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It's a pattern as old as the technology and civilization dependent on it: 1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came t
by high_5 6y ago
It's a pattern as old as the technology and civilization dependent on it:
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
— Genesis 11:1–9[6]
Replace the brick for silicon and slime for oil and here we are, dwelling up high in the sky, each in our own filter bubble, unable to discuss the important issues that build society, but managing to unravel it every time we try to fix it with more technological solutions.
- fartcannon 6y agoIs the lord here just a dick? Why would he do that?
- rangibaby 6y ago“God does something just because he can” is a running theme throughout the Old Testament.
- WJW 6y ago“Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?” — Sister Miriam Godwinson, “But for the Grace of God”
- danharaj 6y agoWhy do monsoons knock down trees? God shouldn't be thought of like a very powerful human.
- theamk 6y agoMonsoons knock down the trees because they have no choice. Lacking any intelligence, they have to follow warm air and pressure differentials. Is this how you see your god?
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoUnderstanding god is hard unless you use your emotional intelligence instead of logical intelligence, because that's what the concept of god is used for. To guide humans in their emotional life, not in their logical pursuits. In your example, if that happened to you (monsoon knocked down trees, your houses and a couple of your children) - then you would for sure have an emotional reaction, and those emotional reactions would absolutely not see monsoons as "pressure differentials with no choice". (Well unless you block all your emotions, which many people do of course.). You would need to figure out an emotional reaction to that situation. That might be anger/grief unto the monsoon (as an extension of god), or if you processed it and grew spiritually from it, you might see it as god (through monsoons) trying to teach you something, and then everything there in between. However, you would still not in any of those cases see monsoon as pressure differentials. At the very least your emotional intelligence wouldn't. (Then there is a question of whether you listen to it or try to block everything and live like a robot, which some people opt to do, but that only works for a while.) But until life makes you actually interact with those situations, then it's easy to ignore the emotional reality and see the world (or any part of it like a monsoon) as dead mechanical force with no consciousness.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago> Understanding god is hard unless you use your emotional intelligence instead of logical intelligence, because that's what the concept of god is used for. To guide humans in their emotional life, not in their logical pursuits. IME the Christian god serves more as a means to an end for controlling and/or dilluted rulers. Being an abusive, often absent, manipulative, and bigoted father that god is unlikely to help anyone emotionally.
- RodgerTheGreat 6y agoThe point of the story is that the humans should know their place. Aspiring to accomplish great things through cooperation, rather than prayer to god, is presented as hubris. Compare to the older stories of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods, made mankind less dependent upon the gods, and was thus consigned to eternal torture. Tyrants hate collectivism more than anything.
- Nasrudith 6y agoReminds me of the implied echo in Greek Mythology. The Titans created the Gods. They tyranized them out of fear and were later near entirety overthrown except for the collaborators or most merciful among them. The Titans shaped man and the Gods breathed life into Man. The Gods tyranized man out of fear of them.... Accidental or not the implications long term are of a cycle of overthrow and self fulfilling prophecy.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoI highly recommend watching Jordan Peterson's lectures on youtube called "Biblical Series". They (attempt to) explain this and similar questions from Christianity to people who are typically smart and approach the world intellectually, who will usually have trouble with these concepts and the meaning of the stories. Regardless of "belief" in Christinity, it is clear to me at least that any such simplistic interpretation as "god was just a dick", is at the very least, missing the point of the stories. There is a much more deep and logical meaning in many of those stories, which becomes very obvious when you get presented to it, and that's before you even start tapping into the spiritual/existential/metaphysical content of the stories. It makes much more sense even as simple life wisdom. To present an overly simplified answer, I will say that typically (and this is a typical occurrence in the stories, where god does something painful or creates an obstruction), when something like that happens, the phrase "god did it", does not refer so much to the fact that christinaity tries to make up this god character and give him some lines to make him look a certain way, in order to tell some message. Instead, "god did it this way" refers to god being everything, the universe, including the human societies: god is not something above human world as a guy in the sky (in fact bible never presents that image, it's more something from monty python), god is the personfification of the world and everything that happens in it. And what happens in it is that sometimes people feel pain, do stupid things, sometimes tragical (appearing so) events happen. That's just the fact of life. Christianity does not triumphantly claim that "god did it" as any form of justification, it simply describes that since those thing do obviously happen, that means the universe, the world, the society - the god (all those things combined) make those things happen. And then the rest of the story is presented in such a way as to understand how humans can act in relationship to those underelying realities. How they can respond to and understand what is happening in the world.
- lowdose 6y agoThan you really have to stretch the principle of charity beyond what it reasonable. Just read the first of the ten commandments and there is a very jealous undertone about other gods. "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me." From this statement it is very clear to me who God is and that is not the Universe, society nor the father of time.
- lookdangerous 6y agoI read this story as a patterned warning against what happens when Humanity becomes too rallied around one particular creative act, so in agreement that they lose sight of the rest of reality and bring about their own downfall. This happens often imo.