Promises Pt. 01

"I suppose so."

"So you were not only asking my client to compromise his standards but to place himself and his business under a huge financial burden just so that you could save money. I would like you to look at this newspaper article and read out the first two paragraphs for the benefit of the court." Henderson handed Mayotte a newspaper clipping. Mayotte physically sagged when he saw what the article was about.

"Local builder honoured in national awards ceremony." He began to read tentatively. "Local home builder Frank McIvor was awarded the highest honour in his category at the recent HIA national awards. In presenting the award the Association President commended Mr. McIvor of McIvor Homes on his tenth straight win in this category, a record that was a reflection of his long-standing commitment to his craft.

In accepting this award Mr. McIvor made particular mention of his sub-contractors, the same sub-contractors that have worked for him for the past fifteen years, and who he said, were an integral part of his success, and that without their commitment to meeting his high standards he would not have won this award."

"And you, Pastor Mayotte, were expecting this man to carry out shoddy, sub-standard work that would compromise a reputation that he has held for many years?"

"Yes." Mayotte answered in a voice that was barely audible to anyone outside a one meter radius.

"Would you speak up please, the jury didn't quite catch that."

"Yes." The voice was loud enough but lacked any enthusiasm.

"My client has told me that not so long ago you were telling the world what a great bloke he was and what a good person he was to do business with. Are you aware of the laws governing restraint of trade where you attempt to apply a negative influence on the business dealings of another party, not to mention the fact that it is illegal to attempt to influence the outcome of proceedings while the court action is in progress?"

"Yes." Mayotte said softly.

"And yet here we have you not only living in unforgiveness, something that Jesus would have frowned upon, but taking steps to punish my client for having the audacity to challenge your church and its teaching. Can you explain this?"

Mayotte looked toward Johansson for help and inspiration but all he got in reply was a shrug.

"Are you aware of the last of the 'Woes' in Matthew 23? We'll be dealing with this passage in detail later on in the proceedings, something that you should look forward to, but let me paraphrase the salient point of it for you; because you are too lazy to examine the Scripture to ascertain the truth, when a new 'truth' or interpretation comes up you would rather kill the messenger than accept that truth. Isn't that what you are doing now? My client challenges your interpretation and application, based on a comprehensive study of the Bible, which you don't seem to have done much of, and you want to destroy him and his family."

"It's not like that. The Bible is the truth and there is no other truth. If the Bible says that it is so, then I believe that it is so. I believe that the Bible is the ultimate authority and if you disagree then you are wrong."

"That is an interesting attitude for a Christian to have, it shows utter contempt for anyone who disagrees with you, it says that these people are inferior to you, that they are less intelligent than you. But does it show the unconditional love for others that Jesus commands us to have?"

"I think that we should move back to our questions and leave this behind us," Henderson did not switch off the projector, "but let me warn you that if I, or anyone else for that matter, ever hear of you attempting to influence, to subvert, the outcome of this trial in this manner I will not be so lenient. Now Pastor Mayotte, we were discussing the story of Cain and his wife and then we have Adam and Eve getting together and making a replacement for Abel. Now doesn't that tell you that there were no further children between Abel and his replacement Seth? If there were other children Adam and Eve would not have needed to make a replacement, would they?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Have you never wondered about this state of affairs or have you just accepted what you have been taught, without question?"

"I accept that the Bible is the truth, and that is all that I need to know."

"Why do you think that God gave us a brain? Why do you think that God gave us the power of reason? Why do you think that God gave us a desire to learn? Do you think that he gave us those gifts for the hell of it? No, He gave us those gifts to use and to not use them is to deny the existence of God."

"The Bible is the 'Word of God', God is without fault, and His word is without fault so we should not question His word."

