Let's cut to the chase. As a student of science, I wasn't liberated, rather, mortified to discover that my idea of creation was mired in the muck of scientific inaccuracy. The so-called emancipating truth advocated by the bible which itself is so fraught with scientific error, sets nobody free. Au contraire, it hands you the shackles to incarcerate yourself. The book must be rejected lock-stock-and-barrel, along with the accompanying prescription for outdated behavioural practices, such as the prohibition on gay or exo-marital relationships, as well as its unverifiable explanations for natural phenomena, like the refraction of light.
Was there really a conversation between God and Noah over how the rainbow came about or is it the fantasy of a great storyteller around a desert campfire? Did rainbows not exist previously? So before the life-destroying great flood, refraction of light by water was a non-existent phenomenon? Let's cut the crap. The separation of light into its component frequencies when it travels through a prism, each of which is perceived as a different colour, is not an endorsement of the story of Noah. Rather, it is a refutation. It makes that story all the more far-fetched, the stuff of childrens' fairy tales. It is far more plausible that refraction of light was going on for as long as light had its present properties, and water bent it the way it currently does. The fact that we can measure the speed of light and we can see stars suggests that light has been around for a very long time. Why? We have a good experiment to measure the speed of light and can compute that it takes a hell of a long time for it to travel from those stars to our eyes and telescopes. Since the Hubble space telescope, we can see stars even further away. Water pre-dates life on earth, no question about it. Before mankind, when water first encountered light at an angle, did it not bend the light? Did a different isotope of water exist that did not refract light? Let's leap forward in time and make the safe assumption that the physical properties of water that mankind was drinking immediately before the Noah story and during its flood is the same that is now in our oceans and atmosphere. The question is whether the pre-Noah water vapour refracted light the way it now does, thereby creating the phenomenon of rainbows.
Coining yet another cliche that makes one yawn, indeed "life is full of choices" and it is all terribly cool, teenage-speak ad-infinitum-cum-nauseum notwithstanding. But dragging the discourse outside of the 10th grade, exchange student level, for those of us who live outside the bubble of the k.i.s.s. formula, for whom Occam's Razor ceases to apply, let us say that we're at the crossroads where one of those choices is between the explanation in Genesis for the appearance of rainbows, and an inclination that the rainbow existed ever since water and light occupied the same space aeons before any cellular organism ever appeared on the planet. Occam's Razor wants us to pick the simplest explanation, namely, a father figure who was sorry for beating the kids so he broke the whip and put up a sign promising never to do it again. That is not really an explanation in any meaningful sense of the word but let's run with it. Let's say we reached our crossroads because a biblical advocate demanded that we either believe this story as fact, or face dire consequences of an eternal nature. At that point, our choice to keep it simple becomes shattered. This is no longer a matter of simple choice, rather a matter of choice based on the analysis of significant evidence.
If you flout the defence of the preacher's version of events, citing the texts he does, you get miserably drawn out of the bubble too. It becomes a little late to put the genie back into the bottle. Once you drag physics into the equation, no humour intended, you lose the option to k.i.s. but the choice to adopt the last 's' is, well, the choice that is so necessary to remain in the bubble. How a person justifies exploiting the products of science that so contradict his beliefs, for example electronic gadgets that takes for granted the speed of electrons in wire, which relies on the calculation of the speed of light that so easily refutes the biblical claim of the age of the universe, or medicines that need the theory of evolutionary biology rather than miraculous creation for their design, begs the question of how seriously he wants to be taken.
Rainbows were in the sky either before Noah's flood or after. If we have a bias for when exactly rainbows occurred, then either bias requires faith because neither is provable. In other words, it would be equally disingenuous to pick one over the other. But what if we can observe today that refraction is a phenomenon in space? What if we can detect light of different colours that has, beyond a shadow of doubt been bent by water that exists in copious quantity in space and travelled for millions of years? If we could do that, then we must do two things: first, draw the conclusion that rainbows happened before Noah's time, and second, kick the Genesis version of rainbows in the proverbial nuts. The faith necessary to believe the Noah tale becomes more demanding. You would have to brandish your faith in the face of evidence to the contrary. Kudos to you if you can do that without embracing lies and in the same breath suggesting that truth is liberating. I used to possess that kind of mindless faith but not any longer. I would have to accept that the other explanation is more compelling, possibly that rainbows are not even unique to planet Earth, flying further in the face of the notion that rainbows have some kind of humane purpose. Technically, the recent massive tsunami that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives was not a flooding of the entire planet that covered all mountains including Everest (the way Genesis describes the conditions, so the regions where Manhattan or Sydney or London or Durban are today were 30,000 ft below sea level during the flood just 6,000 years ago, which subsided within Noah's lifetime until 40 days later he was back in the good old Middle East where he was when the rains began, in a boat full of animals and none of the navigation equipment we have now), but to the victims it was no less a flood of catastrophic proportion. Personally, I would be doubting the significance of the rainbow at this point or the evil duality of the deity that promised safety from demise by water. I have to reject that rainbows started occurring recently within the past 6,000 years. Does it require faith to believe the scientific explanation. Perhaps, but not the truth-defying kind that accepts some far-fetched fable. In the wake of compelling evidence, we certainly cannot attribute reason for the presence or rainbows to regret over a genocidal deluge by the deity. A certain awkwardness now presents itself. We have to question the claim that there is a correlation between our need for a flood-free world and ordinary physical phenomena. We might even have to question our notions that other phenomena like volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis have any bearing on the morality of our species. In this particular instance, if we can make a half-way reasonable argument that rainbows pre-date cellular life, it stands to reason that the biblical claim that rainbows appeared because of some sort of pact between god and mankind becomes dubious at best. In a court of law, if the credibility of a witness is brought into question, it becomes very very difficult to take anything else he says seriously. The author of Genesis upon which the rest of the Bible, Koran and Torah are based is just such a witness, and not because I say it, but because an entire jury of my sceptical peers says it.
Personally, I love science fiction and indulge horror films for sheer entertainment and shock value. I always find it a little odd that the creators of those bodies of fiction have to post disclaimers just in case some brainless viewer misconstrues demon possessed teenage girls, hungry zombies and haemoglobin deprived vampires as real. But when I leave the theatre, I know my fact from my fiction. In the case of the Bible, maybe they didn't realise we'd get sucked in the way we have and hence forgot the disclaimers. I have to say that the authors of that carefully constructed compendium that we call the Holy Bible stretches my incredulity to unacceptable levels. If you can shut out incontrovertible evidence, slap on the blinkers and straight-line it through life, more power to you. I'm not wired that way.
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