Posted by Meyer on
URL: https://coalpha.arkian.net/Against-Secular-Humanism-tp6944769p6954487.html

Great points, fschmidt.  I have been fascinated by the Tower of Babel story for several years now.  Some see it as a parable about the dangers of urban life-- when a lot of people congregate closely and start working on bigger and more ambitious construction projects, they start worshipping themselves and their own "name", instead of focussing on God, and the result is disaster.  It's a variation on the theme of worshipping false gods.

The prime example in our time would be 9/11.  Think of the incredible technical sophistication, time, effort, and expense, and social coordination that went into building those towers-- yet we couldn't prevent a gang of guys with box cutters from destroying them.  We worshipped the false gods of political correctness, so had to let people in the country and on the planes even when they were obviously hell-bent on destruction.

I think that skyscrapers and other large buildings become instruments of tyranny as well.  The enthusiasm and energy needed to build them cannot be sustained once they are complete, and then the buildings take on a life of their own, demanding high expenditures on maintenance and sheltering a privileged group in comfort at the expense of the larger population.  They are similar to mass-scale political movements such as communism and fascism, which initially improve peoples' lives, but soon become demanding and dictatorial and tyrannical.