Billy Stormfield's Visit to Hell, a novel by Stan Rice, part two. Noah the Environmentalist

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven.

 

Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Fundamentalists do not necessarily believe that all environmentalists will go to hell. But certainly any “greenies” who would want to spend a lot of money to save endangered species are damned in the eyes of their God.

One of those was Noah. He built an ark (probably subcontracted the work out) that was big enough to hold all of the animal species in the world. The ark was not quite as big as you might suppose, since when the Old Testament was written most of the world, and its biodiversity, was unknown. (See Stan Rice’s article on this subject for Skeptical Inquirer). But the dimensions described in Genesis were huge and required a lot of wood to build. No explanation is given in the Bible for how so much wood could be obtained or who would pay for it.

However you look at it, the ark was probably the biggest financial undertaking the world had ever known and, relative to the poor economy of the ancient world, it might still rank number one in human history by that measure. It certainly cost more than any modern environmental expenditure. A waste of the resources that God has given to His servants? No wonder Noah ended up in hell.

Many of the animal species were economically important. But most of them were not. I can imagine Noah’s wife saying, “Why are you bringing all those snakes?” Maybe Noah was wondering also. But God did not say, just bring the species that you like. So you don’t like skunks? God told Noah to bring them anyway.

As usual, Mark Twain took this further than anyone else. In Twain’s writing, the ark was safely on its way when it had to turn around and pick up a species that had been left behind: the smallpox virus. How can you reconstruct a post-Flood world without smallpox?