# What was life like before the rainbow? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 6, 2019, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613 "2019-07-06T04:08:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/21 "2019-07-07T05:24:45Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The rainbow [was originally Ishtar’s necklace](https://thenightwriters.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/gilgamesh-and-genesis-the-great-flood/). Thanks for posting that. To think, all these years I thought that Gilgamesh was the name of this Sumerian dude who built an ark. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/22 "2019-07-07T05:47:25Z")
> [@Nature\_s\_Call](#): > > If Genesis is to be believed… Then elephants can fly and triangles have four sides. Once you reject reality, _anything_ is possible. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/23 "2019-07-07T06:15:30Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Thanks for posting that. To think, all these years I thought that Gilgamesh was the name of this Sumerian dude who built an ark. Nope–he was a Sumerian dude who _met_ the guy who built [the big round reed basket](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/01/noahs-ark-was-circular). ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/24 "2019-07-07T06:21:29Z")
(A[better link on the 2014 tablet discovery](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/newly-translated-and-pre-biblical-tablet-details-a-great-flood-and-a-rescue-boat-with-animals-put-aboard-in-pairs/).) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/25 "2019-07-07T07:49:30Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Thanks for posting that. To think, all these years I thought that Gilgamesh was the name of this Sumerian dude who built an ark. You should read it. It is a damn interesting look into another culture. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/26 "2019-07-07T07:53:44Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I’ve heard fundamentalist Evangelicals claim that it never rained until the flood - citing Genesis 2:5-6 as being the state of play up to that point, that is: > > So I guess some sort of divinely-managed water cycle that doesn’t involve clouds and rain after the plants have transpired water vapour - maybe all the water vapour condenses on the sky dome at night and trickles back down to the edge of the earth disc before morning. The mists watering the ground was before the fall. Nowhere does it say there wasn’t any rain after the fall and away from Eden. If God was making Adam and Eve miserable, of course he would make it rain. In any case when God told Noah about the upcoming flood, Noah did not say, “rain? What’s rain.” (After he said “what’s a cubit?,” of course) ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/27 "2019-07-07T10:10:33Z")
Cloudy. Perhaps the thread should be in GD rather than IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/28 "2019-07-07T13:05:04Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Then elephants can fly and triangles have four sides. Once you reject reality, _anything_ is possible. How long can you tread water? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/29 "2019-07-07T17:39:40Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Genesis is not to be believed. Especially that Phil Collins guy. Liar, liar, drums on fire!! ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2019, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/30 "2019-07-07T18:44:20Z")
If God promised (with the rainbow) that he would never flood the earth again, why don’t fundamentalists have trouble with the film Evan Almighty? It goes against scripture! Blasphemy! ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/31 "2019-07-08T03:55:11Z")
Before the rainbow, LGBTQ persons got all confused when they marched. So it’s good that god(dess) gave them a symbol to march under. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/32 "2019-07-08T12:20:24Z")
To answer the OP’s question – it’s hard to imagine how optics could have worked before God’s making a first rainbow after the flood. You’d have to have it arranged that both geometrical and physical optics wouldn’t work. You could, in principle, have reflection and refraction present and working, but you’d have to arrange things so that there was no minimum in the plot of refracted angle against impact parameter on the raindrop. So it could’ve been that: a.) the refractive index of water was _lower_[ than that of air in those days (pretty difficult to do, from several points of view). This would’ve prevented that minimum value from being there b.) raindrops were not shaped at all like spheres in those days c.) raindrops were so tiny that diffraction broadened out the lines from each color, as in a mistbow (raindrops have to be significantly larger than the wavelength of light in order for you to see the colors) d.) everyone was blind back then (causes other problems with Genesis) e.) Everyone was colorblind back then, and they only saw the colors of the rainbow because God “turned on” our ability to see color. Incidentally, in that XCKD cartoon he’s clearly indicating that the character is seeing not only the secondary rainbow, but also the tertiary rainbow. That’s a neat trick – it’s relatively close to the sun, it’s much weaker than the secondary bow (by the same fraction compared to the secondary that the secondary is weaker than the first). It was, AFAIK, first observed in the laboratory by Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi in the 13th century. As Theodoric of Freiburg would shortly do (independently) was to use a spherical flask full of water as a giant model raindrop, and a ray of sunlight admitted through a hole as a source. He traced the beam path for the primary, secondary, and tertiary rainbow, and was able to see it because he could exclude external light and put the screen where he needed it. Tetiary and quarternary rainbows (also near the sun) have been seen and photographed, but I maintain it’s only because people have been looking for them – [EarthSky | Triple and quadruple rainbows in 1st-ever photos](https://earthsky.org/earth/first-ever-photos-of-triple-and-quadruple-rainbows) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/33 "2019-07-08T13:53:52Z")
Mists are no excuse, really - you’d still have glories. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/34 "2019-07-08T14:46:59Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The rainbow [was originally Ishtar’s necklace](https://thenightwriters.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/gilgamesh-and-genesis-the-great-flood/). Love this bit: > [@](#): > > The committee decides to send down a great storm and flood the earth to “exterminate mankind” because of the noise the humans generate (Williams 31). And that was before we invented amplifiers! I’m now picturing the crankiest of those gods doing like my PhysChem teacher and switching their hearing aids off before any committee meetings (he did it before class; yep, not anybody’s favorite teacher). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/35 "2019-07-08T15:17:01Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Mists are no excuse, really - you’d still have glories. Good point – but you wouldn’t have rainbows, interestingly enough. It’s a profound demonstration of the difference in the way that the effects are produced that you can’t have color separation in a rainbow if the drops are so small that the diffraction spread overwhelms the color separation for a rainbow, but doesn’t for the case of the glory. That’s because the rainbow is due to diffraction phenomena occurring within a single drop, whereas glory is due to interference from multiple sources or paths and occurs outside the drops. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/36 "2019-07-08T15:23:06Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Mists are no excuse, really - you’d still have glories. There you go, using facts again. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/37 "2019-07-08T15:33:34Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Another silly let’s-bash-the-Bible thread. When you consider that only about half of even Evangelical Christians believe in Biblical literalism, and Evangelicals make up a bit more than a quarter of all US Christians, the OP is accusing a very small percentage of Christians of having stupid anti-scientific beliefs. > > I fail to see how this is so perennially entertaining. Because it doesn’t make any logical sense. It’s not bashing; it’s questioning. Any belief system worth believing in should be able to stand up to a little scrutiny. The OP asked a decent question. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/38 "2019-07-08T16:32:22Z")
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has the explanation you’re looking for: [Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Quantum Weirdness](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/quantum-weirdness) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/39 "2019-07-08T18:40:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Mists are no excuse, really - you’d still have glories. [Mist rainbows are a government conspiracy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIYZvr3ueGw). ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613/40 "2019-07-08T19:01:14Z")
There’s glory for you! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-like-before-the-rainbow/836613.md?page=3)