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Why would God undermine construction of the Tower of Babel but allow NASA to operate?
Posted on: Fri, 2007-07-06 14:13
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Why would God undermine construction of the Tower of Babel but allow NASA to operate?
Surely NASA has made it closer to heaven than the Tower of Babel? Rational Squad Alerts |
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I guess God probably figured there's no point in separating modern-day people since they will join anyway and use a common language (English).
hm... i don't know why he'd care in the first place, i don't know why people say that god wants us to unite under the enlish language. Even old english wasnt around for hundreds of years after the events surrounding Jesus.
You know, Dave, that's actually a very interesting question.
Perhaps it's a question of motive.
I think you're missing the point. The people building Babel were doing so in defiance of God and his place in the universe, not that they building a building to such a great height.
No, if you read that part in the bible, he didn't want man to reach his position in the heavens(which is apparently just past the clouds?) We have certainly gotten higher than that, and guess what! no heaven yet!
Furthermore, he failed in his goal to separate us by language, at least when it comes to airplanes(international language being english).
Just by using 'he' does not mean that I am acknowledging that God exists, I'm making a contrapositive argument, and since Not B, definitely not A
[quote]No, if you read that part in the bible, he didn't want man to reach his position in the heavens(which is apparently just past the clouds?)[/quote]
False. This kind of understanding is a product of a baseless insertion into the KJV, and most critics of the Bible have given up on this argument. You haven't, apparently.
"May reach" is not in the originals...That's from the KJV. What this verse was supposed to mean was that the tower was [i]dedicated[/i] to heaven rather than setting out to [i]reach[/i] it.
Plus, nowhere in the Bible does it give an exact location of Heaven, and specifically, nowhere in this passage does it say that God was "just past the clouds." That's [i]your[/i] assertion this time.
[quote]We have certainly gotten higher than that, and guess what! no heaven yet![/quote]
Big deal.
[quote]Furthermore, he failed in his goal to separate us by language, at least when it comes to airplanes(international language being english).[/quote]
Right, because everyone on the planet knows English. And English existed back whenever this story occured, too.
why would got nod want a tower dedicated to heaven?
So if English ever becomes ubiquitous language?
The point being, it is a unifying language, as it is used in all countries in international air travel and so on. Man is no longer going to be divided by language soon enough. Does that mean that God would have failed?
[quote]why would got nod want a tower dedicated to heaven?[/quote]
I think the Tower part of the story gets far too much credit in the story. This is about languages and all the people combining into one, not necessarily about the tower per se.
[quote]So if English ever becomes ubiquitous language?[/quote]
I have no idea. If the Tower of Babel story is actually historical, then perhaps the same thing would happen again.
[quote]The point being, it is a unifying language, as it is used in all countries in international air travel and so on. Man is no longer going to be divided by language soon enough. Does that mean that God would have failed?[/quote]
No. If God had failed, then the language barrier wouldn't have lasted for many many thousands of years.
Oh, you're right. Just like I prevent the end of the universe by saving the world for a few thousand years. Of course, with a God which has no written motives, you can always shift the point, and say that he only wanted our language separated for a few thousand years. But see, with something as vague as scripture, I can twist any evidence to support a viewpoint.
Even if the motives were in stone somewhere, you could always say he had intended to change his mind(as you did with the flood point. You have set up a situation which you can justify through as many mental cartwheels as you can do, but can never prove outside of the contextual assumption that you are right already.
[quote]Oh, you're right. Just like I prevent the end of the universe by saving the world for a few thousand years. Of course, with a God which has no written motives, you can always shift the point, and say that he only wanted our language separated for a few thousand years. But see, with something as vague as scripture, I can twist any evidence to support a viewpoint.[/quote]
You're making a valid argument, but I can really tell that it's tinged with a desire to prove God [b]failed.[/b] You can only prove God failed if you can prove that he had intended to seperate our languages for [b]all eternity[/b]. There is no textual evidence to support this whatsoever, so you really can't prove a thing.
[quote]Even if the motives were in stone somewhere, you could always say he had intended to change his mind(as you did with the flood point.[/quote]
You mean with the point about the Old Testament law? The flood has nothing to do with this. You messed up my point in the first place..."Intended to change his mind" is a self contradiction. There would never actually be any sort of change in mind if it was planned beforehand.
[quote]You have set up a situation which you can justify through as many mental cartwheels as you can do, but can never prove outside of the contextual assumption that you are right already.[/quote]
Well, in a way, so are you. In your mind, God failed because we're starting to learn English, though you have no textual evidence to support it. In your mind, this God doesn't even exist, and so me trying to argue a simple point like this is beyond foolish in the first place.