"Tell me Pastor Mayotte," Henderson was applying even more emphasis on the word 'Pastor', making it perfectly clear that he thought little of the title that Mayotte insisted on using. "Noah and the ark. Now forgive me for being curious here, we have a craft a couple of hundred meters long, twenty-five meters wide and fifteen meters high, and in that you have Noah and his family and two of every animal in existence. Now Pastor Mayotte, what would you say if I was to tell you that there has never been a timber strong enough from which to build a vessel of that size, and that, given the technology available to Noah, no saws, no chisels, no screws or nails, it would have flexed to such an extent that gaps would open up in the planking that would allow water to rush in and sink it?"

"I believe what the Bible tells me and if it says that the Ark was a particular size then I must accept that it was that size."

"Even at that size there was not a lot of room for the dinosaurs was there? A couple of Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus and a pair of Tyrannosaurus Rex and you'd have to extend the Ark to fit in the fleas." There was a ripple of laughter from the gallery.

"And the feed needed for their pleasure cruise, storage space for several months supplies for them wouldn't leave any room for the humans. If everything was on the ark that you would have us believe was on it, it would never have floated, an Old Testament Titanic without the iceberg. And how did they keep the fodder and other delectables fresh? Remembering that they were bobbing around on water with no land in sight, unable to replenish the larder, they couldn't run down to the pet store to get food because the pet store and its owner were lost in the flood, how do you explain that Pastor Mayotte? How did they provide specific foods such as the eucalypts for the koalas and the live prey for the snakes, once they ate the mice and other small animals there would have then been no need for pest exterminators? And what was there to prevent the carnivores from eating the other animals?"

"And the stench, I have been into barns and animal enclosures and the stench was overpowering, even in the wide open spaces, imagine what it would have been like to have been cooped up in an enclosed place for how long, a hundred and fifty days, with all of those animals and birds, what with the roaring and bellowing, the squeaking and chirping and the weeing and crapping, not to mention the toxic gasses that are formed from the animal waste, not very pleasant?"

"God would have made things bearable for them."

"Now tell me Pastor Mayotte, where did the water come from?" Mayotte flinched at the sudden change of tack.

"It bubbled up from under the ground and then it rained for forty days and nights."

"And that was enough to cover the Earth's surface, how does the Bible put it, even to the highest peak?"

"Yes."

"Do you realize how much water that would require?"

"God was able to do that."

"Let me enlighten you, for there to be enough rainfall to cover the Earth's surface, what would have, if any, bubbled up from below ground would have been negligible, there would have to have been a cloud layer at least twenty kilometres thick. If the cloud was that thick it would have completely blocked out the sun, the world would have been in total darkness. Apart from the fact that they would have had no way of telling the time without the sun and the moon, the Rolex was still some time off, it could not have happened that way because the Bible makes no mention of that darkness. What do you say to that Pastor Mayotte?"

"It happened the way the Bible tells us, God can do these things, God is a worker of miracles."

"Whatever you say. Tell me Pastor Mayotte, where did the water go to after the flood?"

"Back to where it came from, under the ground and up into the sky."

"Really? So in the space of one hundred and fifty days, how did they know that it was a hundred and fifty days? It couldn't possibly rain for that long without a cloud cover so thick that it completely blocked the sun, and without the sun they had no way of telling time. So it rains and floods the Earth to a depth of around ten thousand meters and then all that water disappears as if by magic. Pretty amazing stuff don't you think?"

"Yes it is amazing! But it is not beyond God's abilities."

"Let me paint a more mundane picture here. Way to the North of where Noah lived, in the mountains of Turkey there had been a long, cold winter with more than your average snowfall, it could even have been the tail end of an ice age, and the snow began to melt. Now down South at Noah's place, the rivers, that's the Tigris and Euphrates, began to flood from all that melt water flowing down stream. Because there had been no cloud, no rain up until then and Noah couldn't see the mountains of Turkey from his front porch, he assumed that the water must have bubbled up from underground. He assumed something that may not have been true."

