The Tower of Babel
The tower of Babel resulted in everyone going their separate ways. Going east, north, south and west the people of the great city scattered over the face of the earth. There are those that say Noah and his three sons begat the four major races we have on earth today.
Each culture group thus formed would have remembered the flood, the tower, and their history before the break up. They would have remembered the great effort and importance placed on building that tower, and maybe even how they had failed to complete it.
Some may have kept the drive to build that tower, no matter what, and that may well be the true source of the pyramids we find across the world today!
Those born to them afterwards would hear the 'legends' and try to imagine them, but the legends spoke of a very different life! No rain, no multitude of languages, very long life spans, one big happy family seemed to be parts of a fantasy world.
Those that did not become the Hebrew people, nor the Arab people, probably had little if any connection with those two groups, other than a historical one. Remember that they could no longer even communicate, as they were separated by many barriers. Not only were they separated by language barriers, but cultural barriers were developing, and soon even geographic barriers kept them further apart.
So how could they explain what had been passed to them by Noah and his sons? How could they possibly keep the same 'paradigm' as those far away from them? There was no way.
They knew truths about their heritage and about life on earth, but they did not have a written link the way the Hebrew people would have.
So, they explained items based on their point of view, as they saw around them what they saw. There are many sayings of famous American Indians that if you just changed a few words, would sound like wonderful scriptural quotes.
"We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things; ... and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as He intends."
- Black Elk The Sacred Pipe
To condemn them because they worship "The Great Spirit" (The Souix word is "Wakan-Tanka") a sign of not being connected with the Judeo-Christian God. The Arab word for God is "Allah". The Hebrew word might be "YHWH". That these words are different in the different languages is NORMAL, not heathen!
If someone does what they know to do, and they do not know any better, should they be condemned?
One can look at the Roman mythology and easily see that it came from the Greek. Yet, few people realize that the Greek mythos came from the Babylonians. The ancient Babylonian mythos told of their first ten kings, and of the great flood the tenth king lived through. Few people have realized that the Babylonian mythos is the telling of the same patriarchs that the book of Genesis mentions! Yes, there are ten generations from Adam to Noah.