Rainbows and Genocidal Maniacs
As some of you may be aware, this (June) is National Pride Month. This is a time when people of alternative sexualities usually gather and have marches and such. This is done first to increase awareness that yeah, straight people, there are a lot of Us out there, along with a lot of straight people who support Us and acknowledge Our basic humanity. The second reason that this is done is to celebrate and acknowledge the progress that We have made over the years in becoming accepted and acknowledged in modern society.
June specifically was chosen because June 28, 1969, is the date of the police raid in Greenwich Village at the Stonewall Inn. This sparked protests and riots amoung the homosexual and queer-friendly population, and is generally believed to mark the beginning the modern gay liberation movement. I’m writing this in 2019, so this year will be the 50th anniversary of those events.
This article really has very little to do with any of that.
What I’m talking about today are rainbows — not the rainbows used as a symbol of the LGBT+ movement but rainbows you see in the sky after, you know, it rains. And as for genocidal maniacs, I’m not talking about people like Hitler, who wanted to wipe out homosexuals along with Jews, gypsies, blacks and … well, anybody he didn’t like being alive, but I’m talking rather about one of the most prolific genocidal maniacs in (fictional) history: the Abrahamic god.
I suppose that one might argue that Darth Vader is a more prolific genocidal maniac than this god character; he destroyed the entire planet of Alderaan with the Death Star, along with countless other people and races over the course of the stories (plus the fanfic and implied backstories). The Abrahamic god only wiped out one planet one time and even then he let a few people survive so they could be his slaves. (Which, honestly, didn’t work out so well for him.)
Still, I’m going to stick with the Abrahamic god as the most prolific fictional serial killer and genocidal maniac in fiction, if only because he is one of the few fictional characters that inspire real-life, flesh-and-blood people to go around killing other real-life, flesh-and-blood people in unheard of multitudes.
But let’s get back to this rainbow thing.
First let’s deal with the flood myth. And yes, I said myth. Because it never floodin’ happened. (See what I did there?)
Sure, you can find articles on the Internet that talk about all the evidence for a worldwide flood just as it is described in the book of Genesis. The first problem is: that’s not science. If you take a story and go looking for “proof” that it’s true, that is by definition not science. There are also articles on the Internet that talk about all the evidence that the earth is flat or hollow, that aliens have infiltrated Our governments, that wind turbines are hazardous to your health, that vaccines and pasteurization are horrible, etc.
You can easily detect the Abrahamic (usually Christain (sic)) influence because they’re always talking about how it happened “just as described in Genesis.” It’s never said to have happened “just as described in Mesopotamian mythology” or “just as described in Mesoamerican mythology.” It’s always used to support the cray cray Christain coco-puff confabulation.
But still, let’s take a step back for just a minute. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument (and at the risk of inducing skull-splitting migraines and convulsive laughter) that a world-wide flood actually did occur. Well, ok, so that part of the Bible is (or would be) true. The Bible also mentions other things that happened to be true, like there really is a nation called Israel and there really is a city there called Jerusalem. That provides absolutely no evidence for the existence of the Abrahamic god, nor any evidence for the Mesopotamian, Mesoamerican, Chinese, or Norse gods. (Or any other gods, just to be absolutely clear on this.)
Now We can return to reality.
Rain. The flood myth says that it didn’t rain before the flood but there was some sort of mist that came up and watered the plants. So what about potable water? Animals, such as humans, drink water and actually are comprised primarily of water. Did that come up out of the ground too? Of course, the Ecology Global Network (and most other, you know, science-type people) say that rain was pretty common about 4 billion years ago. Preceding the time frame of the flood myth by about … well, 4 billion years.
We finally come to what I, personally, think is the most interesting (and frankly nonsensical) parts of the Genesis flood myth: the rainbow. According to the Christain Bible:
Genesis 9:13-I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
9:14 -And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
9:15-And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
9:16-And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
Verse 9:14 isn’t accurate, since you can see clouds and not see a rainbow. Verse 9:15–16 seem to indicate that the Abrahamic god has some sort of Alzheimer’s, since the rainbow serves to “remind” him not to kill everybody again (with a flood, other ways of killing everybody are still on the table.) One might think, if one were even remotely moral, that wiping out nearly the entire population of a planet … is not a good idea.
Shall We talk about the rainbow now? Many people aren’t aware of this or just don’t think of it, but one of the reasons that the rainbow looks like, well, a bow is that We’re usually on the earth when We see it. The horizon cuts off a part of it. This picture shows what a rainbow looks like from an airplane:
The most interesting (or ludicrous) part of the myth, though, is that nobody ever seems to ask: WTF is the Abrahamic god doing with a bow in the first place?
Is the god using it to hunt? What is being hunted? Does it eat what it kills, and if so what actually does the god eat? Does it kill for sport? I think a Thanos-style finger snap would be more efficient and less time-consuming. Besides, if the god is omni-everything like the Christains say, then it’s always going to hit the target. Rather takes the fun out of it, wouldn’t you think?
So, rainbows, flood myths, and fictional genocidal maniacs aside, I hope that you have a pleasant Sunday!
