Methuselah - The Man

excuse me, do you just like arguing?

Tonight, for the weekend we being a two part story that will end tomorrow. The first part is about a man named Methuselah who appears in the Book of Genesis and presents as the oldest person who ever lived. The second part will be about something else named Methuselah. For me, the "genesis" of today's story could only have started on social media which I RARELY frequent.

Methuselah per the Bible is the longest-lived person ever clocking in at 969 years. I can think of no better way to characterize objective and personal truth.

The Inspiration

For people who were not with me at the beginning of my posting (30-SEP-2021), one of my earliest posts started on 04-OCT-2021. While it has some rough edges and the style and format of my posts have refined, I enjoyed writing it more than anything else I have posted. It is LONG and has four parts. I raise it here because the inspiration of tonight’s post, as I described above, social media, was the same driver for that long series of posts in the beginning. I am most proud of that four-part story titled "How To Tame Your Lizard".

A while back I did a post titled “Age is Just a Number”. The post was about how we estimate the age of things on Earth. This has particular relevance to the posts this weekend. Finally, another post I enjoyed writing was titled “Truth”. The point of that post concerned different types of truth and how personal truths can conflict with objective truth. Tonight I am going to start down the path (I’ll finish next time) about something objective, namely one of the oldest living things on Earth and we call it Methuselah. What motivated this topic? The title Methuselah has two applications that I know of, one an objective truth and the other a personal truth.

I am not a Facebook user but do receive messages on a neighborhood information site which often descends into inane gossip and foolishness. If I am interested in the number of people “seeing” mountain lions in their backyard in Minnesota in January, it is the place to get more information. The other evening, a resident was querying for interest in visiting the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. This will take us peripherally to the personal truth of a man named Methuselah who lived to the ripe old age of 969. I wonder if he stuck closely to a plant-based diet?

The Setup

The major draw of the museum is a full-size model of Noah’s Ark as prescribed in the Bible. I remain true and consistent with my premise that an important principle of a free society is to grant a wide berth to personal truths. In “Truth” I also make the point that personal truth should remain in its lane and not INTENTIONALLY TRY TO UNDERMINE objective truth, aka facts. When the Creation Museum was opened, there was a lot of publicity associated with a series of dioramas showing dinosaurs and children walking hand-in-hand. I am saddened when zealots create controversy where none exists. Present-day Bible literalists stand firm that the Creation happened 6000 years ago. I am confident that if the inspired writing of the Old Testament witnessed humans and dinosaurs concurrently it would not have skipped that part of the story. I come to this conclusion based on the wonderful series of movies by Steven Spielberg starting with Jurrasic Park. Even with modern technology, survival was a close call for those people making their way into the world with dinosaurs.

I was raised and my life has been greatly shaped in the Catholic tradition. If there was an important principle in Catholicism through the millennia it was that for most of its history, the members were DISCOURAGED from reading the Bible. I think this was the case in the home I grew up in. Faith was a strong force in our home and my parent’s Missals were dog-eared. The Catholic Missal is a selection of readings and excerpts from the Bible focusing on those passages that reinforce a theme or message. Despite being encouraged to pursue education, I do not believe there was a Bible in our home! In my case, throughout my life, I have been an inquisitive and avid reader. That includes the Bible. I prefer to read something for myself rather than take someone else’s word for it.

How firm was the Catholic commitment to ensure that the brethren were informed top-down? In a previous post titled “I Don’t Understand”, there remain a significant number of nostalgics and doctrinaire Catholics that long for the old days of saying Mass in Latin, a dead language. That seems like a safe way to ensure very few are thinking for themselves.

The Details

If my formal education had a theme, I think it was influenced by the Jesuit tradition. The mark of the Jesuit order is unmistakable worldwide. The tension of an order that EMBRACES LEARNING within the larger Catholic Church is unmistakable. Did you know the current Pope is the one and only Jesuit ever voted Bishop of Rome. Not unlike the current media market full of conspiracy and nonsense, modern Catholics are genuinely split by his outlook.

