These are not the mermaids we expected. . .

Today Columbus, the sailor and not the city, had a disappointing day. The report says:

On the previous day, when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro, he saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea; though they are not so beautiful as they are painted, though to some extent they have the form of a human face.

Is anybody surprised?

Columbus (probably) saw a sea cow, a manatee,

All my youth a mermaid was my idea of a “wow,” but my experience says when the “wow” comes it will be less Hollywood and more Barbara Manatee.

First, there is a basic warning about the way we tend to think. We accept what we have been taught is true without examining the basic assumptions. Columbus had been told by many sailors that they had seen mermaids and so when he saw, on several occasions something somewhat like a mermaid, he saw “mermaid.”

I grew up in a Christian house, but that is not good enough. As an adult, I must examine what I have been taught. Never should I label “divine” something that is not much like what I have been taught, just because of that predisposition to see God.

All of that is obvious and in a reasonable adult, strengthens Christianity, but there is a deeper truth.

Fantasy is often a cheat. People are wonderful to love and manatee are interesting, but turning a manatee into a person is disappointing. We lose out on the beauty of people and of manatee by looking for something else. If my fantasy girl is a mermaid, then my love life will be empty and the chances for real love I could have had will slip away. On top of it all, I will never laugh at the antics of the sea cow, because of the loss of the mermaid!

Finally, there is a warning about “facts.” We do not know, in fact, that Columbus saw a sea cow. We do not know that mermaids never existed. If modern science is correct, many animals have come and gone and left no trace of their existence. Probably, Columbus did not see a mermaid since we have insufficient evidence of the existence of mermaids to make them worthy of belief.

Yet saying the Admiral saw a manatee is just a guess. If we assume that mermaids have never existed, then a manatee is one animal he might have confused with a manatee. Of course, the Admiral might just have had too much sangria and had a disappointing vision. We cannot be sure.

Still the claim is repeated all over the Internet that Columbus mistook a manatee for a mermaid. It is a “fact” to most and not just a guess anymore by a scholar.

This is dangerous. The fact is the report in the Admiral’s journal and the manatee is a plausible explanation from a historian. If I had to guess, I would say that Columbus saw a manatee and not a mermaid, but it would not take much to change my mind, because there is little evidence he saw one. We are not at all sure.

And so it goes.

Never confuse what we know, or probably know, with a hypothesis based on an assumption. One sees this mistake when those who do not believe in miracles “explain” Biblical accounts by appeals to a-bit-similar natural phenomenon. Unlike mermaids,  however, there is powerful evidence that miracles (correctly understood) exist. The evidence for mermaids is, this side of Disneyland, much weaker.

Columbus had a disappointing day, but like most of the disappointments in his life, this was not God’s fault. God gave him a new world, but he insisted on seeing an old one. God gave him new souls created in God’s image for his own education, but Columbus saw only people to exploit. God and nature did not disappoint Columbus, the Admiral did.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.