Myth as history

So here's the deal: A beloved king in ancient times knows that he's getting old and liable to bite the dust any day. He wants to assure that his oldest son succeeds him, and to give his people some kingly advice. So, he says to his son, "Get everyone together tomorrow and I'll talk to them." Now, we have no idea what time of day this occurred, but let's say about 10 a.m., the start of the business day.
So, on the next day, all the people of the kingdom gathered, and there were a lot of them, so many that the king had to order a tower built so that he could speak from it. How big was the tower? We don't know. Let's say, though, that it was 12 feet tall and big enough to hold one king.
With me so far? Okay, so in come the people. They came in droves, they came in hordes, they came in legions. How many? We don't know, but they set up their tents facing the king's tower, and gathered together as families. So, the patriarch's tent would be there, in all its patriarchal splendor, then the tents of the sons, the sons of sons, the sons of sons of sons, and so on. I don't know where the daughters were -- they're not mentioned.
Now, there were so many people, that they couldn't all hear the king, not even from his tower, not even if he used a megaphone. So, he stationed people throughout the crowd with paper and pencil (or the equivalent) to take down the words the king spake and distribute them to the crowd. The king gave a bang-up sermon and named his oldest son as successor, a good time was had by all, and the people went home satisfied and edified.
But there are some trouble spots in the story. The way the story is told, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing. The king talking to his son and sort of hatching the plot on the fly. That being the case, here's what had to happen in the space of about one day:
- The king had to get word to his people to assemble. There being no telephone or radio service, no roads, it meant runners out to all the segments of the kingdom. Since it's a kingdom and not a city or a duchy or a barony, we can assume there were a lot of people. Were there runners hanging around, waiting for the king do tell them what to do? No, because the king prided himself on not being that kind of a king. So, first he had to hustle up some messengers. Whom would he choose? Professional messengers? Aren't any. So, he's got to find someone to round up the messengers. He's got to write out instructions to everybody on assembling: time, place, order of encampment, and so on.
- The people have to assemble. So, first, they've got to get the message. Then, they have to pack and make provisions for their flocks and herds and fields. I mean, you don't just drop everything and take off to see the king. So, herds taken care of, tents packed, family assembled, the families have to journey to where the king is giving a speech, set up camp, get dinner cooked and eaten and the kids to bed.
How long would that take? Let's say that the kingdom is a small one -- fifty by fifty miles, and that the king's tower was smack dab in the middle. So, starting from 10 a.m., the king has to write and make copies of his orders, say one hour; find some runners (he'd need, what? 50?), two hours; get them equipped, girded, mounted, given food, drink, and the messages, another two hours. So, it would be a minimum of five hours before they even started out. And that's assuming a bureaucracy more efficient than is really possible. Then, the riders have to ride, run to the ends of the kingdom, seek out the patriarchs, give them the messages, and ride home, exhausted. The patriarchs have to gather their people, etc. etc. etc., and make it back to the king's city before nightfall, in time to set up their tents. And these people are either walking or riding in carts, which have a top speed of three miles an hour downhill in a tail wind.
See what I mean? I can't be done. What I've described is a process that would take a week under the best of circumstances, and more likely three.
Yet, there they were the next day.
And what about the scribes, the paper, the writing, the copying, of the speech? And the tower. Let's not forget about the tower. If the king scared up builders and got them started right away, how long would it take? Well, first he'd have to find enough builders. Then, they'd have to get the lumber, probably cut it as there were no Lowes stores anywhere around. Then, they'd have to put it together. Could it be done in one third of one day? Maybe. But I've seen movies of people trying to build things like siege towers, and it's a more-than-one-day job, and they did have a Lowes nearby.
Yet the account is firm -- it happened in the space of about 24 hours. Heck, let's say 48 hours. It's still not nearly enough time. I mean, the logistics of the note-taking themselves are formidable.
Yet people buy the story. As history. Not as myth, allegory, legend, or parable. As history. I just can't go along.

Sex Education

The Utah legislature is considering a bill that would allow schools to dispense with sex education altogether. I have no idea why they would be doing this, since there is no evidence whatsoever that sex ed influences kids to have sex. Actually, they're going to do that anyway, regardless of whether they learn about sex in the classroom or in the back seat of a car.
The mentality the legislature seems to be displaying is this: Someone asks a question --"How can we protect our young people from the dangers of sexual indulgence?" The legislature's answer seems to be, "Let's keep them in complete ignorance!"
Wow, what a stroke of genius! I'd like to advise the legislature to take it one step further. Maybe we could make it a law that women should wear a garment that covers them from head to foot. We'll leave armholes, of course, and a slit to see out of, but if that doesn't protect our young people, then perhaps we'll have to move on to chastity belts.
Sex education has much to recommend it, and nothing to suggest that it isn't a help in people's lives. To me, this proposed legislation makes the legislators, in the words of Professor Fate, "Thimble-headed gherkins."

