Noah is kind of a douche

Genesis spends several chapters talking about the heroic work of Noah with his whole ark-building business, collecting and housing every animal on the planet for several months while God washed the entire world away, then repopulating the earth full of humans with just him, his wife, and his sons and their wives. Sure there are innumerable logistical problems with this story – actually finding and keeping every species of animal in one place for that long, repopulating the earth with such a small gene pool (which means he had to get it on with his son's hot wives, go Noah), no fossil record of a true global-wide flood (though much evidence does exist of catastrophic floods in many parts of the world), etc. Nonetheless, the Bible spends a good amount of precious scripture telling us the noble tale of how Noah was single-handedly responsible for continuing life on earth.

However, ironically in the final chapter of Noah's bold life, he gets drunk on wine from grapes that he grew and passes out naked on the floor of his tent. And when his sons find him there, they are kind enough to cover him with a sheet, all the while keeping their back to him to respect their father and not gawk as his old wrinkly naked drunk ass on the floor. And what does he do in return? Gets pissed and curses his grandchild Canaan to be a slave to his sons for the rest of this life. Thanks Grandpa, I was in the yard shooting marbles during your happy hour and now I'm a slave to my dad and uncles forever.

And apparently nothing else worthy of mention happens in Noah's life for the next THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS until he finally dies.

Not quite sure why this last story was so important that Moses and his scribes included it in the holy scripture, and it was copied down meticulously hundreds of times by the highest of Hebrew scholars for 2000 years, so that we could read about Noah saving the world, then being a drunk old fart.

Still searching...

First I’d like to say that my lack of posts recently has been a bit of a downer to me, and I apologize to any who have been frequenting my site and reading my humble insights only to find the same posts staring at you for weeks on end. My newly forming art career has taken much of my time and mindshare, and it’s been hard to find the time and concentration to post regularly. That doesn’t imply however that my search is over, or there aren’t a thousand ideas in my head all day long about God and the universe. Just the opposite in fact. Anyway, rather than trying to put together perfectly organized, well-researched, and very time-consuming posts, I’ve decided to make it more of a stream of consciousness, a place for me to simply share my thoughts and feelings. And anyone wants to present some research to either back up or refute my thoughts, then please do.

I’ve lately been spending a lot of my driving time to and from work listening to podcasts or videos on the internets, thanks to the wonders of the iPhone 4. It’s an endless sea of arguments, discussions, debates, and seminars for and against Christianity, or any religion for that matter. And it’s great for stirring up fodder for some new blog posts. And saves time on my “research” for certain facts when talking about a topic. Hopefully this will allow me to post much faster, since I might be able to recall ideas or evidence from memory, rather than constantly researching while I’m writing. I also might take the liberty to spontaneously share an idea I’ve had, with no argument being made, something that I am sometimes hesitant to do.

Anyway, thank you for all for reading, and I hope to share more thoughts and insights more often.

Using the Bible to prove itself

I’d like to address an argument that I hear often about the credibility of the bible. Many people assert that the bible’s credibility about so many events (such as fulfilled prophesies, the life/death/resurrection of Jesus, etc) is non substantial because there exist few extra-biblical sources of these alleged supernatural events. Not to say that the historical events in the bible didn’t happen, i.e. the Jewish exile from Jerusalem. But to use the prophesies made in the bible to prove events recorded later in the same work is considered by many a circular argument. In other words, using the bible to prove itself is a weak argument.

However I would like to present this idea. The bible itself is not one book, but a collection of 66 different books, written by 44 different authors, over a period of 1500-2000 years. It is a compilation of volumes assembled into one book over a period of time, first the Old Testament as the standard Jewish bible before the birth of Jesus, and later the New Testament about 400 years later due to the efforts of the Roman emperor Constantine, the council of Nicaea, etc. I believe if one book asserts a certain bit of information, and a different book written by a different author in a different time period verifies that information, that is a valid comparison.

That would be like people claiming the same facts in different issues of Time Magazine, written by different authors decades apart, are not substantial because they both appeared in Time Magazine. Assembling the books into a compilation doesn’t discredit the information one bit.

And if you’re wondering about the variations of the text that could have taken place over time (mistranslations, deliberate editing, the game of telephone that changes as the story is re-told a thousand times), after studying much about the ancient Jewish culture, it seems this is considerably unlikely or virtually non-existent. The ancient Hebrews took their culture very seriously – and very meticulously. Before the texts were actually written down and were passed on by word of mouth, it was frowned upon to alter the core of the story in any way. Slight details and nuances were acceptable to change, depending on the characteristics of the storyteller, but the core work was always intentionally kept intact. And they had their entire population telling the same stories, so any variations would have been noted and corrected simply by the vast amounts of people who already knew the correct story.

And once the text was finally written down in the original Hebrew or Aramaic (Old testament) or original Greek (New testament), only the most educated scribes were tasked with meticulously transcribing every character. And the review process was exhaustive, so that there was a near 100% accuracy of each new text. Even if one character was found to be erroneous, the entire text was thrown out and destroyed. Not to mention that every time the endless oceans of Middle Eastern sand cough up an older version of any part of the bible, the accuracy compared to the previously older versions is near 100%.

So with all that, I think that it is a valid argument to use different books of the bible, written by different authors at different time periods, to prove facts or assertions also found within the bible.