The Tower of Babel

[Drich]

The story about the Tower of Babel presents us with some interesting questions. In this story, the inhabitants of the Earth move further away from the Garden of Eden after Adam's eviction therefrom. They all speak the same language and pretty much stick together. There is no confusion among them. No misunderstanding. No war. The Bible tells us they were all of one mind (Genesis 11:1-9).

Because we know ONLY good comes out of a people with 'one mind.' Resistance was futile everyone was assimilated! their technological and biological distinctivness was repurposed and added to their own (or it was put in camps to be later burned in massive ovens.)

The God of the Bible comes down to see this. When he notes that they are united and their unity strengthens them, he is displeased.

Can't imagine why.. Oh, yeah again not all unity is Good!

They plan to build a tower up to heaven. The God of the Bible doesn't merely laugh this off as foolish hubris. Rather, he sees it as a serious threat and takes steps to put a stop to it. He confuses their language so they can’t understand one another.

Yet look at the horror we (those in that picture) visited down on their fellow countrymen. This He allowed.. What Horror did He stop? The answer is one we could not come back from. (Admit it or not we came back from the one pictured above)

I cannot see the Creator of the universe acting this way.

Maybe that's because you have a broken understanding of who and what God is.

But the creator of an Earth-centered fantasy world which does not exist outside the pages of the Bible did act this way. Let's take a look at this passage and see if any of the following questions seem a tad odd.

Sounds like fun!!!

Why would an omnipotent God be worried about the achievements of men?

Seriously? Maybe because (being Omnipotent and all) He could see we would destroy ourselves before the time we should, or worse yet destroy our chance of salvation in some way.

If you have a child you want them to go as far and as high as they can in life. You teach them how to avoid the pitfalls of pride and wealth. But you don't undermine their self-esteem and tear up their job applications.

You do this because you are not Omnipotent!

 If you were, you would teach them to avoid specific threats or obsticals all together would you not? Now what if they were too young to avoid a Specific situation, that would lead to their death? would you take out the obstical form them or would you just go one building their self esteem, and help them fill out job applications knowing full well they would die an early death far from you? a death you had the power to stop with a smack on the wrist?

You don't sabotage their efforts. If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, (Matthew 7:11)

when i was 13/14ish i wanted to make a pulse jet/soap box racer. So my dad let me build it in the garage. He was fine with the soap box part, he even provided me with the pipes and tools to cut and swedge the beginnings of the pulse jet, but when it started to take shape and he learn i was tring to build a "buzz bomb" jet engine he wanted to put on the brakes and have us "work on it together." well days turned to weeks and no progress was made. I decided to finish it. He found out and smashed everything. (good thing he did because i was convinced i was building it safe and right.) and if the smallest scrap remained i would have started over, but he broke everything in front of me (so i would not look for it) and took away all my tools and materials. now that i look back i know for certain I would have killed myself because I was not using any of the right material except K-1 fuel and an ignition source with lots of compressed air to kick start it. (which makes a  flame thrower to start, and a bomb when the componets heat up and melt) bolt all of that into a wooden crate that you had to squeaze into.. what could go wrong?

So yeah, if your kid is the type to just do his home work, do some structured after school activity, then yes your right, you don't want to crush his spirit. But also keep in mind not every kid is chocolate or vanilla ice cream kind of kid. Some Kids like to make their own Ice cream out of things you cant eat, and don't like to be told they can't eat it or feed it to their friends. for them, they need to be taken down a peg or 3. Why? Because they can not live in their own little world of their own making without yielding to the consenquences of their actions. That is how super villians are created. So when you as a parent know what your little lex luthor will do will kill him and everyone around him, then you take that thing away, if he persists then some soul crushing maybe needed.

why paint this dastardly picture of a god who hates to see his creation (children) achieve?

That's the thing i dont see a dastardly picture of God. I see a parent who knows that if his creation is left unchecked then it will destroy itself somehow. I see a hard smack on the hand and God taking away the thing we would use to do it with.
(Not the Tower itself but the hive mind they had)

Why would a god who is not the author of confusion be the cause of the most significant factor that separates people?

