More ranting about the bible..
Okay. It’s been a long time (Reletively) since I’ve been whining about religion and my lack of ability to fit smoothly into the one I was given by my parents. So I thought I could get away with doing a little more of it. Again, I’m going to pick on Genesis.
Okay, so God creates Adam and Eve. Then he tells them not to eat the apple. How is it that God shares a language with Adam and Eve?. They’re freshly created – and as anyone who has dealt with human children knows, humans have to learn language, it doesn’t come programmed into us from the factory – and yet, they share a language with God and with each other. Seems to me a whole lot of stuff got left out of the story there. For that matter, exactly what language does Ze L-oh-rrr-dee speak? We know it’s not english, it’s probably not aramiac – it would be pushing credibility rather far to think that the supreme being in charge of everything happens to speak english when only a third of Earth does. Chances are it’s not a human language at all, is my thinking on the matter.
And yet, in the sermon on Genesis, when they’re talking about the wickedness of the humans who ate of the apple.. how dare they disobey God’s commands – like we’re not all *designed* to disobey authority (by all indications) – no one ever mentions the ludocracy of the language barrier. What, did God flash-load a entire language into Adam and Eve so he could talk to them? If so, how did he pick which language to load, and does he do this regularly?
I’m not saying there isn’t a God, or possibly several. I’m convinced that there is. I’m just pretty convinced that there isn’t much human literature on divinity that is anything other than pure guesswork and stories. But, hey, I could be wrong..
(p.s. it still annoys me.. Jesus wasn’t named Jesus! Stupid western culture can’t even get anyone’s bloody name right.)
July 14th, 2006 at 5:43 am
Adam and Eve were not created as children, so why could they not have been programmed with a language; babies “from the factory” don’t walk or eat apples either. As for God and languages, language would seem to me a much easier thing to create than universes, animals or people. God is able to speak to all of us in our own language.
But, having said all that, yes, I think you may be right–it may not have been a human language at all, certainly not one currently in use.
Question for you: Why start with Genesis? Why not start with James? or Habakkuk?
Another Question: Why do we call foreign countries and cities by English names? And what do those in foreign countries call us?
July 14th, 2006 at 10:43 am
god doesn’t need a language. if he wants us to know something, we’ll know it. he just doesn’t, the coy bastard.
and i think it’s pretty clear that the adam and eve myth is just that: a myth. we descended from the primates. we are primates.
the core mistake made by all religions is assuming that homo sapiens is somehow the most important species in the universe, that all the billions of stars, planets, insects, parsecs of empty space, and bad sitcoms, are all created for OUR benefit.
maybe god is a mosquito, and we were created to provide his children with handy meals. maybe god really loves hydrogen atoms, and life->intelligence is just a fluke.
we are inherently egocentric; that’s the nature of life. but what reason do we have to suppose that god feels the same way about us? a bunch of clever, smelly monkeys running around babbling incessantly and killing each other–is this the end all be all of existence?
July 14th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
The historic assumption has been that Adam and Eve spoke the language of Heaven and the angels, and so did all humans until the Tower of Babel, at which point God scrambled everyone so that not one person spoke the same language as another person, and let things run from there.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
the thing with religion, is that YUR NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK SUCH LOGICAL QUESTIONS!!! haha! ;P Blind faith man. BLIND.