I think I have nailed down creation myths, but it is hard to put it down in writing... Any way, I'll begin right in the middle of it all, and I apologize for the grammar, but I first put down this text in Latvian, so it may have some weird sentence structures. Creation myths don't speak of or refer to the creation of the material world. They speak of the act of comprehending and giving substance/meaning to the manifestations of the objective/natural world. But it could only happen simultaneously and not previous to the creation of language. Like Navajo indians say "Speech is the outer form of thought, and thought is the outer form of knowledge. And knowledge is the awareness of the primordial constituents of the universe". Humanity created its world with language, with the first word. And where there is one word, others must inevitably follow. Any word is a generalization, fiction, a metaphor. We look at light and say "light". And by doing so we have created light in our consciousness and the consciousness of humanity - light, which will later in all cultures be associated with enlightenment, clarity, God, holy. But this "light"/"svet"/"gaisma"/"lux" is not the objective light, it is only our idea of light, and a thought about other things associated with it. The objective light is best described by a physics formula, not language. But the best way to comprehend it is without the associative filters of our consciousness, but just to look at it without using language. And the first humans created all the human world by naming all the things, and from these names associations, metaphors, comparisons, etc. emerged. All that has little to do with the objective reality. And thus first humans had created their world, the world of humanity. To create a new world in a mythological sense means to create a new meaning of the world and its laws. With speech the human world was created. Before speech there didn't exist the subjective world of humanity, the world as we see it, understand and comprehend it today. Speech allows us to think conceptually about the future, past and present, speech allows us , with logical, associative and other links, to link past with the future, speech allows us to subjectively and conceptually create/imagine other/alternative worlds. Thus with speech religion was created, and before language there couldn't exist a religion. Speech makes it possible for human creativity and art to be. Before language the prehuman mind belonged to the chaos, to the objective reality and its dynamics. The prehuman wasn't the master of his subjective world, the prehuman couldn't create (fictional, potential, possible) worlds. With the first word human created his (mytho)world. The universe of humanity began with a word. In creation myths a new world isn't created, it already exists, exists something from which forms and objects emerge - primordial chaos, sea, darkness. There exists an unknown world with no maps and no names. With speech and words first humans made this unknown into known, humans through language put this unknown into their comprehension/consciousness, they gave it meaning and laws. They then could freely operate with these conceptual objects, conceptually think about them, create (fictional) worlds, perception and ideas, philosophies and religions. With this creation or the language of creation humans created such concepts as "God", "light", "stone", "tree", "human". Examples are various and many, from the creation myths of the american indians, to ancient egyptians, greeks, christians, australian aborigenes. Read them! Creation myths speak of that moment when humans first created a word, a language, of that moment when what previously was chaos, became law and order, and meaningful. Creation myths speak of the creation of the subjective world of the humanity, of the creation of all of which the foundations among other things are the archetypes. Creation myths speak of the creation of human. Before that only a prehuman existed, a creature without language, religion, culture, conceptual thinking, art and science. It's very important. It means that creation myths for us open a window to our most ancient origins, to the very roots of humanity and the ways prehumans saw the world before us. We are too immersed in our own creation - language - subjective world of the humanity. We have largely replaced the natural world with our subjective/conceptual one, conceptual objects, not natural ones. It doesn't mean that our conceptual world is less important or true, or real, but it is real in other way. It is real for our subjective mind, but it is not real in relation to the objective world, not in the sense as the nature of light or energy can be revealed by a physics formula. Don't use language when thinking about the natural world. Use language when thinking about concepts such as en*light*enment, honour, friendship, etc, but don't think "tree" when looking at a tree. don't think light, when looking at light. Just look and take it in your psyche without using language and metaphors, take it for what it is, for it's a miracle beyond the capacity of human language. To conclude: through creation myths we can research humanity, understand our as humanity's true being and look at the world as prehumans did. Through creation myths we can understand how we created humanity, and how humans created the world in which we live in. And God said: "Let there be light!" And there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good.
