Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Human Default Settings: Evil

Noah's sons soon multiplied.

♠ Increased genetic disorders
♠ Fluctuating facial asymmetry
♠ Lower birth rate
♠ Higher infant mortality
♠ Slower growth rate
♠ Smaller adult size
♠ Loss of immune system function

These are some of the results of inbreeding. Is this why we live less these days and the people in Genesis lives over a few hundred years?


Anyways, people soon think that they can be superior to God. They started building a city so high that they would prove the previous. God decides to make different languages so that they wouldn't be able to communicate. The city was never completed. The people all separated. It is told that the people who went towards the East started eating raw fish and got funny looking eyes. Just kidding.

This is taking to long. Let me speed up. Abram and Sarai go to Egypt, but are soon kicked out. They go to Canaan, where he separates with Lot. God says something about that he will have as many sons. Abram marries Hagar and gets a son: Ishmael.

God visits Abram. (Sarai is now Sarah. Abram is Abraham) He says that Sarai will soon have a son. Anyways, he says that he will destroy Sodom for the people their were sinful (if that's a word). If there's ten righteous people he will forgive all of Sodom. Yet, there were only four: Lot and his family. They run away from Soom with Lot and his family while Sodom burns behind them. Lot's wife becomes salt for not listening to the angels who told them to not look back at Sodom.

Sarah has her son as promised. He is called Isaac. Due to fights between Hagar and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael are sent out. On the verge of death from lack of water, God helps Hagar and Ishmael. Ishmael soon marries an Egyptian woman and becomes the leaer of a tribe.


Chapters ten through twenty-one were interesting. First of all, it explained the spread of people and the formation of languages. It was weird that the story of Babel, which is famous to represent the evil of humans, was not more than a few verses.

It was kind of sad when Hagar, along with Ishmael, were sort of kicked out. It wasn't all that fair, since Ishmael was Abraham's first son. Well, as they say. Life ain't fair. But whatever, they get a happy ending.

Another interesting thing I foundout as that God usually didn't punish someone directly, or at least, not everyone. As seen from the following quote, "And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram's wife." (Book of Genesis, Ch.12 - 17), he plagued the Pharoah's house. In Babel, the language was changed. Why didn't he just use his psychic powers and kill the bad people? The conclusion that I got was that although humans may be 'evil', God still loves them. In the case of Sodom, Lot was saved for being 'righteous', and in the flood before, Noah was saved.

You might be wondering why my title is 'Human Default Settings: Evil'. This is because no matter how good people are (like Noah), they somehow get evil and defy God. It's like as if their default option setting is to be naturally evil, and sooner of later, they go back to that setting. Just like Cain, the corrupt people before the flood, and the people from Sodom.

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