I was listening to a recent speech that Matt Dillahunty gave in Australia (listen here if you’re interested), and in part of it he brought up the story of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11. It’s a story I’ve thought about several times since leaving Christianity. I don’t recall everything Matt said about it, though I know I’ll be making some of the same points he did. I haven’t been a Christian for about 5 years now, and it’s sometimes hard to imagine that I ever believed stories like this one, though I definitely did. And a number of other conservative Christians do as well.
A few days ago, I asked my wife if she remembered what God was angry about in this story, and she gave the same reason that I thought: God was angry because people were being prideful. In case you’ve forgotten, the crux of the story is that several generations after the flood, mankind was growing numerous, and they all had one common language. They decided to build a tower that would reach Heaven (see how prideful?), so God put a stop to it by confusing their language. This caused the various groups to split up, each person going along with whomever could understand him or her.
However, after looking at the details a bit more, it turns out that my recollection was a bit off. First, the people weren’t actually being prideful at all. Instead of trying to build a tower to Heaven — God’s abode — they were just trying to build a tall one to make it easier to stay in one geographic area:
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
— Genesis 11:1-4
The phrase “in the heavens” is just talking about the sky, not the realm of God. For just a moment though, let’s pretend that they really had been trying to reach God with their tower. Why would that be such a bad thing? Doesn’t the Bible repeatedly tell us to seek after God? Furthermore, would they have succeeded? On September 12, 2013, Voyager 1 actually left our solar system. In all those miles, it didn’t bump into Heaven. No earth-based tower would ever run the risk of reaching God’s home. So not only were the people not attempting that, even if they had been it wouldn’t have succeeded, and it actually would have been flattering toward God.
So if God wasn’t angry at them for being prideful, why did he confuse their language and force them apart? The next few verses give us the answer:
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
— Genesis 11:5-9
Essentially, God was just being a jerk. He was like a kid stirring up an anthill. I mean, God forbid (literally) that people advance technologically, right? Wouldn’t want them discovering things like the germ theory of disease, after all. And why prevent wars by keeping people within the same culture? Much better, I guess, to create different cultures so mistrust and bigotry can form. Furthermore, if this was such a problem at the time, why hasn’t he stopped us again? We’ve figured out ways to overcome language and culture barriers now. We’ve done so much more than just “build a tall tower.” God’s motivation in this story simply makes no sense at all.
However, if you step back for a moment and stop trying to view this as literal history with an actual god, things become clearer. Imagine living thousands of years ago and trying to make sense of the world around you. You think the world is flat and that the sun revolves around it. You don’t understand the cause of thunder storms, earthquakes, or volcanoes. You can’t imagine how animals and humans got here without some kind of creator. And if there’s a creator, why didn’t he make life easier? Why does he allow disease and starvation? There are so many difficult questions that just have no answer. And so people began to formulate answers as best they could. It’s easy to see that one of those questions may have been “why didn’t God (the gods) give us all the same language?” And so they came up with an answer.
Looking at it from that perspective, it’s much easier to understand how a story like this came to be. These people were dealing with the world as they saw it — and to them, the only reason they could think of for God not wanting everyone to have the same language, is that they would accomplish too much. They had no idea that humanity would one day find a way around that problem, rendering their explanation invalid.
Speaking as someone who grew up believing that stories like this were actual history, I know how easy it is to just go along under that assumption without question, especially if those around us believe as we do. It’s not stupidity; it’s either isolation and ignorance, or it’s stubbornness. We can help the isolated and ignorant by just being available to discuss these things when they come up. And with the Bible, there are plenty of examples to be found.
Finding Truth 
Same here, arch. And I really don’t even know what “breach of contract” he’s talking about. It’s funny to me that he thinks he gets to make the rules here.
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“I’ve already made my points, Mike. And I can’t see that you’ve addressed any of them. ”
You are lying Nate . Its apparently what you do. Its you that have yet to show me upon repeated requests where technological advances are in the text you provided as proof
” Regardless, he wiped those people out and started over with Noah.”