Thank you for this. It was enlightening to the connection of how I've always felt about things. Strange how the human mind is really nothing more than the concept of a stone. The stone didn't always have the structure it currently has, but a past, present and future. In other words, the concept of a stone is a thought in of itself. By labeling concepts with an easy metaphor "stone" we can create axioms in thought to build on past the complexities of the mind's pragmatistic focus. We ascended our natural world when we first spoke, thus God was created because a pattern arose. If we can transcend the beasts on Earth, something must transcend us, if not today then eventually. Genesis is the opposite of the end...thus to learn how things began we can gauge where we stand.
I wouldn't go that far. Have any evidence to back it up? Any way, this is not the place to discuss that, we have the Physics and Pseudoscience forums for that.
not really, but genep said it and he's really intelligent. http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/w...as_the_word-t17113.0.html;msg184920#msg184920
Might as well give a very broad version of the scientific creation myth: First there was no consciousness or emotions. Inorganic substance was the rule. Then through random interactions certain molecules began making copies of themselves. Much later these molecular combinations became complicated and consciousness and emotions arose. Inorganic, non-consciousness is primary. Organic is secondary. A small scale exception. Sentience is an even smaller subset of the organic. Science has always had the bias against consciousness and sentience - this is shown in the way science viewed animals, a view that has only recently changed. Science assumes that consciousness is an exception AND THAT IT IS BEST TO ASSUME THINGS ARE NOT ALIVE unless proven (in double blind studies) that they are not. Scientists are therefore skeptical of all attributions of life and consciousness where they don't see it. (I want to stress that scientists are making a metaphysical claim - non life is the rule - a methodological claim - it is best to assume things are not alive first - and a lifestyle claim - assuming things are not alive is a better lifestyle choice than trusting one's intuition that something is in fact alive. None of these assumptions are proven.) This sets them at odds with those who experience life adn consciousness everywhere. What does this Creation Myth say about Scientists? Why might they have a near to think the Inorganic is Primary? In the case of animals, what need did it satisfy to think of them as machines? Does this have something to do with confusing language use - with discrete words - with intelligence? Does it have something to do with a distrust of intuition, despite the clear use of intuition in their own field? Do tendencies in scientist skills and personality types affect the skills that scientists say are the ONLY VALID ones for ascertaining knowledge? Can there be undercurrent fears and competition with those who have other skills? Is there a a fear of life?
Have you read any of Joseph Campbell's books? He had a lot to say on the subject, and the world could do with a lot more like him.
Avatar, You don't know me, of course, since I've made a mere handful of posts on this board, but as a psychologist who shares your interest here, I want you to know that I enjoyed your essay. I agree with the emphasis that you place on the role of language in its metaphorical aspects and how over time, the very words and language we use come to shape how we think about and know a thing as conscious beings given that language is very much a tool of modern consciousness. Yet, as you pointed out, the various words and concepts used to formalize creation myths were imbued with meaning arising from a wordless realm of mentality, what today we typically call "the unconscious," the metaphorical realm of symbols and archetypes. So I can agree with you when you say, "Through creation myths we can understand how we created humanity" since I'm of the opinion that creation myths are a reflection of the dawn of consciousness in early modern humans. Just one thing, though. You mentioned that "In creation myths a new world isn't created, it already exists...," and this doesn't hold in all cases. Since the board won't allow me to include links yet in my posts, if you're interested, google this phrase and follow the first link for a short read that outlines the eight broad categories and patterns of creation myths: "categories of creation myths jeffhouse" Have a great one! Celestia
I don't understand your distinction between the material world and the objective or natural world. As is true of most people in the West, the only creation myth I have any familiarity with is the Abrahamic. According to this myth the one god of the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Baha'i, Rastafarians, etc., originally lived in a universe which was both unnatural (since nature did not yet exist) and immaterial (since matter did not yet exist). By creating matter, God by definition created the material universe because that's what "material" means: comprised of matter. This universe was also natural since in those same six days God created the laws of nature, as manifested in sunlight, matter in solid, liquid and gaseous states, and the rotation of the earth. Perhaps this was a translation problem. As for the "objective world," I'm not at all sure what you mean by that. Presumably there is a "subjective world" that stands in opposition to it? The Bible makes it clear that language already existed because Creation begins with God uttering the statement, "Let there be light." It does not say whether God created language, learned it from someone else, or was born with the ability to speak. In fact the Bible is silent on the origin of God and his entire life before the first line of the Book of Genesis and we have only the faintest glimpses into the milieu in which he