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Babel

and to think, theists think they are funny... well comedians...
 
funinspace said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
The location of the Garden is roughly given, but there are no real descriptions about outside the Garden. If anything, the story seems to act like the entire world is around (referring to known monumental points), but back in the day, the action was in the Garden. Of course, that begs the question, why the whole world if stuff is just happening in the Garden. Seems like God was prepared for "Plan B".
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The Big Prick tried to use an abortion pill? :D

Anywho, the Garden of Eden should be easy enough to find, just look for the cherubim guards with flaming swords...
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You do know what a cherubim is, right? A baby angel. God gave a baby a fucking sword... on fire... and left it to defend the Garden. So not only did the flaming sword burn down the Garden, it likely was involved in the accidental death of the cherubim.

Worst part? All part of God's plan.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
funinspace said:
The Big Prick tried to use an abortion pill? :D

Anywho, the Garden of Eden should be easy enough to find, just look for the cherubim guards with flaming swords...
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You do know what a cherubim is, right? A baby angel. God gave a baby a fucking sword... on fire... and left it to defend the Garden. So not only did the flaming sword burn down the Garden, it likely was involved in the accidental death of the cherubim.

Worst part? All part of God's plan.
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The baby angel thing is a Late Middle Ages/Renaissance invention. The original churubim were human-headed, winged creatures with the body of a bull (in Mesopotamia) or a lion (in Phonecia and Canaan). Pretty badass to start with; I'm not sure they needed the flaming swords. That's overkill.
 
And more importantly, if God didn't want them to eat the fruit of the tree, why the hell put the tree in the garden? Put the tree in Hawaii, or on Mars. Problem solved.
 
C_Mucius_Scaevola said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
You do know what a cherubim is, right? A baby angel. God gave a baby a fucking sword... on fire... and left it to defend the Garden. So not only did the flaming sword burn down the Garden, it likely was involved in the accidental death of the cherubim.

Worst part? All part of God's plan.
Click to expand...

The baby angel thing is a Late Middle Ages/Renaissance invention. The original churubim were human-headed, winged creatures with the body of a bull (in Mesopotamia) or a lion (in Phonecia and Canaan). Pretty badass to start with; I'm not sure they needed the flaming swords. That's overkill.
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I stand corrected. Though, having wings would make one fumble about with a sword, which probably still led to the Garden burning down and slicing their body into two.

Sarpedon said:
And more importantly, if God didn't want them to eat the fruit of the tree, why the hell put the tree in the garden? Put the tree in Hawaii, or on Mars. Problem solved.
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Well, to us mortals it is called a "plot device". To the zealously religious people, it is called a test of faith.
 
DLH said:
Someone, I don't know who, but thank you, brought up the tower of Babel in another thread. ....
Nimrod is thought to be Tammuz or Damuzi, the Sumerian King who invented the filthy idol, the cross, which was later adopted by Christianity in about the middle of the fourth century C.E. after Constantine. Ezekiel 8:15-18
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Given the structural properties of mud brick, there is a practical height limit to any such structure. The ration of the width of the base to the height must remain constant, or the weight of the tower will produce a lateral force on the lower layers and collapse. This means the base must increase with the cube of the height, to prevent structural failure. That's a lot of mud brick.

If there is any factual basis to the story of the Tower of Babel, it maybe that Nimrod and his contractor discovered this problem, the hard way.
 
Bronzeage said:
DLH said:
Someone, I don't know who, but thank you, brought up the tower of Babel in another thread. ....
Nimrod is thought to be Tammuz or Damuzi, the Sumerian King who invented the filthy idol, the cross, which was later adopted by Christianity in about the middle of the fourth century C.E. after Constantine. Ezekiel 8:15-18
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Given the structural properties of mud brick, there is a practical height limit to any such structure. The ration of the width of the base to the height must remain constant, or the weight of the tower will produce a lateral force on the lower layers and collapse. This means the base must increase with the cube of the height, to prevent structural failure. That's a lot of mud brick.

If there is any factual basis to the story of the Tower of Babel, it maybe that Nimrod and his contractor discovered this problem, the hard way.
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I think the point was that these people were using brick and mortar which could help build larger structures (which was impressive relatively speaking) in lieu of the local crap they were building using bitumen.

Granted, building a tower and getting to the heavens to make a name for themselves... that was a legit threat. Just like later on when God warned the "us" he is with about WMDs in Sodom.

Which does bring up another side trail... the whole, mankind is doing well, God is displeased, mankind is immoral, God is displeased. What the heck does this guy want?!
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Bronzeage said:
Given the structural properties of mud brick, there is a practical height limit to any such structure. The ration of the width of the base to the height must remain constant, or the weight of the tower will produce a lateral force on the lower layers and collapse. This means the base must increase with the cube of the height, to prevent structural failure. That's a lot of mud brick.

If there is any factual basis to the story of the Tower of Babel, it maybe that Nimrod and his contractor discovered this problem, the hard way.
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I think the point was that these people were using brick and mortar which could help build larger structures (which was impressive relatively speaking) in lieu of the local crap they were building using bitumen.

Granted, building a tower and getting to the heavens to make a name for themselves... that was a legit threat. Just like later on when God warned the "us" he is with about WMDs in Sodom.

Which does bring up another side trail... the whole, mankind is doing well, God is displeased, mankind is immoral, God is displeased. What the heck does this guy want?!
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It all makes a good story, but the arithmetic tells the truth. The early Egyptians discovered the problem of the base to height ratio when they tried to make a tall pointy pyramid. The foundation stones cracked and it became unstable. The later pyramids are impressively tall, but no one thought they rose anywhere close to heaven.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
...............
Which does bring up another side trail... the whole, mankind is doing well, God is displeased, mankind is immoral, God is displeased. What the heck does this guy want?!
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He likes the smell of burning goat flesh so wants us to spend our time raising goats and burning them for him. Our wasting time building cities and having fun just pisses him off because we should be busy raising goats for him instead.
 
skepticalbip said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
...............
Which does bring up another side trail... the whole, mankind is doing well, God is displeased, mankind is immoral, God is displeased. What the heck does this guy want?!
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He likes the smell of burning goat flesh so wants us to spend our time raising goats and burning them for him. Our wasting time building cities and having fun just pisses him off because we should be busy raising goats for him instead.
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I want to raise goats and burn them for food...but it is just way too hard to find land that I can afford...
 
The story of Babel is hilarious. It's about a God that thinks that kids who have the engineering skills of.. Babylonians.. will be able to do anything they set their minds to. Ohh no, they will make me obsolete, and then they won't care about me anymore!
 
Well, we build a tower of mud and then, only a few short millennia later, we're walking on the moon. The frigging moon. You remember the moon - it's that thing that God was supposed to make as a great light source but then just got lazy and had it reflect light from that other thing he put up there.

As soon as we started, God realized we would very shortly figure out how much of the design of the universe he just plain phoned in. There's a reason that quantum physics doesn't make sense and that's because God just said "blah blah blah and then you have atoms". He didn't want us poking around under the hood anymore than a Ford salesman did when someone came in to buy a Pinto. As soon as we started building that mud tower, he was just like "Shit. I don't like where this is going."
 
Confusing our tongues didn't help much in that regard, did it?
 
thentian said:
Confusing our tongues didn't help much in that regard, did it?
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He'd probably have done better by keeping the language the same but the definitions different.

Imagine a construction company whose employees have fifteen different lengths for a 'foot' ranging from six inches to half a meter.
"I DID build a 10 foot ladder!"
"Then why doesn't it reach the top of the six foot wall!?!?"
We'd never had made it out of the bronze age....
 
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