There are countless creation myths in the world. These symbolic narratives assume a creator to explain how the world began and how people came into being. They are imaginative, foundational to the religious and indigenous communities raised with these stories. Many indigenous creation stories inspire people to care for their homeland, detailing the special nature of the place where their ancestors have lived. In contrast, religious stories are usually of another place. Many religious origin stories are located in the Mideast. Jews pray facing east towards Jerusalem and Muslims also pray facing east towards Mecca, often thousands of miles away.
In this essay I am choosing the word “origin story” rather than creation myth. Scientific cosmogonies are more neutral origin stories and do not always assume a creator. Scientific cosmogony focuses strictly on the birth and origin of the universe. It refers to the of how the universe and our solar system came into being.
The hardest thing to do on this planet is not capturing carbon or ridding ourselves of cruelty and war. It seems that the hardest thing to do is to embrace our common cosmogony, our common origin story.
Sticking to old, engrained individual stories no longer serves us in the context of what is now happening to the biosphere as it undergoes dramatic change. Religious stories typically do not prioritize taking care of the earth. Rather they prioritize serving the rules of a deity. The level of climate disruption we are experiencing reflects dominant extractive stories that began thousands of years ago.
There are two basic types of origin stories, those of the earth-based, indigenous societies and those of the literate societies often based on a specific text or series of texts. The first group’s stories are from oral traditions passed down generation to generation, often with rituals steeped in dance, drumming and music deeply connected to a specific place. The second group has dominated our planet ever since colonial powers spread the gospel of literate stories and destroyed much of the indigenous ways of knowing the world. The dominant monotheistic stories in general, describe a way of engaging with the world based on` a controlling deity who created the world in his image in a very short amount of time. It is not based on natural cycles except in some cases, like Judaism where the lunar cycle is still a part of prayers.
Origin stories are a giant permission slip to behave in certain ways. This presents danger to those who refuse to succumb to the stories and situations they set up which may not be in sync with how the biosphere works. The dispute over whether or not they hold up under a scientific lens is not the issue as much as it is about what they teach us about how we fit in the world.
According to the origin stories of the dominant monotheistic religions, humans were created on the last day of creation in the image of the creator. That human-centric story sets up an ecological nightmare, for clearly, we cannot survive this selfish denial of our interdependence with other creatures and the cycles of water, soil and air on which we depend.
We live and breathe our origin stories whether we are aware of them or not. The dominant narrative ruling the planet right now is that humans are the most important specie in the world. Anthropocentric at its core, these stories set up men as the most significant specie and justify their dominion over earth’s other creatures, of males over females and whites over all people of color. A patriarchy that believes in male superiority ( e.g. Adam was created before Eve ) will establish rules that take rights away from women. In extreme cases these rules will permit arranged marriages and honor killings. Other sub-stories often attach to origin stories, allowing the domination of one group over the other. White supremacy is such a story, claiming the rights of whites to dominate what they believe are inferior people of color.
No matter the type of origin story one may be accustomed to, indigenous or colonial, only one story really connects us all, how the earth came to be in the universe. We all belong to that story. One can be Mandan or Muslim, Lakota or Liberian, horsefly or horse, cheetah or chimpanzee, bamboo or beech tree. We are all of this place. All flora and fauna, past and present from the dinosaurs to the blue whales, from the first amphibians to modern day tree frogs, all came into being on this third planet from the sun. We orbit what must be the perfect distance away from our yellow star, for we know so far that there is no evidence of other complex life forms on any other planet in our solar system.
Our origin stories must align with how the earth works ecologically, for it has final say if our species and most others will continue. Fortunately, we all share the same magnificent, turbulent story. It was violent long before we invented nuclear weapons. It has been molten, frozen and every temperature in between. Our common story is full of amazing and true tales which keep revealing themselves in the albeit incomplete fossil record. We know that there were five major extinctions in our planet’s history each producing new and incredible life forms in subsequent epochs. We know dinosaurs roamed the land for 165-180 million years and some were as large as three school buses parked end to end. We know that humans evolved from the tiny mammals which survived the meteor that hit the earth near what is now the Yucatan peninsula approximately 65 million years ago.
