Creation stories -- why?

by Narkissos 6 Replies latest jw friends

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  Narkissos

  The issue of creation is very often discussed here. I for one don't feel the need for yet another "creation vs. evolution" debate, nor even for an additional discussion on the details and meaning(s) of the Genesis stories. Rather, I would like to start a more basic discussion on creation narratives in general, as those seem to be found in most cultures as far back as the history of writing goes. Why are they needed? What psychological, social, political roles do their play?

  With such a background in mind we might (after all) come back to the Genesis stories. How are they specific -- how specific are they?

  And even, perhaps, to evolution in the broadest sense. Do you think a popularised version of "origins" as studied by natural sciences (from the so-called "big bang" to the evolution of species) could play a similar role within a secularised society as the traditional creation narratives in pre-modern societies? Or, must religious and philosophical approaches abide by the traditional narratives, interpreting them henceforth unambiguously as myths? Side question: can a creation story retain its religious/philosophical force without some basic ambiguity as to its "historicity" in the broadest sense of the term?

  Many questions so far... any taker?
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  skyman

  Big topic not sure where you want us to begin? It is like an adopted child so often after learning of his or her being adopted they want to learn about their past. That is why we as humans have stories of the start of us. In Idaho lives a Indian nation that say's Coyote was the animal that created us. So it is with many cultures the need to have a beginning.
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  Navigator

  As Skyman said, the questions are basic. Who am I? Where did I come from? How did I get here? One of the best creation stories I ever read came from a book called "Awaken From the Dream" by Gloria Wapnick. It has the advantage of never having been edited and revised as have the creation stories in Genisis. Basically, her story says that this earth was created by we ourselves as a place to experience separation from God. Or as" A Course In Miracles" puts it, an insane idea at which we forgot ot laugh.
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  rmt1

  Myth was the first science. Orally-transmitted/aurally-received aetiologies of existence and creation almost invariably rehearse the natural order as seen in the wild and strong-man primitive societies, and legitimate the strongman physical authority by backing it up with a collection of dazzling Dionysic (oral) theatre, quasi logic on the rightness of the present hegemony, and fuzzy good feeling opiate assurances that maintaining the natural order (by deferred gratification, not being hubristic, self-forced contentment, self-sacrifice) will result in some kind of reward. Aural communication precedes literate communication. Literacy in early civilization enables greater, or broader, surveillance, census, increased taxation and the mobilization of manpower. Oral myth becomes ossified or frozen in text (Pesistratus was the first to have Homer written down), which because of its artifactual objectness (ten commandments) accrues its own textual tyranny, which aids in future circular logic that “We are the receivers of divine commandment: See? We have the receipt.” Homeric heros are descended from Zeus. Vergil’s Aeneid gives an aetiology that legitimizes Augustus as a descendant of Zeus. Could the OT have been an elaborate aetiology for the Levites to retain and justify their status? And was not Moses a Levite? As far as the innocent non-Machivellian endeavor to explain our origins, someone else on this board mentioned the E-Bay effect, and there could have been an unregulated market on who had the best oral story to explain things. I still sense that argumentum ad baculum would have trumped any Nobel winners for Best Aetiology.
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  sass_my_frass

  When I'm in a mood to believe that there is a God, I think of the creation stories this way: I'm God. It's a primitive time on earth, there are very few people on the planet and they're not very bright. They think about tents and small tools and herding goats. They want to know how they got there, and to explain that I caused a huge explosion to form from from all the mass that exists in the universe compressed into a space smaller than anything they'll ever see, would be a stretch, as they've only just worked out fire. I can't tell them how long it took because they can't count past twenty or thirty, which is how many years they live. I can't explain how I came up with all the living designs because they're only just working out how to keep chickens. So I cut it down, give them the basics, and hope that one day they'll be intelligent enough to work it out for themselves. That is, one of the brighter ones tells the best story and works out how to record it. Enough people accept that as the truth that it lasts the ages. Of course that doesn't explain why he hasn't come back to clear things up, or, maybe he has.... maybe the scientists working this stuff out are having little miracle epiphanies. Maybe that's what divine inspiration was all along - a bright guy coming up with a new idea and standing by it long enough to be counted.
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  Narkissos

  Thanks a lot for those very insightful posts.

  This reminded me of Blaise Pascal's thought: "It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world."

  Thinking, or simply naming anything is treating it as an object. Making it a close, finished, limited totality which our mind can comprehend, i.e. encompass, grasp, or seize. And even if we speak of the universe, of space and time, of the infinite (or even of God, for that matter) we cannot help thinking it this way for we have no other way to think. Which is basically a mastering, controlling, dominating way. If an atom could speak and think it would likely speak and think as if it were no part of the world and transcended the world. It is not man per se, but the speaking subject which is no part of the world and transcends the world by the very structure of language.

  Talking beginnings and ends is just a part of that. Whoever speaks transcends the time and space s/he speaks in and feels the need to justify this from some out-of-the-world standpoint. Beyond (that is, before, behind, over, under or after) is the fulcrum which the lever of language needs to lift the world. Whether we look for original, transcendantal or final truth what is at stake is always authority -- (out-hority?). The "e-bay market" of myths rmt1 referred to is the very theatre of the power struggle -- whoever rules makes the narrative and naturally anchors it beyond the world, as the legitimation of his authority. Modifying the narrative, in turn, is essential to revolt or reform.

  Most of the ancient NE narratives which stand behind the Bible justified the existing regimes and rulers. Genesis 2--3, as exposed by Leolaia according to the pattern of the driving out of Asherah, justifies the centralist worship of Yahweh which is the standard of the Deuteronomistic reform of Jerusalem. Genesis 1 reflects a (probably later) priestly order.

  Perhaps from this perspective the important question is: whose narratives do we live by? where do they break out into the beyond: over our own head or someone else's?
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  zen nudist

  I think we all want some sort of answers and some of us are able to simply accept something they heard and not need to question it further... many seem devoid of curiosity but then there are those such as myself who seek to find some satisfying answer that fits all the facts and explains all the experiences....

  for me it kind of came out this way....

  ultimately there are many minds which are always part of one system, like many waves upon one ocean...and the one ocean at the same time, always have been always will be the one and the many.... and in all the eons of time the one thing that those who made this realm, the earth, matter and energy, wanted more than anything else was unpredictability... so they, we, collectively created a shared dream which satisifies all of our desires collectively... making it unpredictable and essentially fair to all by forcing it to be based on some standardized elements. [though most games do have cheat codes (^_^) and I suspect that this one is no different.] so here we are, essentially committing pre-meditated chronocide by means a multi-dimensional virtual reality game of our own making... as we move towards creating techological utopias which can give us, individually, everything we desire, I see the gamers as being threatened by their own homesickness and so I suspect all these myths of the end of the world are based in a fact that a needed reset of the game must occur every once in a while to keep it unpredictable.