Ark, Ark, Ark

I have just read about Ken Ham’s Ark, constructed in Kentucky following Biblical standards, and am totally, jaw-dropping flabbergasted, amazed and bewildered.  In a time when information is so readily available how can people possibly spend so many resources pursuing such fictions?  But, I am getting ahead of myself, so I shall back up.

Do you believe in and worship a God?  What are the attributes of your God?

If you believe in the Judeo-Christian God, the God of the Old and New Testament, then I suppose there is a chance that you still believe the story of Noah’s Ark.  That chance could only be based on a lack of information and reflection.  To build a vessel in the Bronze Age capable of housing two of every kind of animal on the planet is a preposterous and impossible task.  There are 7.7 million types of animals on our planet, and science guesses we have identified about one-half of all the life forms here.  If we eliminate all the animals that live in water and all the bugs, then we are down to a mere 2 million animals.  The very most conservative estimates the types of animals and birds is 60,000.  There is no way to build a wooden vessel capable of housing, much less feeding two pair of that many life forms.  Ken Ham claims he built it to house 1,300 pairs of life forms.  Well, OK, but that is a drop in the 2 million life forms bucket.  If it were true that Noah took 1,300 pairs of life forms into a closed environment we now know two things Noah didn’t know.  First, the only way it could possibly be true is to argue for evolution postulating that somehow those 2600 creatures evolved rapidly into the 2 million we know today.  Sadly, Ark believers “believe” the scientific fact of evolution is false, so that cannot explain it.  On the other hand, if it were true and these became the only existent creatures on the planet, then having a gene pool of two specimens damns the life form to become extinct very shortly, not to mention the incest that would have to occur for reproduction.  Noah’s Ark is a fiction.  A fiction that depends on ignoring the knowledge we have accumulated in the past 4,000 years. 

But what is most amazing to me is that the point of the entire Noah story is lost on Ham.  The story is about the wrath of God.  God got so mad at humans that he drowned every single living thing.  Millions of people.  All kinds of animals.  It was genocide and extinction across a life-form spectrum we cannot imagine.  It was a temper-tantrum of universal proportions.  But because the ancient writers could not yet fathom evolution, there had to be a way to tell the story of a mean, wrathful God willing to wipe everything out and start over while explaining the diversity of life even those writers observed.  Hence the Ark.  Hence Noah.  Hence the sideline story of how God in his wrath saved himself the trouble of re-creating all the animals he had already created.  The problem, of course, for humans today is that we know the fiction is impossible, and if true, reveals an attribute of a God more worthy of prosecution than worship unless the worship is based on fear.

And the great flood was not a stand-alone event.  We have Sodom and Gomorrah, entire cities destroyed because they did not follow the rules as prescribed 3,000 years before Jesus.  Once again, a wrathful, mean God shows his true colors.  We have the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden, not only punishment for Adam and Eve for disobeying this wrathful, mean God, but the punishment continues to this day.  Would a loving and forgiving God carry a grudge for what would have to be hundreds of thousands of years?   

The God of the Old Testament is not a God I could worship.  He demands unchallenged control of human life and is willing to execute any number of people if we do not comply.  And the rules he set up to follow are absurd:  stoning to death of humans who are not virgins on their wedding night, children who disobey parents, prostitutes, homosexuals – in fact, anyone who does not toe the line.  If those are attributes you are willing to worship, then I lament the fact that your faith is founded on such a negative supernatural being.  Superman becomes a better role model than God.

Some say that the New Testament in many ways replaces all the rules of the Old Testament via the sacrifice of Jesus.  OK.  The basic premise haunts me.  Prior to Jesus animals were sacrificed to God.  In the New Testament, not only is there human sacrifice, the human to be sacrificed is God’s son.  Really?  In terms of moral behavior has God moved to higher ground in the New Testament moving from animal sacrifice to human sacrifice?