You apparently as an alleged past sunday school teacher never did your homework. The flood did not wipe out humanities sin nature. The human heart is described as desperately wicked. Unless you think this was Noah and his sons men always tended toward evil and chiefly idolatery
You as usual have absolutely no support whatsoever to claim that the people were now all righteous or even that they would not have been engaging in idolatry
and yes you made a point as your hacking setup to claim the Bible did not include idolatry when it called men wicked in the text. its just a flop on your part all the way round
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:And this is how it goes with Mike. The less substantial his point, the louder he gets about everyone else being dishonest. It’s so ironic, :
LOL it really is Ironic you saying that Nate. You have been posting a lot for you recently (mostly to me) so I guess you get louder the more you can’t answer where the idea of knowledge is anywhere in your proof text that was supposed to show its there
these people are so much entertainment 🙂
“Same here, arch. And I really don’t even know what “breach of contract” he’s talking about. It’s funny to me that he thinks he gets to make the rules here.’
Delusional to the bitter end my man. I said nothing about making rules for anyone else but for myself. My terms.Sure you can ban me but you sure are going to have to moderate more than you have because I will decide if I wish to abide by it.
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Oh no! You mean I might have to add new email and IP addresses to the blacklist whenever you decide to irritate us? Or that I might have to *gasp* even delete some comments!?
:shudder:
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“You are lying Nate . Its apparently what you do. Its you that have yet to show me upon repeated requests where technological advances are in the text you provided as proof” – ABlacksmanagain
you know what else is apparent? That pagan worship is nowhere in the tower of babel story.
you know who else has yet to show proof of their claims regarding what’s in gen 11? ABlackamanagain, in regard to pagan worship.
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“LOL it really is Ironic” – ABlacksmanagain
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“You as usual have absolutely no support whatsoever to claim that the people were now all righteous or even that they would not have been engaging in idolatry” – ABlacksmanagain
there is even less support to claim that god confused the languages due to idolatry or pagan worship.
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Nate, are you really going to put up with someone calling you a liar?
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Anyone who is rude and insulting to such a kind, nice guy like Nate has to be one obnoxious prick.
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nan, mike is obviously a douche. Entirely visible to any passerby. it doesnt expose nate as a liar, it exposes mike as a dishonest and argumentative douche. it’s sad, but he’s driving the point home far better any opponent of his…
why get upset or be bothered by the criticisms of a guy like this?
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snippet seen again (see now if I thought I made the rules I would demand a good ignore feature here…snap to it! 🙂
“you know what else is dishonest? saying that pagan worship had anything to do with the tower of babel story when there is not a single thing in the entire text to validate that claim.”
the claim is supported by four points that I gave you earlier. Its a solid answer to nate’s no historical , biblical or textual context claim (but meh I conceded not the only easy rebuttal to Nate’s foolishness). As a rubber stamper I have no doubt you will wish to disregard the solid points based on those contexts . I mean what would be the point for this blog if you didn’t back each other’s totally illogical an unfounded claims against all things religious eh? IF not that there would be places with more than 6-7 people (seems recently) to post with than here.
But by the way where is Nate’s historical biblical or cultural context or what about the proof text he shot over that was supposed to support his claim that Babel was about stopping technological advances????? Where it at??
Could you get him to bold or cap the part that says that? lol….cause brotha it ain’t in there and watching a number of you jumping on that lying boat to defend him is like getting 5 of you down for lying at the price of one sinking.
its like what they say at Walmart – “prices are falling” 🙂
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he’s hoping to be banned. that way he can retreat, avoid answering the hard questions he knows he has no intelligent response to, while claiming the only reason he didnt “win” was because he was kicked out.
he’s even asking to be banned. literally. much like pagan worship is literally nowhere in genesis 11. literally. much like assuming a supernatural; origin literally does nothing to lend any credence to the bible. literally.
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Mike, you continue to harp on Nate’s reference to technological advances, claiming there is no historical, biblical, or cultural context to support this. Yet you do the same (example: the tower and pagan worship), but it’s all OK and true and honest when you do it. Interesting.
