Here we are, as a species, some 200,000 years old [SOURCE]. That’s us now, as modern humans not our bum scratching monkey friends.
The christian die-hards would have you believe that we were created by their god some 6,000 years ago, not 4.6 billion years as most sane people tend to understand. The 6,000 year figure is generally based on the genealogies found in the bible, using that family tree you can trace the generations all the way back to the first humans, Adam and Steve.
We are, I’m sure, all aware of the biblical myth, god created the universe and therefore the world we live in in six days. That’s 6 days of 24 hours. The myth is treated as literal by many christians and ignores any science that has to do with the beginning of the universe through the big bang theory, and it’s also used to discredit the concept of evolution. They call their version of creationism ‘Intelligent Design’ and use whacky claims like the eye is too complicated to have evolved, while ignoring the fact that the first born from the first humans were two men, and from there comes the human race.
Imagine, however, if some other culture had become dominant on earth. What would our world look like if the Navajo people of North America had gained the upper hand. Our creation myth might then be:
According to the Diné, they emerged from three previous underworlds into this, the Fourth, or “Glittering World”, through a magic reed. The first people from the other three worlds were not like the people of today. They were animals, insects or masked spirits as depicted in Navajo ceremonies. First Man (‘Altsé Hastiin), and First Woman (‘Altsé ‘Asdzáá), were two of the beings from the First or Black World. First Man was made in the East from the meeting of the White and Black Clouds. First Woman was made in the West from the joining of the Yellow and Blue Clouds. Spider Woman (Na ashje’ii ‘Asdzáá), who taught
Navajo women how to weave, was also from the First World. [SOURCE]
From a magic reed… ok.
Perhaps that’s not to your liking, what about then the Hindu creation story:
Before time began there was no heaven, no earth and no space between. A vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of night. A giant cobra floated on the waters. Asleep within its endless coils lay the Lord Vishnu. He was watched over by the mighty serpent. Everything was so peaceful and silent that Vishnu slept undisturbed by dreams or motion.
From the depths a humming sound began to tremble, Om. It grew and spread, filling the emptiness and throbbing with energy. The night had ended. Vishnu awoke. As the dawn began to break, from Vishnu’s navel grew a magnificent lotus flower. In the middle of the blossom sat Vishnu’s servant, Brahma. He awaited the Lord’s command.
Vishnu spoke to his servant: ‘It is time to begin.’ Brahma bowed. Vishnu commanded: ‘Create the world.’ [SOURCE]
Can you imagine that, riding around somewhere, in the dark, on a giant cobra!
Then perhaps you’d like to consider the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime myth:
In the beginning the earth was a bare plain. All was dark. There was no life, no death. The sun, the moon, and the stars slept beneath the earth. All the eternal ancestors slept there, too, until at last they woke themselves out of their own eternity and broke through to the surface.
When the eternal ancestors arose, in the Dreamtime, they wandered the earth, sometimes in animal form — as kangaroos, or emus, or lizards — sometimes in human shape, sometimes part animal and human, sometimes as part human and plant.
Two such beings, self-created out of nothing, were the Ungambikula. Wandering the world, they found half-made human beings. They were made of animals and plants, but were shapeless bundles, lying higgledy-piggledy, near where water holes and salt lakes could be created. The people were all doubled over into balls, vague and unfinished, without limbs or features.
With their great stone knives, the Ungambikula carved heads, bodies, legs, and arms out of the bundles. They made the faces, and the hands and feet. At last the human beings were finished.
Thus every man and woman was transformed from nature and owes allegiance to the totem of the animal or the plant that made the bundle they were created from — such as the plum tree, the grass seed, the large and small lizards, the parakeet, or the rat.
This work done, the ancestors went back to sleep. Some of them returned to underground homes, others became rocks and trees. The trails the ancestors walked in the Dreamtime are holy trails. Everywhere the ancestors went, they left sacred traces of their presence — a rock, a waterhole, a tree.
For the Dreamtime does not merely lie in the distant past, the Dreamtime is the eternal Now. Between heartbeat and heartbeat, the Dreamtime can come again.[SOURCE]
Created using stone knives hey.
All these stories are attempts to explain the beginnings of our world and the universe. The stories were told long before we had the science that we have today. Who knows, in another 10,000 years our own stories of the big bang theory might well be the llama’s laughing point.
The Australian Aboriginal myth explains that two beings self-created. This is a point that is often missed by the christians who insist that you can not have creation without an intelligent designer. So, who created god? Where did it come from? Who created the creator? Who created god’s creator? You get the point. It’s a question that can not be answered, people of faith have no problem in accepting that god just is. No further explanation needed.
Just about every society that has ever been on this earth has a creation myth. Some of them are just plain ludicrous. They clearly aren’t all right, but the adherents of those faiths insist that theirs is the right version.
It should be clear when you compare the myths between the religions that in fact, they are all just stories told in ancient times around a campfire under the brilliant daze of countless stars as a way to entertain the kids and the adults and put some sort of explanation to explain the unexplainable. We should continue to tell the stories, the myths – they are great tales and often full of wonder and wisdom. We shouldn’t believe them as true.
Of course, the last creation theory I want to share with you is that of Douglas Adams, his is the best I’ve ever heard and I hope that it will one day become the standard around the world:
In the beginning, the universe was created.
This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe it was created by some sort of God, but the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI firmly believed that the entire universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called “The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief” were small, blue creatures with more than fifty arms each. They were unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. [The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy].
Makes perfect sense.