Wednesday, October 14, 2009
I don't find either creation story more believable than the other. Both introduce fantastical ideas like a talking snake or men crawling through holes in the sky. Although real issues, such as lust, envy, and desire are incorporated into both stories, I honestly just don't see how either story could be considered the least bit believable. While I do believe the ideas of a talking snake and many worlds overlapping with portals to other worlds to be entertaining, I don't believe them to be any more than that: an entertaining explanation to something we have no possible solution for. I do not consider myself to be a religious person and that is probably the reason that I don't find either believable. I prefer the explanation that Navajo offer, however, solely because it reminds me of one of my favorite books, The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, in which the idea of worlds connected by portals is incorporated.
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While I agree that both stories were probably made to help explain what they didn't have the answers to I am curious to whether you just favor the Navajo idea also because it's an idea that seems to be repeated a lot today. For example in the show Fringe there are parallel worlds were there are "better" versions of the people here in the real world. I think that some ideas from the Genesis story has also come up in other works today also.
ReplyDeleteLily, Interesting that you equate "What story is likely to be true" with what's realistic or believable. Are those really the same thing?
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 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.
Also, I thought it interesting you thought humanity escaping from a hole in the sky far fetched. If you think about it, we currently have a hole in the sky (in the ozone layer) and we fly through it regularly on our way to space. If we ever start to populate other planets, won't the Navajo story suddenly look pretty forward thinking?