Crack In Creation

[Tadeo Lentz]

Biblicalcreation is based on the Bible where God created the universe and everything in it as described in Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2:3 is the specific creation week though commonly creation means Genesis 1-11). The Creator did not need matter, large amounts of time, energy, or anything else. He created out of nothing in six literal normal-length days about six thousand years ago.

In addition, biblical creationists do not view the Bible or the book of Genesis as a mythological or allegorical document. Instead, the Bible is rightly considered a historical document that records what actually happened and is the only true and real history.

Biblical creation is based on the Bible being the absolute authority. Several biblical presuppositions are diametrically opposed to evolutionary and naturalistic beliefs, the competing religious origins narrative. Biblical creation entails:

Many Christians think that if we just take each of the days of creation as being figurative, we can harmonize the Bible with the pagan religion of naturalism/evolutionism/humanism and mix it with evolutionary ideas like the big bang and a very old earth. But this only seems reasonable to those who reject the order of events according to Genesis 1 and buy into the order of events according to evolutionary models.

Historical (i.e., origins) science is distinctly different from operational (i.e., observable, repeatable) science, which is used to build computers, create vaccines, or put men on the moon. Biblical creationists and evolutionists both interpret origins evidence based on their own beliefs (starting points) about the past, both firmly within the domain of historical science.

Evolutionists and some old-earth creationists (those who mix their Christianity with the pagan evolutionary story of a big bang, millions of years, and other evolutionary ideas) frequently charge that scientists who believe in a young earth don't have real degrees and don't do real scientific research that can be published in peer-reviewed secular scientific journals. This is a false charge.

Biblical creation is important because of everything it entails. If someone denies biblical creation, they actually reject some vital theological points at the same time. The opening chapters of Genesis and related creation passages teach several important biblical truths including

Creation myths often share several features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions.[11] They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily.[12] They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past that historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore ('at that time').[11][13] Creation myths address questions deeply meaningful to the society that shares them, revealing their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context.[14]

Creation myths have been around since ancient history and have served important societal roles. Over 100 "distinct" ones have been discovered.[20] All creation myths are in one sense etiological because they attempt to explain how the world formed and where humanity came from.[21] Myths attempt to explain the unknown and sometimes teach a lesson.[22][23]

How did everything begin? This is the first question faced by any creation myth and ... answering it remains tricky. ... Each beginning seems to presuppose an earlier beginning. ... Instead of meeting a single starting point, we encounter an infinity of them, each of which poses the same problem. ... There are no entirely satisfactory solutions to this dilemma. What we have to find is not a solution but some way of dealing with the mystery .... And we have to do so using words. The words we reach for, from God to gravity, are inadequate to the task. So we have to use language poetically or symbolically; and such language, whether used by a scientist, a poet, or a shaman, can easily be misunderstood.[26]

Mythologists have applied various schemes to classify creation myths found throughout human cultures. Eliade and his colleague Charles Long developed a classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over. The classification identifies five basic types:[28]

Marta Weigle further developed and refined this typology to highlight nine themes, adding elements such as deus faber, a creation crafted by a deity, creation from the work of two creators working together or against each other, creation from sacrifice and creation from division/conjugation, accretion/conjunction, or secretion.[28]

Ex nihilo creation is found in creation stories from ancient Egypt, the Rig Veda, and many animistic cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North America.[33] In most of these stories, the world is brought into being by the speech, dream, breath, or pure thought of a creator but creation ex nihilo may also take place through a creator's bodily secretions.

The literal translation of the phrase ex nihilo is "from nothing" but in many creation myths the line is blurred whether the creative act would be better classified as a creation ex nihilo or creation from chaos. In ex nihilo creation myths, the potential and the substance of creation springs from within the creator. Such a creator may or may not be existing in physical surroundings such as darkness or water, but does not create the world from them, whereas in creation from chaos the substance used for creation is pre-existing within the unformed void.[34]

In creation from chaos myths, there is nothing initially but a formless, shapeless expanse. In these stories the word "chaos" means "disorder", and this formless expanse, which is also sometimes called a void or an abyss, contains the material with which the created world will be made. Chaos may be described as having the consistency of vapor or water, dimensionless, and sometimes salty or muddy. These myths associate chaos with evil and oblivion, in contrast to "order" (cosmos) which is the good. The act of creation is the bringing of order from disorder, and in many of these cultures it is believed that at some point the forces preserving order and form will weaken and the world will once again be engulfed into the abyss.[35] One example is the Genesis creation narrative from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.

There are two types of world parent myths, both describing a separation or splitting of a primeval entity, the world parent or parents. One form describes the primeval state as an eternal union of two parents, and the creation takes place when the two are pulled apart. The two parents are commonly identified as Sky (usually male) and Earth (usually female), who were so tightly bound to each other in the primeval state that no offspring could emerge. These myths often depict creation as the result of a sexual union and serve as genealogical record of the deities born from it.[36]

In the second form of world parent myths, creation itself springs from dismembered parts of the body of the primeval being. Often, in these stories, the limbs, hair, blood, bones, or organs of the primeval being are somehow severed or sacrificed to transform into sky, earth, animal or plant life, and other worldly features. These myths tend to emphasize creative forces as animistic in nature rather than sexual, and depict the sacred as the elemental and integral component of the natural world.[37] One example of this is the Norse creation myth described in "Vlusp", the first poem in the Poetic Edda, and in Gylfaginning.[38]

In emergence myths, humanity emerges from another world into the one they currently inhabit. The previous world is often considered the womb of the earth mother, and the process of emergence is likened to the act of giving birth. The role of midwife is usually played by a female deity, like the spider woman of several mythologies of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Male characters rarely figure into these stories, and scholars often consider them in counterpoint to male-oriented creation myths, like those of the ex nihilo variety.[21]

Emergence myths commonly describe the creation of people and/or supernatural beings as a staged ascent or metamorphosis from nascent forms through a series of subterranean worlds to arrive at their current place and form. Often the passage from one world or stage to the next is impelled by inner forces, a process of germination or gestation from earlier, embryonic forms.[39][40] The genre is most commonly found in Native American cultures where the myths frequently link the final emergence of people from a hole opening to the underworld to stories about their subsequent migrations and eventual settlement in their current homelands.[41]

The earth-diver is a common character in various traditional creation myths. In these stories a supreme being usually sends an animal (most often a type of bird, but also crustaceans, insects, and fish in some narratives)[42] into the primal waters to find bits of sand or mud with which to build habitable land.[43] Some scholars interpret these myths psychologically while others interpret them cosmogonically. In both cases emphasis is placed on beginnings emanating from the depths.[44]

According to Gudmund Hatt and Tristram P. Coffin, Earth-diver myths are common in Native American folklore, among the following populations: Shoshone, Meskwaki, Blackfoot, Chipewyan, Newettee, Yokuts of California, Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ojibwe, Yuchi, and Cherokee.[42][45]

American anthropologist Gladys Reichard located the distribution of the motif across "all parts of North America", save for "the extreme north, northeast, and southwest".[46] In a 1977 study, anthropologist Victor Barnouw surmised that the earth-diver motif appeared in "hunting-gathering societies", mainly among northerly groups such as the Hare, Dogrib, Kaska, Beaver, Carrier, Chipewyan, Sarsi, Cree, and Montagnais.[47]

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