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Further, KC, in Mesopotamia, where the Tower of Babel fable is alleged to have taken place – assuming that “pagan” is defined as any religion other than Judaism – there would have been no religion other than that which is considered pagan. Judaism – more accurately described as “Yahwehism” – didn’t exist as such until the Jews united for a time with the Midianites in the southern Levant, when the god of the pre-Yahweh Jews was Amurru, and he was merged with the obscure desert storm god YHWH during the symbolic marriage of the literary character of Moses, with the literary character of Zipporah, daughter of the High Priest (Jethro, and three other names, depending on who is telling the story – one apologist tried convincing me that those weren’t contradictions, that Jethro actually had four names!) of that obscure little god, YHWH.
I found this interesting, from britannica.com [emphasis, mine]:
What? But Genesis tells us that Jacob and his boys were circumcised – in fact, they told young prince Shechem that he wouldn’t be allowed to marry Jake’s daughter, Diana, unless he and all of the men of his city were circumcised. I find that a bit contradictory.
But then in Exodus 6:3, the Bible’s god informs Moses, “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, but by my name, JEHOVAH was I not known to them.” Yet in Gen 22:14, Abe named the place where he intended to slit his son’s throat, “Jehovah-jireh” – “Yahweh will provide.” Clearly another contradiction, but let’s don’t get started on the myriad of contradictions in that inerrant book, or we’ll be here all week.
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Thanks Nan and Gary.
Honestly, it’s kind of like William said. I trust the readers of this blog (including any future ones) to see what’s really going on here. I’ve gotten a little nastier today than I typically do, and I don’t really like doing that… but I’m a man of limited patience.
In the end, I try to just focus on content and ignore the insults. I don’t feel like he’s said anything substantial about the Tower of Babel story, so there’s not much else for me to say, I guess! But if any of you feel like I need to address something he’s said, definitely let me know. Otherwise, I would just be reiterating the same points over and over, and he’s not going to shut up either way. So what’s the point? 🙂
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Nate, you really should just ban this guy. Maybe he’ll make it hard, but as you mentioned you can just go through and delete comments and do other things to make sure he’s not causing problems.
Anyone who is asked to leave a group and then threatens to not honor that simply because the group talks about him after he leaves should be banned just for that. If I were asked to leave a group, even if I was the most perfect person in the world and did no wrong, I would immediately leave knowing for sure that I would be talked about afterward. If I did otherwise it would feel like a major social faux pas to me.
The truth is I’ve really enjoyed reading his discussion with Dave, and I agree with Arch that he’s very intelligent, and many times I think he has good points, but it’s clear that his presence creates a certain social dynamic that I think some of your readers wouldn’t appreciate (yes, I’m included in that).
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ignoring points doesnt make them disappear. they;re still there whether you ignore them or not.
“the claim is supported by four points that I gave you earlier.” – ABlacksmanagain
your 4 points had nothing to do with gen 11. I responded to each of them. they were all severely lacking. I can copy and paste it again for you if you missed it.
“Its a solid answer to nate’s no historical , biblical or textual context claim (but meh I conceded not the only easy rebuttal to Nate’s foolishness). As a rubber stamper I have no doubt you will wish to disregard the solid points based on those contexts . I mean what would be the point for this blog if you didn’t back each other’s totally illogical an unfounded claims against all things religious eh? IF not that there would be places with more than 6-7 people (seems recently) to post with than here.” – ABlacksmanagain
one things is, the number of those who participate on a blog isnt good evidence for the blogs contents, only its popularity. it literally has nothing to do with the subject at hand, much like pagan worship has literally nothing to do with the tower of babel.
you know what else has no claim to the tower of babel? pagan worship.
“But by the way where is Nate’s historical biblical or cultural context or what about the proof text he shot over that was supposed to support his claim that Babel was about stopping technological advances????? Where it at??” – ABlacksmanagain
it’s interesting that you keep criticizing nate about a point you say has no footing in the tower of babel story, when you keep pushing for pagan worship, which has even less of a footing.
it’s also interesting that you bring history into this, when that history is counter to the tower of babel legend altogether.
“Could you get him to bold or cap the part that says that? lol….cause brotha it ain’t in there and watching a number of you jumping on that lying boat to defend him is like getting 5 of you down for lying at the price of one sinking.” – ABlacksmanagain
you know what else isnt there? yeah, pagan worship.
