Humanity is home to many creation stories. And why shouldn’t it be? As human beings we have continually sought the meaning of our condition. One of our biggest questions is “What is our origin – where did we come from?”
One way we’ve tried to answer these questions is the creation of creation stories. In different times and cultures, different stories have arisen. Perhaps these were generated by visions and enhanced by story-telling, perhaps portions were influenced by neighboring cultures, but all sought to connect humanity with some Divine influence.
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the Judeo/Christian tradition incorporate such stories into their sacred scriptures. This post identifies some of these creation stories and points out the difficulties we have with incorporating them into our 21st century lives.
Perhaps the most important problem is the inability and unwillingness to understand the difference between a story that is literally, precisely true and a story that is a suggestion or an analogy for a higher meaning.
Hinduism allows several creation stories to coexist and should stand as a lesson to all of us of us regardless of religion. Did things begin with a cosmic egg? Maybe things sprang from parts of a cosmic man? Was the universe created by Brahma, or maybe Vishnu, Shiva or even Sati?
Buddhism tolerates some Hindu perspectives on creation but advises us to concentrate on what really matters, the right way to live. Also a good idea. Both Hinduism and Buddhism have relatively little trouble accepting current science.
In Judeo-Christian tradition, the two adjacent creation stories are contained in the Book of Genesis (known as Bereshit, in Hebrew) and both begin “without form and void.” Both also can be interpreted as resonating with the story of the universe as presented by today’s science.
In Islam, the story of the creation of the world is treated in different parts of the Quran, and it echoes the stories of Genesis. Figurative language, open to different interpretations, emphasizes the need to surrender to the power of God. There are also several statements in the Quran where God says “Be, and it becomes,” which could be compared to the Big Bang.
In both Christianity and Islam, there are major theological movements which either suggest approaches to modify science or to search out obtuse references predicting modern findings. Some reject new scientific findings altogether.
A major problem with religious doctrine is it is subject to wildly diverse interpretations.
Diverse interpretations don’t render the original (or the interpretations, for that matter) useless, but they do add to the difficulty we have arriving at any all-encompassing meanings suggested by the originals.
How important is it to use fear of damnation to keep one’s flock together? What difficulties have been created by damnation of others?
Given human nature, it is no surprise that we find a willingness to tease out meanings which can only be called metaphorical, often to support a preferred frame of reference. One can only marvel at attempts to interpret literally Christianity’s Book of Revelations.
It is also important to note that undue attachment to literalism precludes the great beauty and wisdom of metaphor. Literalists entertain only the most basic meaning of words. (note green period) Although literalists may be loath to admit it, this choice is, in itself, interpretive. Even literalists disagree among themselves about important meanings of certain passages.
The scientific world view has long influenced religion, albeit with a certain time lag. Scientific models abolished earth-centered theology and then sun-centered theology, bringing painful revisions to the idea that humankind is the center of the universe. Interpretations of sacred scripture adjusted.
Newton’s 1687 publication of his three basic laws of motion led to further changes in interpretation. European thinkers began to accept deism, the idea of a distant impersonal God who set in motion the laws of nature and then stood back. This idea influenced America’s founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson.
Then came two mind-blowing developments over the last 150 years: the shocking relationship of all living creatures illuminated by Darwin and the seemingly infinite expanding universe.
Among most scientists, God faded into the background (space) and a materialist, reductionist science gained center stage. Reductionism means reality can be reduced to, or understood as, the most simple sum of its parts, no need to appeal to anything beyond the physical. Today’s scientific reductionism can be explained as all reality will ultimately be explained by chemistry and physics.
The following is the scientific story of the beginning of the universe, expanded from the previous blog Today’s Best Creation Story:
CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE: BROUGHT TO YOU BY SCIENCE
Time and space began 13.7 billion years ago.
In the beginning there was mystery. Science has not reached beyond this beginning some 13.7 billion years ago. When some scientists ask “And who created God?”, believers now respond, “And what was behind the Big Bang?” The source of the first-ever point is moot.
This first point was infinitesimally small, hot, and dense.
Suddenly it expanded at a speed beyond imagination, doubling exponentially some 90 times in perhaps a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. This was the Big Bang.
With expansion, the universe became cooler and less dense, expanding more slowly.
With cooling, protons and neutrons collided to make hydrogen, then helium. Neutral atoms absorbed electrons.
After some 400 million years, clumps of gas began to form the first stars and galaxies. Our universe still expands. The oldest stars and galaxies are farthest from us. The Hubble Space Telescope (from 1990) reveals the beauty of galaxies other than our own.
After perhaps 9 billion years (some 4.6 billion years ago), our sun and solar system formed from a rotating cloud of dust and gas.
The cloud collapsed with most of its mass centered as our sun, the remaining mass flattened into a disc from which our planets, moons, and asteroids formed. Earth, our home, became the third planet from our sun.
Earth is where our life developed, as did our consciousness to appreciate the natural world. We behold beauty, beauty, beauty.
Those whose thoughts are confined by sacred scriptures written over a thousand years ago miss out on this story of ultimate beauty and power, both which can be appreciated as attributes of God.
If Hinduism is perfectly comfortable with several creation stories, and Judaism and Christianity have two different stories, why not expand our minds to entertain both religious and scientific stories.
The next blog post will look at what the great cosmologist Albert Einstein thought about religion and the universe.