Chariots in the red sea

I recently ran across a spate of items on the famous crossing of the Red Sea, when the Hebrews crossed on dry land, and "Pharaoh's army got drownded," so Mary don't you weep.
It seems that an amateur archaeologist claims to have found chariot wheels at the bottom of the Red Sea, which proves that the Biblical account is true.
Whoa there! Some comments:
1. First of all, there is no evidence that there is anything at the bottom of the sea at all. There are photos, of what could possibly be wheels, but no actual artifacts.
2. Even if there were chariot wheels found, what would that prove? It would prove that there were chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea. It does not follow that they were Pharaoh's, nor that they were chasing Israelites, nor that they were part of an army.
If we are to accept the Biblical account, I suspect we would need to find the following:
- Lots and lots of chariots. After all, it was an army that got drowned.
- Evidence that the chariots were Egyptian, Military, and period appropriate.
With evidence like this in hand, I might be inclined to accept that the account could be true.

Miracles

I've never liked miracles; they seem to violate the natural order of things. But sometimes, an account of a miracle does more than that; it makes me mad.
For instance, there's a miracle recorded in the Bible. Seems Jesus and some of the Apostles are walking past a man who was born blind. One Apostle asks, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The answer was that no one had sinned. The man was born blind so that he might help demonstrate the power of God. Wherewith, the blind man was healed, and could see again.
This miracle is often quoted to prove a theological point: a person can sin before he or she is born -- ergo, they lived before this life. Because I focused on this point, I for years overlooked what is now to me the salient point of the story. It's this: A man was forced to live for about 30 years in darkness, unable to run or play as a kid, unable to learn or ply a trade, unable to see the sunrise or the sunset, to read, to recognize the faces of his family -- all this so that someone could pull a stunt and impress the rubes.
This strikes me a both callous and a bit of an overkill. I mean, couldn't he simply be born with a wart on his face, a not unattractive wart, that could be removed miraculously? I can see the scene now: "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born with a not entirely unattractive wart?" The answer, "No one. He was born with a wart so that the power of God could be manifest in a non-cancer-causing operation."
Same result -- the rubes are impressed, the guy gets better looking, and all is much more humane.

Imaginary Friends

When I was growing up in Palmer, Alaska, there was a kid in school who had an imaginary friend. He'd walk around the playground during recess talking to this friend. He'd talk, then listen, then shake his head or nod or gesture, and reply. This is supposed to be a harmless aberration in kids, but an aberration nonetheless. In adults, it's considered to be not so harmless (Unless it's some guy talking on a bluetooth).
But, 'cha know, I have a host of imaginary friends. Everybody does. We talk about them as if they are real, and I think we realize only dimly that they are not. My friends include Sherlock Holmes, for instance, Long John Silver, Mary Poppins, Hamlet, Elizabeth Bennett, Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, Tugboat Annie, Harry Bosch, Bertie Wooster, Frodo Baggins, James Bond, Little Dorrit, Huckleberry Finn, Uncle Remus, The Scarlet Pimpernell, and Lord Peter Wimsey.
I care about these people. I worry when their lives don't go right. I rejoice in their triumphs. I read "Pride and Prejudice" once every two years or so, and am always tickled to death when Lizzy and D'Arcy finally get together.
I mention this because I'm worried about one of my favorite TV characters. She was shot at the end of the season last year, and it looked like she died -- right there on camera. I'm pretty sure it was a cliffhanger, but I can't be certain. What if she's really dead?
There's a part of me that realizes she's a figment of someone's imagination; that the actress speaks the lines she's been given. But there's also a part of me that wonders where to send the flowers.