lived. As the Linguistics Moderator I am surely second to no one in the SciForums community in the importance I attribute to language in mankind's development. Nonetheless, since our ancestral species did not have language, there was clearly a time, probably a very long time, during which creatures that were sort-of-human walked the earth without speaking. They had organization and hierarchy (because their ancestral species did just as gorillas, dogs and many other species have today) and they made primitive tools. (We can't say for sure whether tools came before or after language but there are other species now living who make tools without language.) Organization and toolmaking are good evidence of rather complex thought and an understanding of one's relationship to the external world. So as much as it pains me, I have trouble with your assertion that humans were only able to "create their world" when they had words with which to create it. Musicians, sculptors and many other people form very complex and creative thoughts that direct their interaction with the world, all without words. I don't see a compelling reason to suppose that people who had no language at all could not have done the same thing. I'm not sure if my dogs give much thought to stones and I rather doubt that they ponder the existence of God, but I know that they have very clear concepts of "light," "tree" and "human." Indeed. You seem to agree with me about God already having language, so at least in that particular mythology, it was not created by humans.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The most popular creation myth is the Big Bang. Monsignor Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Roman Catholic priest and president of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Science, originated the concept for the Big Bang with his "Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom" which was based on the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the Universe was created by God from a single atom, much as Christ's miracle of multiplying the loaves of bread and fishes. Pope Pius XII endorsed his theory because it tied a strict literal fundamentalist interpretation of Holy Scripture to science. Monsignor Lemaitre described his theory as "a day without yesterday... The Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation." In a paper written in 1922, he wrote that the universe had begun in light just "as Genesis suggested it."
A "myth" by definition is "traditional, legendary, invented, imaginary, fictitious, unproved" and/or "false." The only word in that list that applies to the Big Bang or any other scientific explanation for the origin of the universe is "unproved," because all scientific theories are only "proven true beyond a reasonable doubt," not "proven absolutely true." The Big Bang isn't even a canonical theory yet and is more properly called a hypothesis. Nonetheless it is a proper scientific hypothesis based upon evidence and reasoning, and therefore worthy of respect. The religious creation myths are based entirely on faith and instinct. They have no supporting evidence and their logic is generally invalid. E.g., since "the universe" includes everything that exists, and (in this myth) God exists, then God is part of the universe, so where did he come from? Therefore they are not worthy of respect. That's quite a difference. The Big Bang has not been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, but it's hardly a myth. Exactly the same is true of religion. This has nothing to do with the disciplines of science and religion; it is a fundamental bias within us, part of the human hubris. At least science has finally gotten over that bias. To be fair, so have some religions, but not the ones that have control of the world. You're way behind the information curve. Brain waves indicate that all warm-blooded animals (mammals and birds) have similar cognitive processes including consciousness and dreaming. Again, you seem to feel qualified to speak critically about science without actually displaying very much knowledge about it. Read up on entropy and then come back with a more informed argument. This one is completely off base. A standard scientific definition of "life" is "a local reversal of entropy." The process of forming a complexity decreases entropy (i.e. creates greater differentiations in energy levels than already exist), and requires simplifying the surroundings to increase their entropy (i.e. reducing their differentiations in energy levels) in such a way that the net differentiation in energy levels of the entire system has been reduced. In other words, lifeforms have very low entropy (very high organization) but their formation exacts a tremendous cost from their environment. To progress from the first organic but non-living matter to the first lifeforms was a colossal local decrease in entropy and required some extremely complex chemical reactions (and perhaps physical conditions) which we don't fully understand yet but which wrought havoc on the surrounding area, leaving it a disorganized shambles of waste matter. Each subsequent step to prokaryotes, to eukaryotes, to animals, to animals with primitive nervous systems, to animals with primitive brains, to chordates, to vertebrates, to warm-blooded animals with consciousness, to primates, to apes, to humans... each of those steps was yet another massive decrease in local entropy mirrored by a disproportionately massive increase in the entropy of the surrounding area. This is not something that will occur with great regularity. It requires perfect conditions as well as sheer coincidence. Why do you associate the dismissal of animal consciousness with science? This is an assumption common to most (but not all) human societies throughout recorded history and presumably before, i.e., long before the Enlightenment made science as we know it possible. We've only progressed away from this hubris since the ascendance of science.