So sinc nobody really knows what God wants, any such evidence can be interpretted either way, and is thus utterly useless. Good, I suppose that means we can toss out the entire bible out as evidence(not that I hadn't already done so)and yes, I meant OT law, just had my mind on the flood
[quote=P-Dunn][quote]No, if you read that part in the bible, he didn't want man to reach his position in the heavens(which is apparently just past the clouds?)[/quote]
False. This kind of understanding is a product of a baseless insertion into the KJV, and most critics of the Bible have given up on this argument. You haven't, apparently.
"May reach" is not in the originals...That's from the KJV. What this verse was supposed to mean was that the tower was [i]dedicated[/i] to heaven rather than setting out to [i]reach[/i] it.
Plus, nowhere in the Bible does it give an exact location of Heaven, and specifically, nowhere in this passage does it say that God was "just past the clouds." That's [i]your[/i] assertion this time.
[quote]We have certainly gotten higher than that, and guess what! no heaven yet![/quote]
Big deal.
[quote]Furthermore, he failed in his goal to separate us by language, at least when it comes to airplanes(international language being english).[/quote]
Right, because everyone on the planet knows English. And English existed back whenever this story occured, too.[/quote]
If its not just above the clouds then why would Jesus have to float to heaven why not just teleport?
[quote]So sinc nobody really knows what God wants, any such evidence can be interpretted either way, and is thus utterly useless. Good, I suppose that means we can toss out the entire bible out as evidence(not that I hadn't already done so)and yes, I meant OT law, just had my mind on the flood[/quote]
Of course, like most fundy atheists, you always take such things to the extreme, which is totally invalid. And, of course, like most fundy atheists, you treat "the Bible" as something that can be tossed out as one, when really, each part of the Bible deserves an equal treatment as seperate books, not as one monolithic source.
"Not that I hadn't already done so," huh? Yes, of course, that's totally valid. Even I, a Christian, haven't eliminated the Quran as evidence of Islam, etc.
[quote=P-Dunn][quote]So sinc nobody really knows what God wants, any such evidence can be interpretted either way, and is thus utterly useless. Good, I suppose that means we can toss out the entire bible out as evidence(not that I hadn't already done so)and yes, I meant OT law, just had my mind on the flood[/quote]
Of course, like most fundy atheists, you always take such things to the extreme, which is totally invalid. And, of course, like most fundy atheists, you treat "the Bible" as something that can be tossed out as one, when really, each part of the Bible deserves an equal treatment as seperate books, not as one monolithic source.
"Not that I hadn't already done so," huh? Yes, of course, that's totally valid. Even I, a Christian, haven't eliminated the Quran as evidence of Islam, etc. [/quote]Good considering islam has more evidence on their side
http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/index2.html
[quote]Good considering islam has more evidence on their side
http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/index2.html[/quote]
Honestly Dave, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to delve into pluralism here? That's not a very wise decision. Are you trying to convert me to Islam? Certainly not. So what is your objective? I wonder, Dave...Have you read the Qu'ran at all? I haven't finished it, but I have read a good portion of it. That's probably more than you can say, I imagine.
While I did say that the Qu'ran is evidence of things happening to Muhammed, I don't believe it's very [i]good[/i] evidence. While the Bible has four independent accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and many historically confirmed details in books like Acts and Luke, the Quran is merely one person sitting in a cave and saying an angel told him something. While this could be true, it's not nearly as good evidence as what we have with the Bible.
I'm not a Muslim for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most serious is that if one studies the Quran, you will see that Allah started Christianity, and not only that, made it the world's most dominant religion. (See Surah 19). If it was unintentional, then we must conclude that God didn’t realize that he was about to start the largest religion in the world. If it was intentional, then God is in the business of starting false religions. And if Jesus really was a prophet of Islam and preached from his birth, then he was the biggest failure out of all the prophets, since after he died, there was no one on earth who even remotely resembled a Muslim. Those who believed his message became Christians, all of whom were guilty of the worst sin imaginable, while those who rejected his message were guilty of rejecting one of God’s greatest messengers. So why in the world does Islam consider Jesus to be one of the greatest prophets ever? It seems he should have been able to convert at least one person to Islam. But he didn’t. On the other hand, there are roughly two billion Christians on earth at the present moment, so it seems that Jesus and God are responsible for starting the only religion in the world that overshadows Islam. Does that make any sense at all?
In addition, the Qu'ran gives a lot of misinformation about Christian doctrine...For example, it completely screws up the Christian doctrine of the trinity, saying it's a Father, Mother, and Son (Sura 5:73-75,116). It also says that Jesus never died on the cross, when that is one of the most historically supported facts about the man in the first place. And since the Qu'ran claims to be the direct dictation of an angel (unlike the Bible, which merely claims to be [b]inspired[/b] by God, there's a HUGE difference), we shouldn't expect there to be any errors in it at all, especially not ones of this magnitude.
If you have nothing better to be than a troll, then you shouldn't even be on this website.