"If you combine that with a heavier than average monsoonal type rainstorm that arrived soon after and lasted for days and days, that exacerbated the already flooded condition of the rivers to the point that there was water as far as the eye could see, remembering of course that they still believed that the world was flat, you would be forgiven for thinking that the whole world was under water."

"The floodwaters eventually receded, the water flowed out into the Indian Ocean and dry land once more appeared. Now I know that this is not as spectacular as the Bible story and doesn't have the same salutary impact as the Bible epic, but it is still a story from which we can learn."

"What you say isn't true! I believe in the Bible account of that event because the Bible is the 'Word of God' all Scripture is God breathed!"

"Or could it be that this is another example of man, with his limited scientific knowledge, trying to explain something that he doesn't fully understand? Let me explain something of the laws of fluid dynamics. Water, if contained, finds its own level. If it is not contained it runs down hill, so that if the Earth was totally covered with water it was self-contained and there was no hill for it to run down, it had formed its own level and had nowhere to run."

"Now for all of that water to have gone underground, as has been suggested, it is contingent on the fact that the Earth would have to have been flat, something that we know it is not. We now know that the Earth is a spheroid, a globe, an oblate spheroid, and that the Earth's core is solid, and we know that it is full of molten rock. You probably have seen the effect of water on a hot surface, it creates steam, and steam expands to sixteen times its volume as water. If it is constrained within a vessel, the hollow Earth would be just such a vessel, builds up explosive force until Kablooie! An explosion would result that would lead to the total destruction of the Earth. But this couldn't have happened because we are right here, right now, so it didn't happen, did it now, Pastor Mayotte?"

Mayotte did not answer.

"It could not have, as was believed at the time, run through a hole in the ground to disappear into oblivion, or to have run off the edge of the Earth because the Earth is not flat, it has no edges, because it is a globe."

"It could not have spun off into space because the same forces of gravity that exist now existed back then, and the waters in our oceans are not spinning into outer space."

"It could not have evaporated because that would have formed a vapour cloud that would have blocked out the sun again, and it would have fallen back to earth as rain, and that didn't happen because the Bible doesn't mention it."

"It's not rocket science Pastor Mayotte, it just requires the belief that the world will not come to a screeching halt if, as I have just explained, man's knowledge of the forces of nature, at that time, were somewhat lacking. All the faith in the world will not change the fact that the story of Noah and his ark full of people and animals may not have happened exactly as the Bible tells us."

"It is another example of mankind using the forces that formed this Earth over many millions of years, forces that he didn't understand, as a means of creating a vengeful God, a God who would punish mankind for any transgression. So if there was a flood it was God punishing us for sinning. If there was an earthquake it was God punishing us for sinning. If a volcano erupted and covered a town such as Pompeii; it was God punishing us for sinning. Is this the same loving and forgiving God that I know?"

"God will punish us for our sins!"

"If God, wanted us to be perfect, He would have made us that way, so why then, do you want us to believe that this very God who loves us unconditionally, would want to punish us for those very same imperfections? This eschatology, this apocalyptic end of the world as we know it, came about not at the very beginning of mankind's relationship with God, but at a much later stage when the history of that relationship was first written down, and do you know when that was, Pastor Mayotte? It was when the Israelites were held in captivity at Babylon by the Persian Emperor Cyrus. I believe that God had a greater purpose for these disasters. It was to tell us that we shouldn't blame him for everything that goes wrong, but that we should learn from them and make changes in how we live. If we see a volcano engulf a town we know not to build near a volcano, if we see the devastation of an earthquake we learn not to build flimsy buildings on a fault line, and if we live in an area that is prone to flooding we move to higher ground. Recently I was in Grafton on the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and I was asking about real estate and the message that I got loud and clear was that there were two important points when buying property; the first that the buildings should have a current termite certificate and secondly, that they should be built above the hundred year flood line. This was in recognition of the fact that once every hundred years or so a series of events would combine to create flooding of a much higher magnitude than normal. It had nothing to do with God's wrath at all, it was a part of the cycle of events that have been integral in the formation of this country. This hundred year event is no longer covered by the 'Act of God' clause loved by insurance companies because it is not an act of God."

