benhocking's Journal: Best satire of Intelligent Design yet

MSNBC had a link to this satire of ID. I like it because you could actually see it happening. (For all of those FSM fans out there, sure that's amusing, but this is really, really clever.)

Moo

[Chacham]

it held that the whole array of modern languages was created by God at a single stroke, for the immediate purpose of disrupting humanity's hubristic attempt to build a tower that would reach to heaven:

That is incorrect, and shows ignorance in the Bible. The Bible clearly states beforehand that they had many languages, even being split based on this. See Genesis 10:5 [blueletterbible.org] and 10:31 [blueletterbible.org].

Yeah, i know its a joke, but like the flat earth [slashdot.org] idea, it makes fun of an incorrect belief, making people believe the belief is actua

Re:Moo

[benhocking]

Well, in Genesis 11:1 it says:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

followed in 11:9 by:

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

but from 10:10 we have:

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

So, it is reasonable that the tongues referenced in 10:5 and 10:31 arose as a c

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

They spoke a universal language. Similar to English today.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth:

Confound most definitely does not mean create anew. And comfound is incorrect, the word (balal) means to mix.

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

That is out of order as it tells you his history right away.

Seems like you're grasping at straws :)

[benhocking]

How about 11:6-7

And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

Surely sounds to me like this "mixing" is resulting in them being unintelligible to each other even though they previously all had "one language".

Also, now that we've established that 10 and 11 are

Re:Seems like you're grasping at straws :)

[Chacham]

First, the tower and city of Babel was a collection point of people who were already separated. The verses spoke of how they separated "after the deluge". My reading of that tells me that they split, and got together to build the tower using the universal language. The response was to make then get mixed up in this language, and thus revert to their native language, bringing the whole thing to a halt. I see Esperanto as a more recent attempt at something similar.

Besides, Sodom probably also only spoke one l

A strict translationist viewpoint

[benhocking]

I think if you look at these verses as a strict translationist, the "have all one language" to me suggests that there was only one language, not just that they merely spoke a common language. If that were the case, it seems that it could be communicated more clearly.

As for what was taken away, it was the "one language". From a historical point of view, we know this to be true. Historically, as a new tongue is developed, the old one is forgotten - at least to the new speakers. (In "forgotten" I'm referring

Re:A strict translationist viewpoint

[Chacham]

Ah, but if you are a strict translationist, you will see that it never says that.

The word for language is tounge or "luhshohn".

The word here is "sufuh" which means edge, as in the edge of a sea, though sometimes it means mustache. In context it means language, but that is not the actual translation.

The second part says "oohd'vurim achadim", which is a very strange way of saying one language. It actually means "and things ones" or "one things". If it meant speech, it should have said (IIUC) "udeburim ehchud"