To be fair, Canama, a.) the builders probably thought they could do it (remember, they didn't have our modern scientific knowledge about the size of the earth and the vastness of space), and b.) "A tower that can reach the heavens" is a far more poetic way to express the concept than "a tower that is really [bleep]-ing tall."
Honestly, Red's explanation makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Assuming for the sake of argument that there is one God who exists as a conscious being, and that these ancient people observed His interactions with the world, what would be their natural reaction? The same thing we do today when we see something we don't understand, we come up with an explanation for it. The explanations various people around the world came up with became the religons we see today. The different "denominations" and divisions between and within religions come from alternate interpretations of the same evidence.
This is not dissimilar to the scientific method that scientists use today; scientists observe data, various scientists formulate hypotheses, hypotheses that successfully explain the data become theories while the rest are discarded; as more data is observed and the leading theories continue to explain the data, more people accept the different theories. If counter-evidence is discovered to a particular theory, those who learn of it will modify or discard the theory, but as long as concrete counter-evidence is not found, the theory persists, even if other theories explain the data just as well.
Ideally, scientists would be able to set aside their own opinions for a moment and analyze the other theories, imagining them to be correct for the sake of analysis. In doing so, the scientists could isolate the facets of each theory that are identical and accept them as being true, and then find ways to determine which parts of the theories that are also true and which parts are not. However, observation shows us that scientists can be as dogmatic about the theories they subscribe to as people of different faiths can be about the religion they believe in. If scientists, people who are trained to be unbiased and logical, cannot put aside their human dogmatic tendencies, why should we expect people of faith (or even atheists and agnostics) to be any different?
The problem boils down to this: people do not know how to learn, nor do they know how to analyze what they read, think, and see, nor to they know how to lay aside their personal beliefs and examine ideas from a different perspective. People do not know this because they are not taught, and as long as we do not teach our children to
think about the world, the things they observe, and the things they are told, then we as a race are doomed to more of the same narrow-minded thinking we see all around us today.
Most people, when asked a question about spiritual matters would answer "yes" or "no".
Both of those answers are wrong. The
correct response, the one that shows that one knows how to think with an open mind, is something along the lines of "I don't
know, but I
believe that..."