A New Religion

I've been thinking about starting a new religion. I want it to be a success, and I haven't had any visits from angels, spirits, deities, or other religion-founding sources, so I guess I'm on my own. I've thus been forced to think about what the requirements for a good religion might be, and I've come up with a few:
Doctrine: Of course, you've got to have a doctrine. What the doctrine is really doesn't matter much. What does matter is that the doctrine has to be a mix of how-to-live-a-good-life advice with some really hard-to-believe tenets. I mean, if a religion were based on science, it wouldn't be a religion; it would be science. Now a lot of doctrinal points that are hard to swallow are already taken (virgin birth, earth 6000 years old, day of the sabbath really important), so I can either go ahead and use someone else's doctrine or invent my own. Best would be to invent my own. I can borrow from science fiction, I guess. The number of outlandish doctrines should be kept to a manageable number -- three is a good one, I think. And remember, the emphasis should be on the outlandish, but there should be enough of the live-a-good-life that the membership can actually exist on the planet. Remember what happened to the Shakers and the Jonestown group.
A Conduit: The best religions have a pipeline to deity. Religions that rely on sacred texts alone tend to splinter and to fight with each other. A charismatic leader, on the other hand, can shift doctrine to suit the needs of a changing world. He (or she) can get a revelation that we all need to eat more broccoli, and voila! the church is healthier. The leader also becomes a magnet for new converts. Let's face it, a leader with lots of ethos beats sound doctrine every time.
Rigor: Those religions which demand a lot of their people seem to thrive. From those to whom much is given, much is required (That's a quote but I don't know if I got it right; hence no quotation marks). People don't value something that's free. So, in my religion I will require both money and time. The money because even religious leaders need Ferraris, and the time because it keeps people occupied and out of trouble.
Isolation: Not total isolation, the way some religions separate themselves from the "world," but a degree of separation. One of the best ways to do this is to teach your people to distrust anything that is printed, broadcast, aired, said, written, or mimed by any "unapproved" source. This has two benefits. First, it can be used to keep believers away from annoying counter arguments and from science in general. Second, it creates a category of sin, which means that curious people will also be feeling guilty about it.
Sin: The concept of sin is a wonderful one for religions. Let's face it; you can't have a religion without sin if you want to survive. Sins don't exist naturally. That is, there is no such thing as a sin in nature. In nature, there are acts and there are consequences. So, both sin and law are inventions. The neat thing about sin is that it isn't subject to the will of the people, the way laws can be. If the religious leader says, "This is a sin," then it's a sin. End of story.
A mark: Really good religions have something about them that tells non-believers who they are. Best is some item of clothing that is an announcement. A hat, a hairstyle, a tattoo -- these are all nice. This gives the members of the congregation a sense that they are set apart from (translation: better than) other people.
Just six simple things, and you're on your way to world domination.

Faith

I've been thinking about faith lately. The Apostle Paul said, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen." Which sounds kind of neat, except that when you examine it closely, it ends up not meaning much. Exactly what is "the substance of things hoped for?" The other half, "the evidence of things not seen" makes a little more sense, except that I'd say that the evidence of things not seen is -- evidence. We can't see the back side of the moon, but we accept that it's there, based on, what? Faith. No, I'd say that we have faith based on evidence.

And yet the idea of evidence-based faith runs counter to most religious thought today. One religious leader said, "Faith precedes the miracle," which I interpret to mean, if you believe hard enough, it will come into being. Kind of a twist on the "If you build it they will come" mantra from otherworldly movies like "Field of Dreams."

So, I'd like to posit that there are three types of faith.

Faith A is faith that you have because of the evidence. What the Greeks called "logos." When my doctor told me I had blockage of the cardiac artery and showed me the X-ray, I believed. I had faith. Some people differentiate between knowledge and faith, but that's a false dichotomy. If you believe because of the evidence, you have Faith A. In a court case, both sides present evidence, and one side engenders more faith than the other. Then you get a verdict.

Faith B is a faith that you have in the absence of evidence. This is what most people think of as faith, and perhaps what Paul had when he started his maundering definition. I believe in God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or Mohamed, or Zoroaster, or astrology or the Tarot, or tea leaves, even though there is no real evidence that the information is true.

Faith C is a faith that you have in spite of the evidence. The belief that the earth is 6,000 years old, for instance, or that God created a certain number of animal species which has remained constant, that there was a world-wide flood -- you get the picture. This faith is the scary one. It's one thing to believe in a 6,000 year-old earth when all you have to go on is some old texts, but it's quite another when you can walk out in your back yard and see the folding in the earth that took place a good sight longer ago than a measly six grand years. In order to keep your belief, you have to reject not only the accumulated evidence, but pretty much rational thought itself. The work that people will go through to explain away data is awesome. One person explained to me in solemn detail how the layers in the earth's crust were the effect of a giant earthquake that shook things up and made them naturally sort themselves out into layer. Sir William of Occam is twirling in his grave.