Abstract
Creation myths are a common factor in human societies. While esteemed in ancient societies, today they are regarded as performing the function in the past that is today better performed by modern science. In this comparison, unprovable activities of a god or gods are usually ranked beneath scientific, naturalistic investigation. This present analysis of creation myths attempts to demonstrate that ancient creation myths were not simplistic creations of the archaic mind: they were stories attempting to answer fundamental questions about the cosmos and human life. At the same time, they acted as media allowing humans to cope with these mysteries of the world and the parts played by humans in it. They did not solve those mysteries; they allowed humans to cope with them. It may well be that, for modern usage, the creation myths need to be adapted and reformulated so that they can regain their original function. This could well require the use of poetry, arts, dancing, music as well as writing. We have inherited the shell of the creation myths; they require to be re-enervated.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
There is disagreement about the use of ‘hominid’ relative to the genus Homo. The more usual terminology used by anthropologists today is:
Hominid – the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes (that is, modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans plus all their immediate ancestors).Hominin – the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all the human immediate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus).
- 3.
Recent palaeontologist research has pushed homo sapiens in Africa back to 315,000 + years ago; their exit from Africa would have been around 194,000 years ago. There were a number of ‘exits’.
- 4.
‘Actuate’ is defined in the OED as ‘to cause to operate; motivate to act in a particular way’. Specifically, as part of the ethical process, ‘to actuate’ describes two separate activities: cultural group and individual. The term is adopted to describe the interface activity between the genetic structure of the human and culture.
- 5.
See Wilson (2012). He argues that ‘eusociality’ (close in meaning to a friendly and productive social sense of relationship) makes humans as a species unique.
- 6.
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Crotty, R. (2020). Creation Myths: A Deeper Truth for Today’s Religionists. In: Babie, P., Sarre, R. (eds) Religion Matters. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2489-9_3
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