Image: Drunkenness of Noah. c. 1515. Oil on canvas, 103 x 157 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Besançon.
This post was inspired by the opening of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. (which seems at $20 a person to be another great way to make money off of religious fundies). It’s mind-boggling that in the year 2007, and with all of scientific evidences accumulated over the centuries by highly intelligent and dedicated scientists, explorers, educators, etc. that there are so many who choose to believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that dinosaurs and people co-existed…and that dinosaurs drowned in “the flood” but people survived despite the fact that no vegetation would have survived, and nothing would be left for them to eat after the floodwaters subsided, and nothing for the animals to eat to survive (if they survived such a long time confined to a wooden ark.) The whole story is so obviously absurd mythology, yet there are those who choose to hold onto ignorant beliefs of ancient folks who knew nothing about science, biology, geology, geography, meteorology, etc. And if getting rid of sin and evilness was the goal, this God sure picked a real loser to head up his “mission” to “cleanse the world.”
How can people actually take the story of Noah to be real? Have any Bible literalists ever asked themselves why, if an omnipotent God had the ability to create humans and all things in the first place, why the need to go through having an old drunken pervert build an ark, gather two of all the millions and millions of life forms all over the planet, when this God could have just wiped his imperfect creations out in one click of his fingers, and then with the blink of an eye re-create them all over again just as “in the beginning”? If one can look at the Bible with a critical eye, as with other ancient world mythologies, the absurdity of the stories contained therein are at the same level of absurdity.
The Flood myth absurdity doesn’t just end with the floodwaters subsiding. As Steve from Oak Park, Illinois on the website Straight Dope Science Advisory Board writes,
“Genesis 9:20-25 seems to be one of the strangest stories in the Bible. Noah lands the ark, plants a vineyard, gets drunk off its wine, lays around naked in his tent and is seen by his son Ham who reports it to his two brothers. Noah sobers up knowing what Ham did and curses his grandson Canaan who apparently was not even there. What is even stranger is when I started researching this mystery I discovered the story was once used to support slavery. Further there are theories floating around concerning castration and incest. What is the real story? Is there a deeper meaning to this than Noah having a case of misdirected anger while hung over? Or are we only hearing the watered-down version in our modern day Bible?”
SDSTAFF Dex replies:
“we examined the story of drunken Noah putting a curse on his grandson Canaan. This story came to be used as the biblical justification for slavery in pre-Civil War America, and for racial segregation after the war. The justification wasn’t purely an invention of plantation owners, either–its roots go back more than 1,500 years. That seems remarkable, since the story itself doesn’t mention race at all. Tracking the development of the slavery interpretation is an object lesson in the use of scripture to justify man’s inhumanity to man.“
Link to What’s up with the biblical story of drunken Noah? Part I & II: The Straight Dope
Every time someone mentions the Ark, I’m reminded of the famous quote from Jaws. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
But forget all the animals they didn’t know existed, at that time. Think of the logistics involved. All predators would have to kept away from the prey and each other. Enough food for forty days and nights would have to be stored on board. Some way of getting rid of waste would have to be devised…
Hell, and I thought my wife had it rough planning our wedding. Although, the thought of a T-Rex and a hippo getting into it does remind me of what I expected from her mother (Roman Catholic) and my uncle (Fundie Pentecostal).
One question no one has ever answered is how the hell does an Arab man have a white, black, and Jewish son with an Arab woman?
Psst! It only costs C$5.00 to get into this one:
Big Valley Creation Science Museum
Go take the virtual-tour - you know you want to…
From EARTHtimes.org The science of Genesis: two museums open in North America.
All of this creationism crap makes me think about how the church freaked out when Galileo first began to support the idea that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
They were pretty pissed, since the Bible claims that that’s not true, either. However, it was gradually accepted, and today we’d laugh our asses off at anyone who claimed that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
Perhaps someday, the same sort of situation will happen with evolution. All of the crazy fundie ideas will eventually die out, and evolution will become accepted as fact by pretty much everyone.
Maybe I’m being a bit too optimistic, but I hope that this will eventually happen in my lifetime.
PZ put up his anti-Ham carnival on Sunday as planned; it’s worth a look.
In addition to the Canadian Cretin Museum, here in the US we’ve got more edifices to fantasy being constructed in the form of a Billy Graham amusement park and a Harry Potter theme park at Universal/Orlando.
The Potter one will probably be a lot more fun than Graham’s thing, even though it won’t have a talking cow.
