Why a Flood?

Raven scopes out the eats at Wupatki National Monument

"

"So on the seventh day I released a Raven, to soar in search of land..."



"I sent forth a Raven and released it. The Raven went off, and saw the water slither back. it eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me."



"And he sent forth a Raven, which went to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth."



So there's Raven -



Now, ever heard of Sumer, (of course you have, if you've read later posts, if not, then read the posts fer chrissakes!! Jeez, I'm workin here!!) or Akkad, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Enlil, Ziusudra, Atrahasis, Utnapishtim? (I must admit it's true we're both working at a disadvantage here if you had the misfortune to be a victim of the American Public School System, in which case it's highly unlikely you ever heard word one about any of the above. Shoot, these days I bet you could graduate from any American college/university without ever running into even one those names.)



That makes me think of a joke I heard once from a furriner -



Furriner: "What do you call a University graduate who only speaks one language?"

Me: "I don't know, what do you call a University graduate who only speaks one language?"

Furriner: "An American!"  Then he fell to the ground laughing hysterically.

So I kicked him while he was down.

But!

And it's a BIG but!

I bet you've heard of Noah, of Noah and the Ark fame. Of course you have. He's damn hard to avoid, lessen you was raised a heathen!

Still, I have to ask… Why a flood?

I mean think about it. This is G we're talking about here, Old "Fiat Lux!" himself. Think it, and it is! Just say the word!

"In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god."

(John has a much more complicated theology, and a much higher christology, than is found in the synoptics. A theology, and christology, that can't be derived, as far as I can see, from anything contained in the synoptics. And a theology, and christolo blah blah blah,  that is pretty much totally incompatible with the theology, and blah blah blah, of the synoptics.)

But that is neither here nor there.

Anyway -

If G can create the world out of nothing, then G can un-create it just as easily. (Yeah yeah yeah, there I go using logic... Jeez!)

Should G choose to say, "Abracadabra Poof! you're a pile of shit!", well then, abracadabra poof! you're a pile of shit!

And should G choose to say, at ANY time, (we'll deal with temporality issues elsewhere), anyway, supposing he is in fact G, and does, in fact, exist, if he says, "Let the earth be (again) without form, and void!" 

The earth will be without form, and void. Or a cinder, or a clinker, or just a twinkle in Gs eye.

Just like that!

Whatever G wants, G gets. (Let us not, here, get into the issue of, "is it even logically possible for an omniscient being to want, or desire, anything.)

(Did you know that the early Israelites, (ok, they were actually Canaanites), anyway, they believed G had a wife? Her name was Asherah, and She was reeeeally hot! I bet you She put a twinkle in G's eye!)

So if G is G it's simple, see? (Hmm. If G is the all in all, could he even have eyes to have a twinkle in? if so, what would he use them for? (Other than scopin out Asherah in her hot new Bikini!)).

(Regarding genesis 1:1 - 2. It's poetry, and it is beautiful, and I cannot deny the power of the imagery, yet I wonder how can any thing be, if it is without form, and void?)

Therefore, given all the above, again I have to ask, "Why a flood?"

Why all the time and effort?

Why make Noah, (who was, according to certain Rabbinic traditions, not necessarily a good man, but perhaps simply the least bad), build the ark? G certainly had the power to simply create the Ark, so why make Noah build it? As a matter of fact, why make anyone build it? Seems like a monumental waste of time and effort to me.

And why the hell build a ship that size out of wood? Hell! G could have given Noah the Nimitz fer chrissakes! Now there's a ship to ride out a world destroying flood in. A ship made out of steel! With nuclear reactors for power! Big elevators! Water and sewage treatment plants! Pumps! Satellite navigation! Jet fighters! Missiles! More toys than Noah and sons would know what to do with!

Side note: The largest real (non-mythological) wooden ship ever built was the Wyoming. Keel laid in 1909, the Wyoming's finished hull measured a mere 350 feet from stem to stern, with a beam of 51 feet - versus the reported length of 450 feet and beam of 75 feet for the Ark. It so fell out that the hull of the Wyoming, built at the pinnacle of wooden ship building technology by people who had mastered all the arts and crafts required - and reinforced with metal bracing - worked so heavily in any kind of a sea that her seams leaked like the proverbial sieve, and hence that, she required the use of large steam driven pumps, running continuously, to remain afloat.

So anyway, for whatever reasons, G decides he wants a new creation. (For an omniscient being, G seems to spend an awful lot of time changing his mind.)

"And why does he decide that?" you ask.

"Well," I reply, "because he evidently decided he did a pretty shitty job the first time around."

Still, why not start again from scratch? Seriously. Blank slate. Tabula Rasa. Ex Nihilio - all over again! How is it possible for an omniscient deity to even think that Noah and company won't just bring all the old problems along with them? Of course he knows they will, he's omniscient!! Jesus!

G speaks! : Not yet! Don't be getting ahead of the plan. I do have a plan fer chrissake! A plan for each and every one of you yahoos, so don't be fuckin with the plan! Or asking questions either. No questions. All questions will be answered at the end of the program. Thank you for flying with G airlines. Now sit down and shut the fuck up.

Oh, back to the omniscient thing, (for those of you asleep in the back: Omniscient = All Knowing. You will be tested!) 

And Yes, in answer to your question, if genesis is true, then G wrote an exam that he himself flunked!

How is that possible?
How the hell should I know?
Do I look like God?

Look, it's an article of faith that G = Omniscient = Knows Everything that happens!
All that happens, happens under Gs eternal inerrant purview. Even the fall of a sparrow! Your job is just to Believe!

Evidence?