...How is separating people according to their language confusing to you?

How many wars would not have been fought, lands not stolen, racism not perpetrated, peoples not subjugated if this god had left us alone to flourish in the peace

again, The Nazi's were all of one mind and they all but killed and ate their own babies. They did these thing to their own countrymen first and then to people in other countries. Being of one mind =/= "good" people. It just means everyone agrees that all people who look like this or is born here or their should xyz. even those who get the short end of the stick. may also agree. when the Jews were being first rounded up, they packed up and went where they were told!!!

we had before he decided that he did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34)?

in that passage Jesus is speaking to the fact that he in this incarnation is not going to lead the jews against rome. Not that he will always stand for peace.

Why does a god who is omnipresent have to come down to look at a city?

so that 'we' meaning those to whom Genesis first was written to, and every generation after who needed that crutch, could understand that God put his full attention in that time and place and this was not a flipant desision.

Despite passages which tell us god is everywhere and invisible, we find too many passages that tell us the god of the Bible is corporal, has physical features and has been seen by at least 74 men (Exodus 24:1-15)

Why can't both things be true?

Air is everywhere and invisible, and yet if certain conditions exist it too can be seen by men, have and hold physical features..

Meaning if we can use terms like everywhere and invisible to describe a natural occouring phenomia then why can't those attributes be ascribed to a being with the power to observe without our direct knoweledge and make himself known to whomever He wills? Are you truly so single minded you can not see what is being said here?

Why is the god who created the whole universe so threatened by his own creation that he is only happy when we are confused, broken, contrite, helpless and sorrowful—especially when we were none of those things before he intervened.

Book chapter and verse? Are we still discussing the tower of bable?

That's like a doctor giving you poison so that you will need the medicine he wants to sell you,
The tower of Babel represents an attempt by man to explain natural phenomenon (diverse languages) by creating a god whom they could not raise above their own spiritual immaturity.

... Or it could be recording real events.

We could redeem the Tower of Babel story. Instead of looking at it as a historical account of some ancient event, we could look at it through the eyes of Joseph Campbell and see its power as a myth. Imposing modern ideas on an ancient text will not tell us what the ancient writers had in mind. However, the myths studied by Campbell existed long before he was born and the creators of those myths may or may not have been aware of the deeper meanings Campbell saw in their creations.  Divining the intentions of the ancient writers is not necessary to harvest what insights into the collective human psyche may be found in their writings. So what does the Tower of Babel have to say to us?

It completely depends on who 'us' refers to.. Some of 'us' use the story to relate closer to God, to see the love and care He has bestowed upon us while we were too young to manage the power we have been given collectivly. while others use the same love that bring some of 'us' closer to seperate themselves from God. in an attempt to villify a deity they do not want to live under, therefore feeling justified in not obey his rules. In essence "if God is a tyrant as per the tower of babble and other storys like it, then to obey god would be to live in tyrany.' Thus making it their moral obligation to rebel against God.

A power struggle between generations—between parent and child—permeates western mythology. Everything from Zeus and his children to Ibsen’s Master Builder. The incumbent generation feels threatened by the generation that comes to take its place. In Greek mythology the god solves this problem by killing his children. Other gods kill their parents so they can reign unrivaled. Is there any value in a story which depicts man at his worst? Only if we read it with the eyes of understanding. In this story, we see that the end result of generation rivalry is confusion and lack of achievement.

you don't need to go back to zuse to see this battle between creator and created. Look no further than this thread.

We might also see the synergy of people working together. A community where people work toward common goals—where nobody says “that‘s mine” can be imagined. And if we can imagine a thing, we can build it.

Those who do not know history, are doomed to repeat it.


Alot of people had to die before that pic was taken, before a single communal/hive/borg mind took control of them. That maybe your idea of Nirvana, but not me not in this life.