Babel

"That's a sea of lies a mile wide."

He was talking to the television again.

"A mile wide?" she reiterated. "That's not very wide. For a sea."

"Are you listening to what he's saying?"

"I'm listening to what you're saying. If nobody listened to what you said, would it need to make sense? If you never thought about what you said, might it happen to be true? If nobody listened to him, would it matter what he said?"

He had stopped looking at the television.

"A sea can be small," he said delicately.

"True. But a mile wide?"

"In some places, yeah. Shallow, too. Like with the parting of the Red Sea. Somebody told me part of it is kind of shallow, marshy even, so it would be easy for God or Moses to call up a strong wind and blow the water away for a few hours so the Children of Israel could cross."

"Does that mean the Bible is true?" she asked.

"No, it was just an illustration that some parts of the sea aren't very big."

"So you're using bullshit to justify a bad metaphor. Is the sea of lies really a mile wide?"

"No," he said.

~~~~~~~~~~

*Sigh* This is what happens when I spend two hours reading about the Tower of Babel.