Punished for Babel?

[The Reality Salesman01]

That information is transferable to other people. Christians verify what other Christians say is correct, and check the information to confirm it's validity.
Belief isn't transferable. it has to be the choice of the individual. This is the model of faith laid out in the bible.

I'm sorry. But this is the text book of what is considered circular logic from a skeptical position on your claim. I am not doubting that you believe this makes sense. But, I'm not talking about you. You've already decided this is acceptable.

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I've explained to you how God is reasoned. That isn't the assumption. Belief in him is the assumption, based upon solid reasoning.
I understand that by using logic I can understand what would make this deity work. No blind faith or lack of reasoning involved. No bridging of gaps.

Your belief in God is is the second assumption. Your first assumption is to posit that there is a God to assign belief to. .

[fr0d0]

I know that TeX. Which is why I qualified it with its basis in reality. Logical concepts don't have to be bound to any one ideal or doctrine. These truths are universally recognized. Humans wouldn't be able to relate to them if they were uniquely insular to Christianity.
You would have to assume that my conversion was some sort of magical transformation. Another leap of faith for you.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Frodo,

I don't know that I'm making myself very clear here. Picture a blank chalkboard. This represents things I consider to exist from my experience.

No where on this list is the word God. There is no God character anywhere on my chalkboard.

You then come up and tell me about a new character that should have a place on my list.

I would have to first accept that this character is necessary, before entertaining any belief in it. If the process that leads you to believing this character A) Exists B) Has attributes- is unreliable, then I reject your assumption that this "God" is anything more than a conjured idea. This God, is no where on my chalkboard, nor can you give me any reason to think that it would even be necessary to correlate it to the things on my board. I would need to assume that God is a sensical word before adopting a belief system in it. Do you understand?

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Logical concepts don't have to be bound to any one ideal or doctrine. These truths are universally recognized. Humans wouldn't be able to relate to them if they were uniquely insular to Christianity.
You would have to assume that my conversion was some sort of magical transformation. Another leap of faith for you.

Frodo, what logical concepts? Are you referring to the "true-ness" characteristic that 2+2=4 has? Are you sayin that because 2+2 always equals 4, that true-ness is something you think needs an explanation for in a worldview, and to you, that explanation is God?

[Minimalist]

Besides the fact that we and the universe exist.

We don't need any horseshit gods for that.

[Drich]

If I was omnipontent too, I could arrange a less violent solution. These are all obvious flaws with the way your stories are told. It's so strange that you remain oblivious to the absurd nature of the God you describe.

less violent solution than creating various languages? I did not know there was violence in creating a language, do tell.

[YahwehIsTheWay]

Also one has to remember that at that point in man's history 'Heaven' was not considered to be in the sky. This did not happen till Jesus assended upon a cloud into Heaven some 3000 years later. Up to that point the only direct contact people had with God was on earth in the garden.

Did you miss all the rest of my post that you responded to?

The text couldn't possibly be more clear! The people were going to succeed in building a tower that would reach Heaven. "Nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do". Yahweh was clearly frightened or at least worried about the potential for their success. His actions to confound their language was the only way to stop them.

Heaven is a dome in the sky! Wake up already! Science has lied to you!

The word for "Heaven" and "sky" are one and the same in the ancient Hebrew language. So Genesis 1:8 declares that Yahweh called the dome (firmament) "the sky" which was also what separated Heaven from earth. Yahweh opens a window in the dome when it rains (Gen 7:11).

Science has lied to us saying the earth is round and orbits the sun through a vacuum! Scripture clearly says the earth is flat and supported by pillars. The sky is a dome that stretches over it. The sun revolves around the earth, having been fixed in the dome.

The only alternative can be to think the Bible is wrong. You can't reconcile the two!

I can quote extensively from scripture that shows that the earth clearly is flat, that it is fixed in place and that the sun revolves around it along the sky-dome that is Heaven.

Science is a collection of lies straight from Satan! Stop trying to reconcile Satan's Word with the Lord's Word! They do not mix!

[The Reality Salesman01]

If I was omnipontent too, I could arrange a less violent solution. These are all obvious flaws with the way your stories are told. It's so strange that you remain oblivious to the absurd nature of the God you describe.

less violent solution than creating various languages? I did not know there was violence in creating a language, do tell.

Lol, will you pick a topic and stay with it?!! I thought we were still talking about all the harm coming from my son catching his shadow.

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You describe God as some kind of a cosmic batter. Somebody keeps throwing all sorts of terrible outcomes in the paths of people, but God keeps batting them out of the way.

Who is creating the terrible outcomes that God foresees? Who's the pitcher? And if people are supposed to have free will, why is he Intervening?

[Bad Writer]

The people were trying to get to heaven, not God. Which is why God thwarted their plan. They were trying to achieve perfection apart from the source.
They used man made materials, brick and tar, rather than stone and mortar, symbolising their own efforts over natural law.

I know I'm late coming to the party, but this sentence struck me as odd. If the story of the Tower of Babel was completely accurate, and this is the reasoning god used to thwart the plans of the people building, then why hasn't god reached out his almighty hand of Justice to crush our current endeavors to go beyond earth, beyond the solar system, to where no one has gone before?

If god is invisible, why would he need a physical home called heaven? And if it's not physical, then what was his worry that the people would even reach it?

I am by trade a linguist, and I know for a fact that languages have evolved. There was no sudden, sporadic splitting of languages. They progress, change, and adapt over time because of isolation (the parallels to the theory of biological evolution are astounding, btw!). If you look at the Romance languages, you can see that not only are Spain and Portugal on the same continent, these countries being in close proximity to one another, but, even though their languages are completely different, they are similar enough to where each nation can talk to and be understood by one another in their own, native tongues. I am fluent in Polish, and I can do the same thing with people from the Czech Republic.

If you take a map and trace the lineage of languages across the globe, they paint a startling, yet very real, picture of how they progressed, spread, and evolved over the history of humankind. To say that the Tower of Babel story is how these languages came to be is a gross misrepresentation of the facts, completely ignoring what history has proven otherwise to be the case. It's akin to taking one of Rudyard Kipling's stories of how things came to be and taking it as complete fact, which is a very irresponsible way to proceed with this.

It doesn't matter that the story of the Tower of Babel is in your scriptures: it's nothing more than a fable, and telling people it's true is lying to your fellowman.

BTW, Mormons believe that a group of people whose language was not corrupted at the time of the Tower of Babel because of their righteousness were led to America in 2000 B.C. This story is false on this assumption alone.

[MindForgedManacle]

The story is rather absurd, to the point of giddiness. God clearly states that nothing would be beyond our reach and capability if we had but a single language. And much like the later story of him being unable to win a battle because of the enemy having iron chariots, the explanations given by believers tend to be amusingly ad hoc and in excess of what the text actually says.

[Silver]

Technically, she said.

When did I get a sex change?