Miscellanea Agnostica

Most religions have symbols that can be used to denote them. Christianity has the cross, Judaism a star of David, Hinduism the “om” syllable in Devanagari, Sikhism has its khanda, and so on. The various kinds of freethought (Atheism, Agnosticism, etc.) don’t really have a symbol, however. I encountered this problem in creating this site; it would have been nice to offer a nice distinct logo or even a favicon, but nothing really worked.

This is not something that hasn’t received attention over the years, and various groups have adopted their own logos, but none has really gained acceptance as an overall symbol.

But PeterM at the Effing the Ineffable blog has an interesting proposal:

The magnifying glass. Simply a circle and a stick. It can be drawn roughly or precisely, it can be incorporated into other designs, or it can be rendered in three dimensions – as jewellery, for instance, or sculpture.

The magnifying glass (we could refer to it as the rationalist lens) represents rational enquiry, scientific investigation and curiosity about the natural world. Like the Christian fish, it’s easy to reproduce in two or three dimensions, formally or informally. It can be executed as calligraphy, typography or jewellery. It’s simple to remember and easy to explain. And, if you’re of a subversive turn of mind or otherwise need to conceal your affiliations, it makes (like the fish in its day) an excellent piece of clandestine graffiti.

It’s definitely worth consideration! Think about it!

Has the Discovery Channel become the Religion Channel?

Tonight I saw listed as airing on Discovery Channel a show called Noah’s Ark: The True Story. Folks, there is absolutely nothing “true” about Noah’s Ark. There never was a global flood, there was no ark that contained two of every species on earth, humanity was not saved and preserved by 8 people led by the righteous Noah. It never happened. Nothing about the story is true. Not one speck. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nichts. Nijako.

Of course, the Hebrew scribes who wrote about “Noah” in the 6th or 5th century BCE did not really make the story up, as might be claimed given the story’s ahistorical nature. They actually had a source, that being a story that had been told in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) for perhaps millennia already. The best-attested prior version of this story is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh; we know it from 7th century BCE tablets which in turn were based on legends dating back as far as the 14th century BCE, and were written in Akkadian, the language of Babylon (once ruled by the famous Hammurabi). The flood tale in Gilgamesh is a story-within-a-story, told by the man who survived the flood, named Utnapishtim. But even the ancient Babylonians didn’t make up their flood story … they, too, had a source, which we know from a few fragments in the Sumerian language, as well as mentions of the tale from Greek authors who heard it in classical times. Its hero is Ziusudra, priest-king of the city of Shuruppak.

Nothing about the Noah-Flood story as found in Genesis is a “historical” record. It was, rather, a very old legend even in the Hebrews’ time, which their priesthood used for its metaphorical value — and we have every reason to suppose that previous versions of the story, as told among the Babylonians and Sumerians before them, also had been used for its metaphorical value.

Humanity desperately needs to get over its compulsion to confuse these morality-tales with actual history — because they are not history, they never were intended to be history, and they never will become history, no matter how ardently anyone looks for the Ark. It’s a story, nothing more. Just a story.

We certainly do not need the Discovery Channel — known for its science content, including the excellent show Mythbusters — to provide us with documentaries pretending to tell us “the True Story” about something that never fucking happened!

If you wish to believe that Noah existed, that YHVH saved him and his family from ruin; that he, his wife, his sons, and all their wives gathered aboard an ark, along with two of every animal on earth; and together they all survived a global flood lasting 40 days — well, you go right ahead. Just don’t expect me to accept it as true, and for cryin’ out loud, stop telling everyone else that they should, too, just because you do! Your belief, no matter how deep or sincere, does not equate with veracity. It just doesn’t.

And we sure as hell don’t need television channels usually dedicated to scientific content, to be peddling religion, of all things!