Need a good laugh? Go and read the wikipedia entry for “Curse of Ham.” (I love that phrase; I myself am stricken with the less common “Curse of Ham on Whole Wheat Toast with Spicy Mustard, Sweet Onions and a Pickle.” The “Curse” part just refers to one’s breath after partaking.)
The wikipedia article is a fairly comprehensive overview, and yes, some people actually believe this shit.
If you want a really good laugh, read some of the religious websites’ interpretations and justifications for such drivel. Even the fundie organizations like Answers in Genesis repudiate the racist interpretation and say that it is “biblically unfounded” “sinfully racist” etc…of course these groups are made up of the same families of folks who took their racial superiority for granted until as recently as 15-20 years ago. Many still do.
Instead of admitting the complete ridiculousness of the story, they just find the next handy victims-gays. Because anyone who would make light of their drunk-ass dad rolling around naked-obviously gay, right? I mean, they’re smart enough to know you can’t publicly bash the negroes, right? So it must be the faggots’ fault.
The AIG website calls the descendants of Canaan “some of the most wicked people on earth, like the people of Sodom and Gomorah, for instance.” Then they bring up the so-called “sexual connotations” of the story. Obviously trying to slip the homophobic agenda into tales where it was surprisingly absent before. Neither the Noah story nor the Sodom and Gomorah story started as anti-sex tirades, but that is what the crippled fundy brain injects into them.
Of course some of the blame must go to the Jewish authors and the early Jewish scholars-some of the first human beings to actually organize and institutionalize both their racism and homophobia. The early interpretations, while of course not backed up at all by the actual words, were along the lines of “curse those black motherfuckers!” “Black” and “motherfuckers” being meant quite literally.
Sorry to run long here, but this issue has a deep anchor in my brain, from a long time back. I won’t bore everyone with a drawn out anecdote, but I will ask you to imagine a scenario…
It’s fine spring afternoon. You are at your maternal grandmother’s house, waiting for one of your parents to get off work and pick you up. You are a bright, inquisitive 13 year old who has already devoured every science and science-fiction book available for your age group, and several more that most people won’t even get to in high school. Then on that particular afternoon, for unknown reasons, your kindly, loving Grandmother gets off onto a strange tangent of conversation; maybe somebody else in the room started it, you weren’t really listening. All that you know is that your strong-hearted, wise, seemingly all-knowing Grandma is trying to tell you where black people come from. And she’s serious, because it’s IN THE BOOK.
Oh Ham, you silly bastard. You should’ve just kicked him in the nuts.
A long time ago I read an Babylonian version of the flood myth. Noah and attendant ark and animals figure in, but they are not the only survivors. That story had several others making it, and Noah owed them money for what he needed for the ark. They wanted payment, and they wanted it toot freakin’ sweet. I can’t remember much else about it, but my parentts advised me that it was “of the devil” since it differed from the KJV. Both make a pretty neat primitve myth, but if people actually take it for true need to do some serious growing up.
Has anyone else seen the ark which is eternally under construction on I 68 near Frostburg, Maryland? Every time I pass it I really wonder how people have the time and money to lavish on that idiocy.
Sarge, you mean this one?
Do the fundies ever consider the implications of their beliefs? The ark story portrays God as totally maniacal. It’s not rational to kill every living thing on the face of the earth because you’re in some kind of snit. And the entire ark scheme strongly suggests that he ain’t the brightest thing that ever lurched down the turnpike. Well, I’m sure they have what they consider to be plausible explanations. “If God does it, it’s moral,” and “You can’t judge God by human standards,” and blah-blah-blah. What a way to live.
Noah was a 500 year old virgin! Just visit my November archive for the story.
What, really, is there to say…not just about the Noah bullshit..but there’s so much childish, kindergarten, cosmological stupidity in the Bible stories.
As I, and other GifSters, in effect, have commented many times; any god who would supposedly dream that retarded level stuff up, would have had to be a sort of dropout from the (fictional, of course?) “Interdimensional School of Creators”.
Like maybe, an: “I vant to be a god…Bleh!…Bleh!”…student “lab experiment” gone completely amuck?
Yeah…or even, like, earth is sorta the result of a total fucktard’s ‘inter-demented’ Xmas gift…ala..
“Gilbert’s Master Interdimensional Creator Chemistry Set”!
(You older guys, like moi, might remember all that wonderful Gilbert stuff?…I still have my American Flyer train!)
