dap1@ihlpf.UUCP (05/30/83)
#N:ihlpf:22600010: 0:3208
ihlpf!dap1 May 29 18:43:00 1983
>From "The Humanist" Magazine
By Robert Yoakum
Let's listen in on a world history class in a school where the Bible, taken
literally, serves as the text:
"Why?"
"Why what, Jimmy?"
"Why did God drown everybody except Noah and his family?"
"Because, as the Bible says, God saw that the wickedness of man was great on
the earth, and it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth."
"Why? I mean, making man was God's idea, wasn't it? How come He couldn't
do it right?"
"Uh, do you want to answer that question, Ann?"
"Well, I was sort of wondering the same thing, Miss Christianson. Why did
God have to drown everybody, even the old people and tiny babies? Were the
babies evil?"
"My but we have a lot of 'whys' today! Uh... Yes, what is it, Sara?"
"What about dogs and cats? Did God drown them, too?"
"I'm afraid so. The Bible says the Lord destroyed both man and beast, and
the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air."
"Why? Were they evil?"
"Apparently. The Bible says that God told Noah, 'The end of all flesh is
come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them.' God
didn't like all that violence."
"But gee whiz, animals have to eat each other to stay alive! It isn't their
fault. That's the way God made them."
"Some of God's ways are mysterious, children. Now then, let's go on to-"
"What about the fish?"
"What's that, Johnny?"
"What about the fish? You can't drown a fish."
"I guess God spared the fish."
"Why?"
"I don't know why. Now let's-"
"How old was Noah when God made the flood?"
"The Bible says Noah was six hundred years old, Jack."
"Isn't that awful old? I mean, it must have taken a six-hundred-year-old man
a long time to build a whole ark."
"I assmue that Noah's sons helped him."
"But then who got two of all the animals and bugs and creepy things together?
I read in a magazine there are more than a million different kinds of animals.
I'll betcha it would take three guys a hundred years to round up a million
animals by twos. Sometimes it takes me a couple of hours just to find my dog
or catch the cat."
"Look, children, I think this discussion is getting everybody confused. I'd
like to go on to another-"
"First can I ask a question?"
"Yes, Jeanne. What is it?"
"Did Noah take two yucky things like flies and mosquitos and toads and worms
and spiders?"
"Yes, Jeanne, He did."
"But wouldn't the toads and spiders eat the flies and the birds eat the worms?
Anyway, why would God want to keep flies? They make diseases."
"All right. Now that's enough. We've got to-"
"What happened to the water?"
"What water?"
"The flood water. Where did it go after everybody was drownded? Did God
flush it or what? And if they were all in the ark for almost a year, like you
said, what would there be to eat when they got out? And why did-"
"WHY! WHY! WHY! That's all I've heard today! I'm tired of questions beginning
with WHY."
"But yesterday you said that the Lord said unto Cain, 'Why art thou wroth?
And why is thy countenance fallen?' Why can the Lord ask 'why' and we can't
ask 'why'?"
"Children, I have a slight headache so I'm going to dismiss class early today.
God bless you."
"God bless you, Miss Christianson."
END OF QUOTElevy@princeto.UUCP (06/06/83)
I was a bit taken aback by Yoakum's article. It seems to me it resorts to
ridicule a bit unfairly, and where there is no need to.
Unfairly, because to the best of my knowledge there are no schools where
the Bible is taken as a textbook on *world history*. Yes, the biblical
accounts are deemed by many people (including me, but I will qualify this
statement later) to be historical, but this does not make it a textbook on
history. In fact, I think pretty much all Christians would agree that the
Bible primarily addresses spiritual questions, and has no claim to being
a treatise on history (or geography, or physical science, or whatever).
It is also unfair to put a child in the role of the questioner. Try
explaining elementary astronomical facts to a child:
"Why?"
"Why what, Jimmy?"
"Why is the moon always smiling?"
"It is not really smiling, Jimmy. These are just mountains and seas on the
surface of the moon."
"How come thy look so small? The hill behind our classroom is bigger than
the whole moon, so there should be moons on the mountain and not mountains
on the moon..."
"Well, that's because the moon is so far away. In fact the moon is very,
very big and lies many miles above the earth."
"If it's above the earth how come it doesn't fall on us?"
"Because... Well, it's falling all right, but it never hits the ground."
"Can I try jumping from the window to see if I hit the ground?"
"Don't be silly, of course you'll hit the ground."
"So why doesn't the moon? You said it's bigger and heavier than me..."
"Well, there is a reason. It's just too hard for you to understand."
"Can I swim on the moon?"
"Swim?!"
"You said the smiling face is really mountains and seas..."
"Oh, they aren't really seas, they are just called so. They're dry."
"I've never seen a dry sea!..."
And so on. You take my meaning.
This of course brings me to the second point: You *could* explain gravitation
to a (reasonably intelligent) adult (if you're satisfied with a rough
approximation of *how* it works, and give no thought to the question of
*why* it works so -- this question being obviously unanswerable, like some
of Jimmy's whys -- but you cannot explain the biblical account of the flood
in physical terms (in spite of the creationists' attempt to do so). So
indeed it is a hard question. So what? Does this invalidate the claim that
things happened as narrated in the Bible? Once you admit the existence of
a God with certain characteristics (e.g. omnipotence), why not believe also
that he flooded the earth? Surely if God can create the universe he can
disturb the cosmic balance ever so slightly and flood this speckle of dust
which we call our world, thereby drowning the even more insignificant speckles
animated with life which abound on its surface. Equally easy is to say that
he saved two exemplars of each living species (N.B. nothing is said about
Noah having to gather them from far and wide; God could also take care of
that).
So this more or less explains why I think it is unnecessary to use irony or
ridicule in pointing out the difficulties with the story of the flood. They
are obvious. If you do not believe in God in the first place (and you have
a right not to, known as free choice), then you won't believe in the flood.
If you do believe in something like the Christian God, there is nothing
impossible about it.
Now for a brief clarification of my own position. The Bible says that
the rainbow is the sign of an agreement God made with Noah that he would
not send another flood. Now we know better, don't we? We know the rainbow
is caused by light refraction, different coefficients for different wavelengths,
what have you. Does that invalidate the biblical claim? Again, no. It can
still be a sign of a divine covenant. In the same way I believe the whole
biblical story of the creation, the flood, etc. to be essentially true, though
nothing prevents us from trying to find out the underlying physical processes
that are "summarized" in those stories. In particular, I maintain that with
due attention to the use of *limited* metaphor in the Bible (e.g. not taking
"days" in Gen 1 literally; cf. the verse, which I quote from memory, that
says that a day is to God like a thousand years, and conversely. The lesson
is that God's time reckoning is not the same as ours, which is not surprising),
there is *no conflict* between the biblical account of creation and the theory
of evolution as can be substantiated by facts; of course, the idea that all
evolution is the product of chance and hence there can be no mind behind it
is *not* provable in any reasonable sense of the word, and hence not scientifi
in spite of Carl Sagan's proud boasts to the contrary. So the lesson I draw
from Gen 1 is that God is omnipotent; he created the world according to his
will; he did it in an orderly manner, and with a plan. I can't see how you
can possibly refute this without unscientifical assumptions. As for bona
fide efforts to detail the history of this creation, I'm all for them. Long
live Darwin!...
I'd appreciate any form of response to this letter.
Silvio Levy
puccvax!eecs!levy