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Thanks Howie. That’s likely what’s going to happen. But like you said, his conversation with Dave has been relatively interesting and cordial. Plus, I feel like he’s actually illustrating how weak a conservative Christian view of this story is. So hopefully it will be useful to someone at some point.
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Also, does anyone else see this as referring to a concern over man’s technological prowess?
I see it that way, but am I alone in that? If so, what am I missing? I’d especially like to hear from Nan and Howie (and Dave, if he’s still reading)… and don’t spare my feelings or anything. If you don’t see it, please let me know. If I’m mistaken, I want to know it.
Thanks 🙂
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I think it would be helpful if ABlacksmanagain would actually take the next step with his conversation with dave, and show how he goes from a supernatural first cause to 1 god, then to that being the god of the bible.
that would interesting and helpful.
I cannot help but see the rest of this as smokescreen to keep from going to that logical next step, out of trepidation or fear of failing to have anything of substance.
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nate, when one reads that verse 6, right there in between verse 5 and verse 7, in context, yes, i can definitely see it.
but you know what’s definitely not there? pagan worship. neither for the people’s motivation to build the tower, nor for god’s to confuse their language.
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“Anyone who is rude and insulting to such a kind, nice guy like Nate has to be one obnoxious prick.”
anyone who is rude and insulting to nice people like Christians some of who I see come by here and get blasted are a small group of obnoxious pricks themselves (with BIIIIIIIG chips on their shoulder against religious people)
But serious question because I think it illustrates how bad you rubber stampers are for people like Nate. Do you realize that in the thread where Nate confesses that he stands in front of his church and bare faced and premeditatedly lies to them that a number of said rubber stampers like yourself lined up bemoaning with him on how bad it is what THEY did to him (but he was the one perpetrating a triple whammy)?
One of the thing good friends should do is hold each other to accountability. You guys suck assuch friends to Nate. You rubber stamp him and put halos over his head he is nowhere near logically deserving of and it does him no goood. Judging by recent posts he has become more dishonest and arrogant. To be honest I don’t know If the last time I was here he would have maintained belligerently the crapola on technological advances in that text that are not there and other universes are natural gymnastics he tried to pull. You have just been enablers to his decline. Hate me , consider me rude and harsh (because I know you) but the only one who gives Nate any room to grow and be better on this blog is your beloved MIke.
Little proverbs passage …Iron sharpeneth Iron
I mean don’t get me wrong i knew you would back him up in any foolishness . Its not like I thought for a minute then or now you were an honest bunch but just thought i would be remiss not pointing out – as real friends to Nate you pretty much suck since all you really do is rubber stamp.
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“Anyone who is asked to leave a group and then threatens to not honor that simply because the group talks about him after he leaves should be banned just for that.”
Please who cares? Ban away (to the extent that any open comment thread on a wordpress blog can even do so). The facts are however We did discuss and have an arrangement that I not be talked about on this blog. I really don’t care if Nate has amnesia. You make agreements you should live by them. I won’t lower my views on the morality of that to suit you.
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“Mike, you continue to harp on Nate’s reference to technological advances, claiming there is no historical, biblical, or cultural context to support this. Yet you do the same (example: the tower and pagan worship), but it’s all OK and true and honest when you do it. Interesting.”
Nan I remember you know . Sorry I can’t ever remember you having a good point or doing anything else but rubber stamping “me too…what he said”. Heres the recap – I asked your guy nate for proof that technological advances are spoken about in the text. He sent me a text as proof that states nothing of the kind. Its straight up not in there
Had he admitted that he was drawing from assumptions and even drawing from some historical or cultural context then he would not been a liar and we could have got into that honestly. NO what he did was send me the text and said there it is its there when it is clearly not. instead of coming clean subsequently he has just skirted and dodged and refused to admit that the text has no such proof, Furthermore no matter what any rubber stamper says here there is ZERO …NADA biblical or historical context that demonstrates that God ever had anything against advancement in technology. its complete dry rot
Like it or not thats what makes him undeniably and totally dishonest. The longer he persists in it is the longer he is lying
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Nate, if technological prowess means electronics then I don’t see it, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you mean by “technology”.
I don’t feel like I even have to say anything because this verse seems to say it all:
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