And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is just the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
Genesis 11:6-7

One of my religion professors liked to joke that the Tower of Babel incident was the "big bang" of European civilization. Okay, so that's not the greatest joke in the world. It's still kinda funny.

Whenever I'm paging through the Bible, I tend to substitute "the guys in power at the time" for "the Lord." It's not a perfect fit, but it works pretty well, especially in this case. The tribal warlords of ancient Mesopotamia were just beginning to realize the power of written language. Indeed, the earliest human scribblings known today are Mesopotamian cuneiform. In fact, the oldest recipe in existence is one for beer, hardly surprising since the Mesopotamians were among the first people to domesticate wild grasses into cultivated crops like wheat and barley.

The lesson I get from the Tower of Babel story is that "the Lord" worried about the power of people working together toward a common purpose. This is not the stance of an awesome and all-power god. It is the stance of a petty thief who holds power by threat of violence and nothing else.

Sound like someone we all know?

Temporal political questions aside, I like this story because it illustrates why so many powerful people (including the Prez, the folks in Congress and just about every leader of consequence in the world) fears the Internet and other modern forms of mass-communication. China and Iran and other totalitarian states are changing--slowly, but surely--because their people have access to the Internet and satellite television and radio and cell phones and everything else. The Soviet Union fell largely because the people finally figured out what the hell was going on, and more importantly, that their leaders were powerless. Okay, so a massive economic collapse has a wee bit to do with that as well, but still. A free press, and more importantly, the free dissemination of information (truth or lies; it doesn't matter which) truly does put the power of the world in the hands of the people.

This isn't to say that governments still don't get away with lies. They do, but the truth catches up to them much faster than it used to. Remember how long it took to establish the fiction of the Gulf of Tonkin incident? The lies surrounding the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch--a much less obfuscatable story, I'll admit--fell apart in days.

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring libraries to install filtering software on their computers. This means, among other things, that those library patrons who don't request that the filters be turned off won't be able to access SUIT columns. Filtering software generally locks out the A&A web site because every once in a while some of us use a few "bad" words. The vast majority of sites "filtered" don't involve porn; they just use language (not necessarily obscenity, either) that some people don't like.

For another example, look at the consternation over cloning, an act which much more closely resembles the Tower of Babel. If we master cloning and, more importantly, manipulation of DNA, then indeed there is very little that we cannot accomplish as a civilization. John Cramer wrote a great novel called Einstein's Bridge in which the characters learned to "read and write." That is, they learned to read and write DNA so as to manipulate matter to suit their needs. The questions surrounding such a talent are immense. But we must ask ourselves: Who is trying to stop such advances, and why?

Religious fundamentalists of all types have the most to lose if scientists unlock some of the great secrets of the universe. Their rigid views on religion do not allow their sacred texts to serve as living documents, but rather fixed dogma. Folks who like to call themselves "strict constructionists" when it comes to the Constitution share the same boat. Some people cling to literal interpretations of their sacred texts, even when their error becomes increasingly obvious. For example, a literal interpretation of Genesis just doesn't cut it. We already know that the universe is pretty damned old (slightly more aged than 7,000 years, at the very least), and the "big bang" theory has pretty much been proven correct by astronomical observation. However, no one knows what caused the big bang, and I don't have a quarrel with those who want to say God did. I'm really not that concerned by claims that God determined the laws of the universe. Once we're talking about true elemental forces, it's really all semantics. These are powers far beyond human grasp.

Recognizing the meekness of human achievement and cultivating a sense of humility is one of the best things religion can teach. I get the same thing by pondering the immensity of the universe. Is that so different from pondering the immensity of an all-powerful, all-knowing God? Not really.

So back to that act of vandalism in the land of Shinar on the plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Any god who would stoop to tear down the Tower of Babel would be so short-sighted as to appear stupid. After all, every year fewer and fewer languages are spoken. More and more people are communicating with each other in ways no human imagined just 50 years ago. An all-powerful, all-knowing god would have been able to see the events of today coming. And it wouldn't have stomped some fifty-foot ziggurat into the dust.

James Morrow paints a much better picture of God in Towing Jehovah. His God kills himself so as to set the human race free.

Now there's an act of true humanity.

Jon Worley ponders the imponderable. Then he quits watching baseball and gets on with his life.