About Creation Myths

 Thruout the ages since humanity attained civilization there have been attempts made in every culture to explain where everything came from. Here are a dozen of the big ones:

(1) Mesopotamian • Fresh water (Apsu) and salt water (Tiamat) mingle, causing conflict. The storm-god Marduk kills Tiamat and splits her body to form heaven and earth.

(2) Abrahamic • Yahweh creates everything from nothing (“ex nihilo”).

(3) Greek • From Chaos, a formless void, arise primordial beings such as Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the underworld), and Eros (force of attraction). Gaia births Uranus (sky), and the two of them couple to produce many other gods, most of whom murder their elders.

(4) Hindu • Out of a dark, undifferentiated ocean a cosmic being or force — Brahman, Purusha, or the cosmic egg Hiranyagarbha — emerges and gives rise to the universe.

(5) Chinese/Confucian • Out of formless chaos (hundun) a cosmic egg emerges. After a long time, it separates into earth (yin) and sky (yang), either spontaneously or due to the actions of the giant Pangu.

(6) Norse • The frozen void Ginnungagap separates the realms of fire and ice, but they nonetheless meet, producing the giant Ymir and the cosmic cow Audhumla. More generations of giants produce the gods Odin, Vili, and Ve, who kill Ymir and use his body to form the world.

(7) Egyptian • The world emerges from Nun, the primeval watery chaos, with different causes in different traditions:

 – (7a) Heliopolitan: The sun god Atum arises on a primordial mound and produces Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture), who in turn produce Geb (earth) and Nut (sky).

 – (7b) Memphite: The creator god Ptah brings the world into being through thought and speech, crafting all things by naming them.

 – (7c) Hermopolitan: Eight primordial deities (the Ogdoad) representing chaos interact to generate (a) the cosmic egg or (b) the sun.

(8) Mesoamerican • The sky and primordial sea exist, but the rest of the world is spoken into existence by the plumed serpent creator god Qʼuqʼumatz (Mayan) or Quetzalcoatl (Aztec).

(9) Inuit • From darkness and endless water the trickster-creator Raven brings up land and shapes the features of the world.

(10) Japanese • The first gods, Izanagi and Izanami, appear spontaneously out of the primordial chaotic mass and use a jeweled spear to stir the waters and create the land. Izanami dies giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi.

(11) Yoruba • The universe starts as a watery void beneath the heavens from which the supreme deity Olodumare sends Obatala (or Oduduwa) to create land.

(12) Buddhist • The universe has always existed, but it goes thru a cycle of (apparently causeless) formation, duration, dissolution, and void. The world and entities within it are reformed and reincarnated somewhat differently in each cycle, depending on the karma accrued in the previous one.

All of these myths have these features in common:

(1) None of them describes creation; they all start out with something or other that already exists.

(2) They are silent about the mechanisms or processes by which the subsequent transformations supposedly occurred.

(3) They were all made up by ignorant, primitive people trying to make sense of the world around them.

(4) They all disagree with each other.

(5) There isn’t a single lick of evidence supporting any of them.

Now, the theory of evolution gives us a ready explanation for why knowledge and intelligence are selected for: they enhance each individual’s chances of survival and thus the ability to thrive, reproduce, and pass those traits (whether genetic or intellectual) on to future generations. Knowledge was initially gained only thru personal experience but, after the development of language, it could be transmitted verbally to others as well. So it made a lot of sense for children to listen to their parents and for adults to heed the “wisdom of the elders”.

But there’s a dark side to that process as well, namely that those who only pretended to knowledge (whether they were sincere but had duped themselves into believing they’d stumbled upon something valuable or outright charlatans who were willing to lie in order to gain prestige, protection, and a cushy lifestyle) could gain followers who’d pass along their misinformation accompanied by user endorsements.

Do this often enuf and *presto* you’ve got a religion.

But occasionally problems would arise when skeptics would say things like “Well, that’s not true” or “How do you know that?”. And, again, evolution showed that the religion-pushers who came up with the best artful dodges to such challenges valorized those responses, resulting in their being adopted by others of like mindset.

Thru the centuries, that approach successfully fended off many, many challenges, each one an object lesson in how to avoid specificity, until it has become apparent that the basic rule of thumb for evangelizing is to never ever make any statement or claim that can be observed, tested, or measured! Because, if you do, as surely as night follows day, somebody’s going to come along and ask to observe, test, or measure it.  And then what are you going to do?

Be vague, my priests, be vague. That’s how you keep the fannies in the pews and the bucks in the collection plates. (Also doesn’t hurt to throw in a side order of fear every now and again. As they used to say during the Vietnam Era, if you can’t win their hearts and minds, go for their nuts and guts.)