Tower of Babel, stupid story? You be the judge.

Babel comes from ancient languages meaning to confuse or jumble or both.   There are many sources of opinion on the Tower of Babel.  Generally speaking the story found in Genesis 11. 1-9 is an explanation story.  Throughout the ancient Middle East there were remnants of large buildings.  These buildings may have been built by leaders for their own glory.  Just as today, societies and leaders came and go and towns were built and abandoned and fell into decay.   Examples today are Flint and Detroit Michigan, Chicago, and parts of many large cities.   So there were two separate campfire questions: (1) why are there towers and buildings that no one inhabits, why are they there, who built them, why are they abandoned, and (2) the totally separate question of why are there so many different people and speaking so many different languages.   There were trade caravans traveling through the Middle East from Europe to Africa and back as well as other parts of the known world.  Those caravans traveled from the northern end of modern Israel through that which is called the fertile crescent along the Mediterranean 

  Sea north an south to Egypt, Africa, north to Europe and all the areas in between.  So the Holy Land in those times was not isolated.  There was a lot of traffic with a lot of different looking and sounding people coming and going.

The oral stories formed around the abandoned structures and the many languages.  In the story humans spoke the same language and begin building a tower to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the whole earth (Gen 11.4 NIV).  Apparently God had other ideas and wanted a variety of people and wanted them scattered over the earth.  So God figured that as long as they spoke the same language and were all the same they would do things for their own glory and not be a spiritual people with God as their king, (Gen 11.5-7 NIV).  So God came down, (God comes to us to be active in our lives for our own good you see) and confused the language and scattered the people over the entire earth (or the earth a the story tellers knew it).  

There is a slight conflict.  Going back to Noah and the table of nations Genesis 10.5 says that the descendants of Noah spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with their own language (NIV).   In ancient language "nations" meant races of people.  

This is just an example of how things were explained by the early Hebrews by different people commingling stories that were established by different people over a periods of time and eventually written down and then edited into the final form for canonization* into the Holy Scriptures.   

There is a constant belief among humans and chickens that everyone should be like us especially when it comes to religion.  Wars have always been fought and are still being fought between people of differing faiths.  (Believe what I believe or die).  If a chicken in a flock has a spot of blood on it it is pecked to death by the other chickens.   Maybe a spot of blood represents and different faith like a Methodist among Southern Baptists.  Just saying.   So in a world of conflict the question may have been why did God not create us all the same as in, like me?  And the answer is if we are all the same and there is no conflict we don't need God. Your guess is as good as mine.