Worse in my mind is the implication that the God of the New Testament is not very bright.  Here is a God that created everything.  He did it in 6 days.  He mapped out all those life forms he later saved on the Ark.  He was brilliant.  He was omnipotent.  But he gets really stupid in the New Testament because he cannot figure out a way to forgive humans for their sins except by the torturous death of his only son.  Amazing.  He would have a better image had we stuck with animal sacrifice.  Is the sacrifice of our children a behavior we should emulate?  Should I love my neighbor so much I am willing to kill my son?  Such a godly requirement is not one I can follow.  Why didn’t he send Jesus to perform miracles and simply announce that the punishments administered to Adam and Eve are now over for anyone who worships God?  I suspect the number of believers would be huge if believers did not have to toil and there was no pain in child birth for those who believe.  Why didn’t he simply allow Jesus to live forever on earth preaching love and forgiveness?  Why all this continued death and destruction in the name of sacrifice, anger and jealousy?  Worse, these deeds do not align with the words:  Love thy neighbor, unless of course, he does not do what God told him to do.  Even God approves a death penalty for those who disobey him, and the ultimate death penalty is an eternity in hell.

So, if you are of the Judeo-Christian heritage you worship a God who is wrathful, angry, willing to kill humans and entire species if we do not behave.  You worship a God that could not see a way around sacrificing his own son to implement forgiveness.  You worship a God who holds a grudge for a very long time.  You worship a God whose basic tenets in many cases go against the scientific rules of reality; rules that he theoretically created and implemented.  You worship a God who says one thing and does another.  You worship a God that supports slavery and no rights for women.  You appear to worship an all-powerful, supernatural being who has consistently demonstrated all the behaviors we abhor most in our fellow man. 

Or, it is all just a great story, a marvelous fiction written to promote certain beliefs and behaviors.  In that case the Ark is no more real than Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox, Tinker Bell and Never-Never Land, or even Oz.  In fact, if you heard that someone worshipped Tinker Bell and spent millions of dollars in the lab to create fairy dust so that we could all fly and never grow up, I suspect you would be totally, jaw-dropping flabbergasted, amazed and bewildered. 

And even though it is so sad, you would laugh, and your laughter would sound like, “Ark, ark, ark.” 

Bible Dilemma

I suppose the very first question should be, “Do you believe that the Bible is the holy word of the Lord, written and/or inspired by God and should be taken literally, verbatim, just as we have it today?”  Or, “Do you believe the Bible is a guide, subject to interpretation and that you (or other humans) have the authority to decide which verses are real and you will believe those verses, and which verses are not real today and we are not obligated to believe them?”  The first group that views the Bible as the literal, infallible word of God, I shall refer to as Type A Christians.  The second group who revere the Bible but do not take it literally I shall refer to as Type B Christians.  From where I sit, both groups have an intellectual dilemma that cannot be resolved.

Type A’s must believe everything in the Bible.  They must believe the earth is flat.  They must believe the sun orbits the earth.  They must believe the earth is about 6,000 years old.  They must believe it is better to offer your virgin daughters to a group of men than allow those men to have sex with other men.  They must believe that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night she should be stoned to death.  They must believe prostitutes should be stoned to death.  They must believe homosexuals should be stoned to death.  They must believe that God created everything and evolution is a theory that cannot be proven.  And they must believe that Jesus believes all these things as well because Jesus said he did.

The intellectual dilemma for the Type A’s is that we know so much more about the universe than the authors of the Bible knew.  We know for a fact that the earth is not flat.  We know for a fact that the sun does not orbit the earth.  We consider it a crime to promote your children to have sex with men, stone women for not being virgins, stone homosexuals, and stone prostitutes.  We know for a fact that evolution is not a theory in the common use of the word, it is a scientific fact that has been confirmed over and over again.  In fact, there is no evidence that contradicts evolution and every new piece of data we get confirms it even more.  If there was evidence contrary to evolutions then scientists would be the first to say that this theory does not work because we found an exception.  Whether the Type A’s believe God dictated the Bible, or God whispered in the ear of those men who could write in that age, their dilemma is, much of the Bible is false.  (If God inspired the Bible, I wonder why He did not throw in some anti-slavery, pro-human rights verses.  Did He know it was coming?)  The Bible in many cases is confirmed by scientific fact to be false.  Type A’s now have a problem with clinging to the word of God if we prove God wrong.  Can we believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful God when we know he was wrong? 

Type B’s are much more laid back and much less bull-headed about the Bible.  They see the Bible as a holy work, but believe it must be adapted to the times.  Verses that advocate stoning, advocate treating women as second class citizens, support slavery, condemn homosexuality, etc., etc. must just be ignored.  Those were the rules in the Bronze Age and they no longer apply.  We choose not to follow those passages that conflict with our current social beliefs.  OK.  Type B’s are much more open and comforting and tolerant.