"On the same trip I was speaking to a real estate agent in Kempsey and I asked him why houses in the CBD were so cheap. He took me for a drive around town and showed me some perfectly reasonable houses at very attractive prices. He then showed me flood markers halfway up the power poles. "The houses are cheap, but good luck getting flood insurance cover." The point was taken.

"For many thousands of years mankind has farmed the rich soils of floodplains in the knowledge that the nutrients in the soil would be replenished on a regular basis by floods, and they live with that fact. Farmers in the Hunter Valley build their houses on mounds above the flood level, while farmers in other areas actually use that fact for their benefit. Take for instance the grape growers in the Langhorne Creek district in South Australia, here is an area of little rainfall. The growers are able to grow grapes successfully by taking advantage of the annual flooding of the Bremer River that replenishes the nutrients in the soil and the water soaks into the aquifer thereby enabling the grapes to draw on the ground water when they most need it, during the hot, dry summer months as the fruit ripens."

"Tell me Pastor Mayotte, have you ever been to the Grand Canyon, or seen photographs of it?"

"Yes, I've been there."

"Did you stop to think that it was so amazing how God had created a canyon thousands of meters deep in less than a year?"

"Yes it was amazing, but God can do that."

"And that instead of a single, very thick, layer of sedimentary rock we have hundreds of thin layers each resulting from a separate inundation over many years? Somehow during the forty days and nights that it rained there were at least two volcanic eruptions that put down layers of volcanic rock in amongst the sedimentary rock?"

"He can do that."

"Now, if my knowledge of geography is correct, widespread floodwaters, when they drain away, tend to form a wide shallow stream and if the layer of silt is thick enough they will form braided streams similar to deltas at river mouths, would you agree with that?"

"I suppose so."

"It would not form meanders, these are formed over many years as the river finds its way, eroding the outer arc of bends and depositing sediment on the inner arc. As the process develops the inner arc extends and the outer arc recedes creating the serpentine river formations known as meanders, a process that takes many hundreds, even thousands, sometimes millions of years. Now Pastor Mayotte, the Grand Canyon was formed by a process known as 'cliff retreat', this is where a channel is cut through the surface of the ground, in this case a plateau, and as this channel is deepened it is also widened when the face of the channel bank collapses into it. If you look closely at the Grand Canyon you will see the evidence of that. At the rim of the canyon is a cliff and below the cliff is what is known as a scree slope, made up of the rock from the collapsed cliff face. As the scree is washed away it breaks down into smaller particles and is carried as sediment downstream. Flood waters from the Rocky Mountains, where the headwaters of the Colorado River can be found, flow downstream and eat into the scree slope widening the canyon floor until it has reached its current width. A process that any High School Geology student will tell you, will take many millions of years, given the igneous layers that exist within the layers of sedimentary rock. "

"And another fly in the ointment of creationism is a tree in the Mojave Desert, that has been aged, by counting annual rings, at 11,700 years old, a little older than Creationists claim the world is. Tell me Pastor Mayotte, what is your opinion of Darwin's theory of Evolution?"

"The man was a charlatan! How anyone could think that we were descendant from apes is utterly beyond comprehension! The man recanted his theory on his death bed."

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when you are dealing with a subject that you don't really understand. Firstly Darwin actually had faith in the existence of a creator, God. What he saw was that the Creation was a starting point in the evolutionary process and that living things evolved to suit their environment by a process he described as 'Natural Selection' where those creatures that could adapt to an environmental change, they survived, while those that could not, did not."

"He never actually said that we were descended from apes just that there was an evolutionary link between man and apes. And last of all, according to his niece who was at his death bed, he did not recant his theory, but that has become an urban myth that became accepted by the Creationists as a truth."