Faith don't need no stinking evidence! In fact, asking for evidence is a damnable offense. Just ask The Church. The Catholic Church. They'll tell you that. If they don't burn you first.
(Just because they aren't doing so currently, don't doubt for one minute that there aren't still christian clerics who wouldn't dearly love to be burning heretics and unbelievers. I'm thinking Society of St Pius X for starters, since they'd dearly love the restoration of absolute monarchy. And while Opus Dei is, I think, politically astute enough to never say burning heretics and unbelievers would be a good thing, I bet many of them think it. And you Protestants don't get off scott free, oh no. Just engage in a discussion with any of the followers of old John Calvin. (He of Cursed Memory.) And heresy and apostasy are capitol offenses which are prosecuted, to this very day, in Islamic countries.)

So, back to the question at hand.

So G, I gotta ask you. If your possession of that particular quality - omniscience - is truly the case, then you must have known you had fucked up from the very start, right? I mean, how could it even be possible for you, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibeneficent, (or omnibenevolent) G, to create something corruptible? In order to be corruptible, it must contain the possibility of corruption from its very beginning, and must, therefore, be imperfect, from its very beginning. In fact it must have been imperfect from before its beginning, imperfect from the first instant that you, G, thought about it! (And remember, Adam and Eve didn't just fuck up their (and consequently all OUR) lives, no, they fucked up the ENTIRETY of creation. I'm talkin every freakin atom, quark, gluon, and virtual particle, of the entire universe! All from one bite of an apple.)

I mean, I could be wrong here, but it would seem, on purely logical grounds, that A Perfect Creators Creation must be Perfectly Perfect, and therefore, incorruptible.

Unless, of course, as some sort of perfect game with his perfect self, our perfect creator somehow perfectly chose to create something imperfect? And so chose, therefore, to actually BE imperfect? (Just to see if he could do it, maybe? But only in a perfect way.) And, I gotta say, based on observation, it's been a smashing success. He hit himself a home run on his first at bat!

Which could lead to the following potential out.

G himself contains corruption. G is therefore imperfect.

Damn! the Gnostics were correct! (Yes, I know the term Gnostic is considered so broad or poorly defined as to be thought meaningless in certain circles. If, perchance, you happen to be standing inside one of those circles, well, step outside it fer a minute. Christ! The world won't come to an end - Revelation notwithstanding.)

Seriously…

And don't go babbling about "free will" somehow giving G an out - if you're omniscient, you have to know everything there is to know.

For all o' time.

You... Have... To... Know....

(I see you over there with your Godly fingers in your Godly ears going "La la la la la la la I can't hear you.")

You know, really... If you're omniscient, truly, why even bother? Why not just run a simulation in your head. As a matter of fact. If you're omniscient, why DO anything at all? In actual fact, would it even be possible for you to do anything? (see above.)
So it's no longer a question of "why bother", it's now a question of "would it even be possible?”

Unless "all knowing" doesn't actually mean "all knowing".
("I did not have sex with that woman.")

Based on much of my reading, it really appears that theologians, and philosophers, (to a lesser extent), appear to solve many of their problems by "defining them out of existence".
Must be an occupational hazard when faced with the Problem of G.
 And G is a problem. A great big hairy problem. (Unless, of course, G doesn't exist, in which case all the problems immediately go away.)

It's true.

G causes many more problems then he solves. (What would be another term for all of G's "omni-properties"? - It's simple - an "omni-property" is exactly the same thing as an infinity. And infinities always cause problems.) So why not get rid of the G variable, and all its infinities, entirely?
 It's amazing how all of a sudden things begin to make sense. No more special pleading. No more paradoxes. No more mutually exclusive properties within a single object. (The logical incoherence of G.) No need for a Satan, or dualism, or having to assign differing moral values to the "human" versus the "divine".

Example?

"How is it possible that G allowing 250,000 people to drown in the tsunami of December 2004 is for a greater good?" (The G of the three monotheisms, by definition, had the power to prevent that from happening.)

"Our human wisdom is weak and finite. G's wisdom is infinite. Who are we to even try to understand or to question. We must simply have faith that G is working toward a greater good." *

I call this The Book of Job defense. But I hate the Book of Job, so it cuts no ice with me.
 In truth I would be much more kindly inclined towards G if, at the end of the story, he had come down from heaven, put his arm around Jobs shoulders, and had the balls to admit he'd given Satan permission to kill all Jobs family, destroy all his wealth, remove all his honor, etc, etc, (denying Satan only the authority to kill Job himself, which would have been infinitely kinder), as the terms of a little wager.

A bet, as it were, betwixt G and Satan.

Which, thanks to Jobs touching faith in him, G won! (A truly omniscient G would, of course, have known that from before the beginning.)

But G does no such thing.

Instead he, G, launches into this insane, irrational, ridiculous tirade which basically boils down to "Because I'm G! Me Dammit! That's why! No more questions! Just shut the fuck up and take it like a man."

Perhaps I should find G's faith in Job touching. But I don't. In fact I find Gs behavior appalling, and, truth be told, I'd have a great deal more respect for Job if, after Gs ridiculous tirade, Job had had the cojones to tell G "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!" spat in G's eye, and kicked him in the balls.

But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, it does appear, according to the Book of Job, that G does play dice with the universe.


And the dice are loaded.


(And here we are, and we still have no idea why a flood.)

* It just now occurred to me that if G is solely concerned with the good of the universe as a WHOLE, i.e. that he is working at the scale of the universe in its totality, throughout the entirety of its existence in time, then this faith in the unknowable goodness of G must include acknowledging the possibility that we - humanity - and all our hopes, prayers, and dreams, are a matter of no concern to G whatsoever. That what ultimately happens on this little planet, and whether humanity lives, or dies, is of no consequence in G's plan for some - humanly inconceivable - greater universal ultimate good.