We also know we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction which cannot be blamed on volcanic activity or a catastrophic encounter with a meteor. We are the culprit, the reason nearly three billion birds are now gone from the U.S. and Canada. We are the reason for increased droughts, wildfires and violent storms. Our billions, now pushing an unprecedented nine billion, are rapidly paving over the remaining wild and open areas, simultaneously destroying life-giving arable soil and the water cycle’s ability to use it to percolate and return water from the atmosphere to aquifers. We keep surpassing the life-threatening limits of the parts per million of carbon with our fossil fuel emissions.
There are many who deny all of this because it conflicts with the origin story they have embraced and it threatens their access to wealth, for the oil and gas barons were the first to become rich after selling us our carbon habit. These climate deniers say it always goes in cycles, and this is just one of them. Others claim that their God has a plan. According to some interpretations, it includes the biblically predicted end-of-days so why interfere with this diabolical supernatural version of the end of the world? While beginnings and endings are a part of all of life, succumbing to this version of the earth’s story prevents our power to make it a better journey.
Even though scientific research has pulled back the curtain on so many of these dangerous stories, these toxic notions still persist, helping a certain group maintain the power they have enjoyed for so long. Due to advances in mitochondrial DNA research or mtDNA, we now know that humans all are descendants of one woman from Africa. We know that humans were all originally black and over time skin lightened to absorb crucial Vitamin D from sunlight when migration and encountering colder temperatures demanded covering up. That is where our new stories need to begin and offer a new and more sustainable way of viewing the world.
I propose that we raise children from a very young age with the story of how our universe really formed. We need a foundation that everyone can proudly share without doubt. We need to learn the same origin story, because that actually is what we share. Our home planet developed in a solar system that originated after the cataclysmic explosion referred to as the Big Bang. The latest telescopes and scientific calculations have been able to piece together our origin story. It is a profound, violent and magnificent one, happening over a time span that is difficult to comprehend. Spanning some 4.3 billion years, it involves the forces of gravity, toxic gases of volcanic action, bombardment by meteors and freezing cold episodes of a lifeless time on earth. Major species evolved followed by major extinctions, all happening millennia before homo sapiens ever evolved to develop their many different creation stories, all claiming truth and often dividing us from one another with detrimental results.
The modern era has many flaws, having created inventions to make life more comfortable on the one hand and dangerous on the other. Technology has brought us everything from air conditioning to atom bombs. Simultaneously, the modern era has discovered perhaps the most important thing, how the earth originated. This could be the key to surviving as a specie into the future, but it has largely failed to pierce the old origin stories even with this strong evidence. Failing to do so has kept us from coming together over our common beginnings and prevented the collective fight we so badly need so that we can stop the accelerating degradation of our delicate biosphere.
Cultural diversity makes us an interesting specie and keeps our extended family units knit together with traditions of language, dialects, recipes, dance and music handed down for generations. That needn’t stop. It just needs to stop preventing the actual origin story from taking hold and showing us the delicate magnificence that is life on earth.
If everyone was required to study the earth’s origin story from a young age, it is easier to imagine that we would all begin to realize the fragile nature of our unique planet. What if we learned as pre-schoolers that we are protected from the sun’s radiation and breathe life into our lungs each day, thanks to our atmosphere. This blanket of air is unequaled in our solar system. It formed in three stages, the last beginning some 2.4 billion years ago. We are dependent upon steady temperatures in order to grow our food. Above all, the Earth though expansive, is a limited place, with slow cycles. Many of the energy sources we depend on formed in the Carboniferous Period, over 300 million years ago. The Earth’s resources can be depleted and polluted. We are doing a great job of both right now, causing the tremendous problems seen on the news each day, to the detriment of our future. Steeped in the Earth’s origin story, we would develop a deep understanding of what it took for life to first form and then remain on earth. It would become clear just how critically important it is to honor the boundaries of our planet’s limited resources and ability to clean up our pollution. We would see the need to keep our population numbers within the boundaries of nature’s resources, and the goal of a stabilized smaller population would be viewed as a survival mechanism.
