The Tower of Babel: A Tawdry Tale of Divine Bullshit

Confused and Conquered: A Bewildered Mass of Pious Fools, Spurned by a God of Wrath?

Every time atheists listen to silly, credulous biblical stories of cataclysmic epics and ugly tales, we tend to wonder why mature, grown-up adults of the 21st story would actually buy into such deluded drivel, written by uneducated dessert mules of a long-forgotten era.

From the catastrophic global floods of Noah's bullshit tale to the exodus of Jews into the wilderness of the desserts, these supposedly historical and archaeological events have been asserted as truth, and are even cited as God's "convent" to his beloved Creation; i.e us.

One of my least favorite (also the least violent of the biblical XXX stories) tales from the biblical crypt is the tale of The Tower of Babel, long cited by the pious to explain the myriad of languages and dialects that have proliferated the planet.

From the Annals of Genesis

Before we begin to understand the absurdity of such a tawdry, stupid tale, it would be prudent for us to examine what the good book of Gawd has to say with regards to this rather insipid tale of linguistic confusion:

Genesis 11:1-9 :

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

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded.

6 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.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); 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.

Holy Gawd's of Almighty! Here we have a bunch of folks, presumably the remnants of only survivors of the human species, trying to settle down and irk a living.

Alas, these worldly folks get all too comfy for their own good. In their haste to grovel and prostrate before their deity, they had desired to build a tower stretching to the high heavens, as a sort of gratitude for Gawd's good grace. A pity, though, God doesn't like intruders in his heavenly domain when he's taking a siesta (gee, we know he needs to rest on the Sabbath. Cut it out, ye noisy humans!).

Suppose these folks didn't have the benefit of the pneumatic drill, these hardworking folks would have required a hell of an effort to construct this huge monument for Gawk, and all the chipping and mess must have disturbed our Invisible Sky God to no end.

So what does Gawd do? Like an old-fashioned despot and tyrant, he mixes their languages, rendering communication impossible, and cast them out of the land! Hey, at least he didn't smite them with lightning or some other highly creative means of torture and death, like he is usually wont to do! Be grateful and stop making a din, ye noisy humans!

If this story is to be held authentic, one can hardly begin to grasp the sheer narrow-mindedness of this Judaic-Christian God: Not only did he not appreciate the degree of piousness and thoughtfulness of such a beautiful monument, he even chose to "punish" them for their audacity.

The Tower of Babel: Historical Bullshit?

This absurd tale has often been cited as an explanation for the existence of many dialects and languages, and what is interesting is that the tale of the tower's subsequent destruction was not written in Genesis, but in the Book of Jubilees (not in the Biblical Canon), which really is a testimony to the sheer numbers of purported "words of God" being scripted or written by these ancient charlatans.

Given that the earliest records of Jewry was approximately 1200 B.C. Confirmed by the archaeological find of The Merneptah Stele (also known as the Israel Stele or Victory Stele) originally erected by the Ancient Egyptian king Amenhotep III, we can draw the assumption that if such an incident had been witnessed, then one would assume that this incident would have taken place some 3,200-3600 years ago (Add 400 years for margin of error).

Which means, modern languages would have been a singular entity before this time. Assuming this was true, consider the following:

Sumerian tablet, 3,100-2,900 B.C

1. The Sumerians, a distinctly non-Semitic people, were already settling down in southern Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) since 5429 BC, and their Sumerian language had already existed at that time. [1]

The existence of this civilization would have easily debunked the Creationist's myth of a 6000 year old planet (for they would have been around 7000 years back), and evidence suggests that the Sumerians were conquering tribes, meaning to say their language could well be derived from other cultures too!

2. The Xia Dynasty, the earliest Chinese dynasty to have attempted the unification of China (otherwise known as the Middle Kingdom), ruled arbitrarily from 2070 BC–1600 BC,as described in the Records of the Grand Historian and unofficial Bamboo Annals, lasting some seventeen kings over fourteen generations 431 to 471 years. That would predate the existence of the Xia dynasty way before the Jews had even acquired their racial identity.

If such glorious, ancient civilizations, each with their own customs and languages, took place long before the first Torah was ever scribed, how does one begin to account for such a historically fraudulent story???

Invading God's Territory? Man and Hist Erstwhile Technology

Unfortunately for the good Gawd, in today's world of technology, Man is slowly infringing upon Gawd's private airspace.

Gawd hates Aircrafts???

We have herculean skyscrapers towering and pushing ever higher into the skies. Jet planes of all shapes of sizes, flying at supersonic speeds, create such deafening noises that would have put God out of his nap even on Sabbath days, and we are not even done yet.

We have Hubble Telescopes and all manner of military and commercial satellites in space, and enough probes to scour planets for rocks and signs of life.

In fact, one could safely speculate that Man has intruded into what was once God's sacred territory. And if he's going to get mad with one stupid Tower, then my presumption is that he ought to inflict worst physical punishments than mere speech confusion.

Such tales from the biblical crypt serve as a reminder to us that old scriptures of these nature are generally mere religious hogwash: They come from a pious era when anything that is remotely attached to higher learning was deemed as a blasphemy and a challenge to the powerful presence of a patriarchal God.

To regard such biblical nonsense as Gospel Truth is the equivalent of talking about the virtues of a flat Earth. It is high time that humans, as a rational, level-headed species, reject such infantile, servile beliefs and consign them to the annals of our history books.


[1]John Nicholas Postgate (1994). Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. Routledge (UK).