask Jesus Christ to become your personal Savior.

Do I shake a magic 8 ball or something? On WHOSE AUTHORITY is Jesus Christ (who never existed by the way) my personal Savior?

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Again: Sez who? I could claim the world sprang from the corpse of the giant Ymir and have the exact same authority: a few texts written a long time ago by superstitious people.

Still unaddressed:

How could six people produce a race of Men not horribly inbred?

How does a modest suburban home constitute a University, which, by definition, must consist of multiple buildings? Is Kent Hovind not a liar for claiming that he holds a doctorate degree?

Anonymous said...

Mahayana Buddhism, the Greater Vehicle, emerged about 2000 years ago.

About, not exactly, 2000 years ago. In truth, it was well over 2000 years. If it were exactly 2000 years ago, after all, the alleged Christ figure would be what? Six to nine years old, depending on whose story you believe.

Anonymous said...

The changeing of a pagan holiday to a Christian one, is also a way to tell many people about the Good News. It is not a compromise.

Yes it is. It's agitprop, plain and simple.

(Interesting random fact: four out of seven weekdays are named after Norse Gods: Tyr, Woden, Thor, and Frigga.)

Anonymous said...

I think that it is a compliment to Christianity that they would copy from it. Or is this just more proof that Christianity is far reaching...

...The changeing of a pagan holiday to a Christian one, is also a way to tell many people about the Good News. It is not a compromise.


Maybe it is a compliment for Norse and Saxon paganism to copy their holidays and rituals.

Anonymous said...

I did address this. Just because you are unwilling to understand, will not make my answering it again more to your liking.

And I answered. This was ten generations AFTER Adam.

As far as Kent Hovinds education, not being up to "your" standards. I DON'T CARE. I think you are being rude, and you sound like Richard Dawkins.

Well, lah-dee-dah! Shame on me for expecting that someone who claims to hold a doctorate degree actually holds one. I guess "my standards" are just way too stringent for people who can't pay their taxes and live up to a basic modicum of honesty.

Let me put it this way:

Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.
Kent Hovind is a liar.

And lastly:

Kent Hovind is a liar.

Who by the way thinks it is "safe" to call anyone that believes in God a liar.

OH NO, it is by no means safe to offend religion, because of the crazed wingnuts who can and will kill infidels. Brave people like the late Theo van Gogh will stand up to these idiots, but often pay the ultimate price.

It's not right either. 'Seriously deluded' is a better description.

If a person reads the Bible, without being on a mission to find contradictions, he/she will find the Bible to be understandable, consistent, and in harmony.

And if you read about Indic and Northern European paganism while not hell bent on proving me wrong, you'll find that Mahayana Buddhism and, literally, ALL of the concepts that distinguish Christianity from Judaism---salvation through faith, a personal God, the concept of being born again ('twice-born' for Brahmins and Kshatriyas), avatars, holy trinity, the Second Coming, EVERYTHING---come from either Hinduism or (Mahayana) Buddhism.

You'll also find that Heimdal kicks ass.

Anonymous said...

Me:

...you'll find that Mahayana Buddhism...

Pleh.

And if you read about Indic and Northern European paganism while not hell bent on proving me wrong, you'll find that, literally, ALL of the concepts that distinguish Christianity from Judaism---salvation through faith, a personal God, the concept of being born again ('twice-born' for Brahmins and Kshatriyas), avatars, holy trinity, the Second Coming, EVERYTHING---come from either Hinduism or (Mahayana) Buddhism.

You'll also find that Heimdal kicks ass.

(I may as well say that about Heimdal twice, because it's so tr00.)

Your brother in Parabramhan,
Theerasak