Modern understandings of the earth must dominate and permeate all our other stories. How deeply ironic that while the James Webb telescope is now over one million miles away from earth hurtling through space, collecting all sorts of data about the origin and makeup of the universe, there are people on present day earth building and visiting creation museums. The James Webb telescope has revealed new objects called black hole stars. It has taught us how long it takes to form stars and black holes and sent back photos to Earth for anyone willing to have their minds blown away by all of its amazing discoveries. Meanwhile, in Petersburg, Kentucky between 400,000 to 500,000 visitors each year come to see biblical story dioramas showing how the earth was created at the Creation Museum. The Ark Encounter Museum, located in Williamstown, Kentucky is a sister attraction. Together they attract some 1.5 million visitors each year. These monuments to anti-science are not without their benefits and benefactors. As tourist attractions designed to solidify biblical creation stories, they generate 73.5 million dollars in annual revenue for the non-profit, Answers in Genesis, whose leaders take home hefty salaries, ranging between $206,000 to $269,000 a year. Though tax exempt, their merchandise sales do generate sales tax for Kentucky.
Why does this matter? It matters because science tells us we are causing the earth to rapidly warm. It is telling us that we are overshooting our planet’s ability to support us in basic resources. If our origin story is undermined by biblical ones, we will be unable to respond to this threat as we continue ignoring science and deluding ourselves with these ancient creation myths. This causes us both global peril and keeps us believing that we are fundamentally different from one another. We are not. We all formed from the same cosmic dust. We are all related and will share the same frightening fate if we do not rise above petty, historical differences to come together over preserving what is left of our life-giving planet.
When we embrace an earth origin story, we are also embracing the same ending to the earth’s story. That ending is not pretty. It is sobering knowing the sun’s fuel will run out someday and when it does, no matter how many peace treaties we sign, or how much we stabilize and reduce our population to more sustainable numbers, no matter how vegan we become or how much land is converted to restorative practices, we will eventually return to cosmic dust. While an estimated five billion years remain before the sun completely runs out of fuel, it will begin heating up much earlier, causing the forests to die and the oceans to dry up in one billion years. This process is estimated to begin in about 600 million years. That means that the earth, our home has about 14% of its life left to support us. If it were a human it would be in an assisted living home. As of right now it is on life support too.
While the end game is set in the stone of astrophysics, 600 million years is a lot of time. It is three times longer than dinosaurs exited on earth. We have lots of time left, but not if we continue ignoring the science and realize our shared origin and destiny. None of us, no matter how hard we pray or how much money we accumulate, are going to escape that reality. Science can be frightening with its predictions of running out of things we depend on, but it can be fascinating too. We can choose to marvel at what all we have discovered and what we have yet to learn, or we can leave science to the scientists and continue to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old compared to the 13.8 billion years the James Webb telescope is measuring it to be. The earth is estimated to be approximately four billion years old. The universe is estimated to be about 13.8 billion years old. Our ancient stories are not that ancient by comparison. Most of them need to be challenged when they prevent understanding of the facts of evolution and the damage our species is causing the earth.
Our march towards self-destruction shows few signs of slowing, despite urgent warnings from overpopulation activists and climate scientists. Nepal, near the Tibet border, has just experienced a devastating collapse of a glacier. It melted under the new order of atmospheric conditions. This may be a new phenomenon in modern life, but it will not be an isolated one.
Perhaps there will be time for something else to evolve and fill our niche. In his 2007 book, The World Without US, Alan Weissman explored just what those creatures may look like. Would those creatures miss us, he asks? Whether they do or not, I hope the giant scorpions, centipedes, cockroaches or whomever our successors may be, will live in sync with earth’s rhythms, never invent weapons of mass destruction or become a source of destruction themselves.