The Jesuit order was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, a former Spanish soldier in 1534. The order has a proud history of valuing learning and education instead of only mysticism. For the nostalgic Catholics who seek the good old days, they are blamed for the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. A significant group of conservative Catholics expresses concerns about our current Pope! They managed to hold their tongue for the prior conservative Pope from Germany who began his life with rather controversial affiliations in Nazi Germany. To understand the breadth of the Jesuit legacy, we of course have many great American Universities like Georgetown, Boston College, Santa Clara, Marquette, and Saint Louis University to name a few. Here is a perhaps more shocking fact. Nearly half of all of the Jesuit Universities in the world (800+) are in India (390+).

The legacy of the California Missions is mixed. As newlyweds, my wife and I lived near San Luis Obispo and we attended services at times at the Mission. The missions are a common tourist attraction and largely follow El Camino Real, Highway 101 along the coast of California. The Missions were established and operated by the Franciscans. The Missions, their operation, and their philosophy are far from the high-water mark. Current-day angst about conversion at the sword has quite a blindspot.

For me, if there is a movement to be proud of in the Catholic Church it is the educational legacy of the Jesuits around the world, the abandonment of superstition, and the embrace of knowledge as the way forward for mankind. The conservative tradition of Roman Catholicism and its inability to thoughtfully evaluate the world is rooted in the distrust of a way forward shown by the Jesuits.

Is this problematic to me? Museums are dedicated to truth and education. The underlying premise here is to start with a 6000-year-old world and the loading of all of the world’s animals into a ship (including the dinosaurs in the background) by a 600-year-old ship captain who would go on to live another 350 years. At 950 he nearly lived as long as the oldest person in the Bible, and today’s title Methuselah at 969.

Having read the Bible, the Old Testament is full of disturbing imagery, “lessons”, and insights. In the context of the period it was written (around 1200 BC) this is understandable. To embrace such writing as rigid and unchanging is challenging in my opinion. The proprietors of the Creation Museum happen to embrace this unchanging irreducibility of the book. To me, this is unfortunate and requires a lot of squirming to make stories like Noah and the flood seem reasonable.

According to the Bible Noah’s Ark was 300 cubits long (510 feet) so that is what the theme park in Kentucky built. You can even see kangaroo’s as they apparently originated in the Middle East as something called Baramins according to the creators and designers of the model.

I consider the education system in Minnesota to be top-notch. There is often reporting that Minnesota high school math performance is similar to the nations of Taiwan and South Korea. In such context, it is remarkable that a large percentage embrace 6000-year-old earth and the story of creation. The idea of a caravan traveling to the Creation Museum from the suburbs of St. Paul challenges my sensibilities.

Providing material of this sort in a museum is not harmless. It is shocking to me that neighbors of mine are planning a trip. I respect their right to personal beliefs, I only wish there was some allegiance to language and we might reserve titles like museums in a more traditional way.

In the post “A Nice Beagle” I tried to strike the right tone of wonder about Charles Darwin. There are LOTS OF THINGS Darwin got wrong, that is how the constant refinement of the scientific method works. Do not fret as this is a good way for the story to improve and that is good for us! For me, characterizing the story of 6000-year-old earth that bends modern science into knots to explain how dinosaurs were here about 4500 years ago is without precedent or justification. I will always stand by the right of people to proffer personal beliefs that make them happy. I cannot equate such ideas as reasonable options when compared to the objective. It is nonsensical to even consider such ideas as EQUALS. For the same reason, we do not teach astrology as part of a class on astronomy, let us never be foolish enough to confuse the minds of the young with alchemy or dinosaurs roaming the Earth around the time of the Pyramids. I hope we are better than that.

The imposition of black and white creates conflict. My next post will pivot the story to another Methuselah. In the meantime, here is my absolute favorite song about flooding. The artist is one of my favorites. If you usually skip the music, I recommend listening tonight as this is the smoothest of voices telling a story with great skill.

Here’s a link to part 2 if you are reading an old post.