But the intellectual dilemma for Type B’s is that someone gets to just say, “I do not believe this verse to be true today,” and act as though it is irrelevant.  They have made the Bible as false as the Type A’s.  God must be wrong, so we have updated Him.  Even harder to resolve is the question if any passage can be declared inappropriate and inaccurate, who is to say that the virgin birth and the resurrection cannot be declared the same?  Are they not in the same book from which we have chosen only the verses that comply with our thinking?  If we can do that, then this becomes our book and not God’s book, and we declare, once again, that God must be wrong and this book cannot be holy, or at least not worth reading until we have corrected some things.

Perhaps there is a Type C, but I cannot fathom what that belief system might be.  If you believe it all you are wrong and so is God.  If you get to cherry pick which verses you want then it is not a holy book, you could simply ignore anything you wanted to because we have given permission to do so, and the book becomes superficial.

So, where does all that leave us?

If the Bible and our common history of Jesus disappeared, would we re-discover God as we have discovered evolution, gravity, human rights, the order of our solar system, the history of our solar system, our planet and our universe, etc.?  If we forgot all we knew, would we re-discover what we currently know based on science and math?  Yes.  But I suspect we could not and would not discover God.  We would not be as wowed today with burning bushes, parting of seas, water into wine, etc.  We would look for the causes and explanations of such phenomenon and would not make the de facto assumption that they were magical events.  In fact, we would probably look to the authors who described such things as the culprits thereby rendering one more piece of evidence that the Bible cannot be true when we know authors made stuff up.  The question should be, “What factual evidence do we have to support the stories and claims made in the Bible?”  If any are shown to be false, are they all false?  If any are shown to be false should we base an international belief system on this book?  And sadly, it will be up to the Christians to prove it happened not the non-believers to prove it did not happen.  Believing it is true is not the same as knowing and showing it to be true.

Therein is the Bible dilemma.

My God Moment

I was in the 7^th grade, sitting in the Astrodome with my friends and peers from church.  We traveled there to hear Billy Graham.  The Dome was full of the faithful, the curious, the saved and the sinners.  I could smell popcorn and beer though the concessions stands were closed and the confession stands were open. There were many musical performances prior to the main event, warming up the crowd.  Graham finally emerged and the crowd went wild.  I was curious.  As he spoke in his distinct drawl about God loving even me, forgiving even me, I felt a warmth I had not felt before.  It was a glow, a sense of being worthwhile.  I knew I was a sinner.  My sins were easy for me to list and worry about.  I did not know it at the time, but I was depressed.  I felt worthless.  I felt unloved.  I felt incomplete.  All my teenage urges were overpowering and “sinful.”  The message that there was a supreme, supernatural being that loved me anyway was incredibly powerful.  I was so ready to hear such a sermon.  I was so needy of love. 

When Billy asked those who felt the spirit moving to stand, I stood.  Tears rolled down my cheeks.  He asked us to make our way from wherever we were sitting to the floor of the Dome.  I left my group, wandered down ramps and emerged on the Astroturf with hundreds of other people.  Many were crying.  Many were smiling and laughing.  A man met me as I stepped on the turf.  He asked me what was going on and I told him I felt the spirit of the Lord, I wanted to let Jesus take my life.  He got my name, address and phone number, and I was dismissed.  I was now on the roster of converts.  I was now on the mailing list.

While others at the microphone continued to urge folks to let Jesus in and come on down, while gospel music blared, I wandered upstream back to my seat.  My peers looked at me either as though I had lost my mind or with a warm smile of approval.  Adult church sponsors came to sit by me and praise my new commitment, my conversion, and my born-againness. 

Life quickly returned to normal.  There was school, church, girlfriends, sports and I detected nothing different.  I prayed fervently.  Nothing happened.  I asked for things but did not get them.  I asked to be relieved of things that remained with me.  I began to feel more and more like the fool.  I kept all this buried deep within.  For the religiously fervent in the church I was now a real member, an insider.  For everyone else I was still just Bob.

So, after my 7^th grade God Moment in the Houston Astrodome at the feet of Billy Graham I have wondered if I am now officially “saved,” once and for always no matter what I do.  That makes no sense to me.  My prayers remained un-answered and un-recognized.  My depression lingers.  I may have been touched by God, but what I really wanted was a life-long embrace.  I remain un-hugged by the supernatural.  The God Moment came and went and life went on as usual. 

It must be my fault.  I hear God does not make mistakes.