Wednesday, October 14, 2009
creation stories
I am not a religious person, so I don’t think either of these creation stories are true. I think that they both have the same general idea though. In The Fall of Man, Adam and Eve are in Paradise; in the Navajo Creation Story life was peaceful, without any evils. The world was peaceful. Both of the stories include ideas of the first people escaping from a world of evils into a better, more peaceful world. Though I don’t think that either of the stories are true, I think that they are both good stories about how the world was created. They are both stories from different cultures answering the same question of how the world was created.
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I understand that in the Navajo story, the first people escaped from a world of evils to a better place, but how is that true for Adam and Eve? To me it seemed like they started in a good world and then turned it into a world with bad elements, but they didn't "escape".
ReplyDeleteWhat does being a "religious person" have to do with believing if these stories are true or not? Believing in the factuality of a religion's story is not essential to being a member of that religion. Despite that, I think you are right that these stories are both just cultures trying to answer big questions, even if the stories are not factual.
ReplyDeleteEirinn, glad to see that you're reading the texts closely. Tim and Helen, you both raise good points, but I still don't get your implied assumption that something has to be factual to be true.
ReplyDeleteJust like in the film, The Little Buddha, when the boy's dad calls the story of the Buddha an interesting "myth," the monk replies (I'm paraphrasing here), "It is one way to get at the truth." It’s likely these stories have probably been embellished over time, but the fanciful details are not necessarily where their truth rests. The truth of these stories is in their basic premises.
Looking at them this way, the stories shouldn't come across as equally true because some of their root assumptions aren't the same. For instance, they don't explain the existence of evil and suffering in the world the same way. Which account rings "true" to you? There is no scientific or realistic answer to this, is there? It’s just a matter of what makes sense to you.