;(
No arrogance intended (I lie!)…but, it seems that we atheists are somewhat alone in our ability to detect the…oh, so seemingly obvious…rampant and outrageous stupidity that has blinded the majority. It’s not only those holding…and seeking…the reigns of power, but those in the media; who are supposed to be intelligent watchdogs!
By the way Berlzebub, you coitenly run a nice “Inferno”!
Quite the informative link to straight dope…
The irony for the racists here is that we are all one race. A modern pro- segregation pale face may be surprised who he is more closely related to genetically. You see, the visable physical traits which many folks often associate with distinct human races are the expressions of a mindblowingly small percentage of our genetic makeup. Even in ancient times our species was highly mobile, and our increasing mobility combined with fewer language barriers has put any possible productive utility of the idea to bed. To speak of different human races is folk taxonomy - it is misleading. The concept of subspecies or race is useful if, a) The species in question is undergoing speciation into two distinct species, which is obviously not the case for humans, b) Phenotypic traits can be identified that accurately reflect genetic similarity - in humans these only confuse this matter.
All humans are identical for 75% of the human genome.
This number, 75% is a higher percentage than in chimpanzees.
The remaining 25% (the only genetic variation which does exist) is actually fairly evenly distributed.
Yes, Stardust, that’s the one. I’ve been passing it twice a year for over twenty years, and it never seems to get anywhere.
My daughters-in-law are both non caucasian, one is a Blackfoot native American and the other is a black woman. Both are quite dear to me, and even the fundies in the family…against their will in some cases…like them. But the intermarriage thing really gets in the way.
My sons always got along pretty well, and the youngest married, then the oldest. They all came to the home-place to meet up, and my wife had been talking to the ‘girls’ telling them how our sons had rubbed along pretty well together. The youngest said, I did better than you! You married a Blackfoot woman, my wife is ALL black! This got him quite a swat from his wife. Oldest laughed, which got him the death-look and a swat from HIS wife. I didn’t laugh at all, but one of them swatted me, too. I asked “why?” and was told, in tones of disgust, “Well, you’re a GUY!” Physical chastisement because I was a guy? What ethos determined that?
We’re comfortable with our differences, they enhance rather than seperate us.
The artist was rather kind to old, drunk Noah. He’s got quite the physique for a passed-out wino.
Karen, not to mention that according to the story, he is 601 years old at the time!
Sarge - all that swatting sure sounds peaceful! Maybe y’all should except the fact that two given pale faces may be more different than a pale face and someone with a darker skintone or ancestors from a different part of the globe! Variety is good, but grouping it on a false racial basis is misleading and dangerous. The swats amongst your family parallel the crusades amongst civilizations.
Well, Jimmy, it was actually all in fun. I had a stroke about a year ago and then got run down by a car a couple of months after that, and my daughters in law were pretty upset. Among our family race is a foil, actually. My mother is a geneologist and she found a few things out that kind of distressed some of the extended family.
My wife’s father’s family actually came from Fairfax, VA and around Silver Spring and other places in Maryland. For some reason his branch went to Ohio in the 1850s. My wife’s brother said there were the rumors of a “touch of the tar brush” and we found out that it was quite true. Look at my wife and sons and you’d never even guess, but it was, in fact true. In 1963, in that very room, I read in the newspaper about a VA couple who were exiled from the state for an interacial marriage. And, now it is a norm, at least for us. Some things HAVE changed for the better.
I didn’t mean to give the impression that we engaged in assaultive behavior. In neither of their families do they use physical punishment with their kids, and I taught my sons a lot better. I’ve seen violence in ways and quantities that made me want as little to do with it as possible, and communicated this to my sons. Our home is their home, and our contact is an embrace, a supportive hand. Well, as guys, my sons and I do get “the death look” but what married guy doesn’t, usually for the high crime of being a guy? At least once in a while.
i like incest
Tommykey
“not to mention that according to the story, he is 601 years old at the time!”
Well, ya know, people didn’t start falling apart at the seams back then till they hit the ripe old age of 666.
Sarge
Jeez, a stroke and then run over a couple of months later? Just how many gods did you piss off? Glad you made it through though, and hope all is well with you now.
Except for that being a guy thing. Yeah, you’ll get killer looks for that, and you’ll deserve ‘em—just for being a guy! It’s your lot in life; the trade-off for not getting to bleed uncontrollably once a month.