There is a theory that one of the primary advantages of Homo sapiens over Homo neanderthalensis was the anatomy of our throats which allow much greater vocalization, in other words, language. What an advantage it would be to be able to make and communicate complex plans and organize the group so that each member understood his role in the plan. If true, it would certainly explain how we were able to wipe the Neaderthals off the earth. So, whether or not speech allowed us to create our world, it may well have allowed for our continued existence and spelled doom for the Neanderthals.
One of the major tenets of this myth is that time began with the Big Bang, but recent trends in phyics go against this idea. Would you consider Jung's 23-dimensional model of the human spirit a proper scientific hypothesis? Or a myth? You cannot base a myth on faith. You can decide to have a faith based relationship to an idea, including a certain myth, but this is not what myths are based on. I have never heard that line of reasoning. The Big Bang is a collection of ideas. There seems to be quite a bit of flexibility in the scientific community about each of these. Nope, it a common trait in the large monotheisms and science. Most indigenous groups did not share this bias. Which was mythological. It caught up with the pagans, to a degree. On the animals, but not on what it considers inorganic. Funny, I thought he was talking about the information curve in science. Sure, science has finally gotten around to realizing what pet owners, pagans and people who work with animals have known for thousands of years. Science is still assuming this is true in relation to what it sees as inorganic. He is talking, I assume, about the starting place in science and a bias, that yes, has loosened, but is still present. It looked like a question. This is simply incorrect. Certainly it applies to the big monotheisms. It does not apply to Buddhism or Hinduism. I am not sure about Taoism, but even these first two religions cover a vast portion of humanity. Then you have pagan and indigenous religions where animal consciousness was definintely assumed. Science needs to look at its bedfellow on this issue: the Abrahamic Religions. Though Islam through its Halal practices definitely seems aware that animals suffer and suggests that this suffering be minimized. Contradictions to this stance may be present also, I don't know enough about that religion. The religions that had conversion aims dovetailed nicely with colonialist and empirical - ha, ha - aims in a large portion of the world. But these religions should not be confused with RELIGION. They are just examples. The fact that in conjunction with colonialist and empirical aims they helped wipe out religions who on this issue were ahead of them (and anyone who listend to Descartes) should not give them the right to stand for religion in general.
wise acre, As someone who's studied Jung for many years, the term "23-dimensional model of the human spirit" is a new one for me. I don't want to take this thread off topic, so would you please just provide a link that addresses this concept? Thanks. *** And in general in this thread, my observation is that Avatar's focus on the metaphorical aspects of language is being overlooked. Celestia
Jane Goodall mentions that one day in Gombe, she saw a group of chimpanzees staring in fascination at a waterfall, which was generating a lot of spray. Sunlight coming through the spray had produced a rainbow, which was entrancing the chimps. Her interpretation of this was that the chimps were astonished by their contact with something mysterious, and she speculated whether this was the beginning of musings about the presence of powers beyond our own. Our earliest ancestors had such encounters with the mysteries of Nature, which would have led them along the same speculative path. It's been proved recently (now that a rough draft of the Neanderthal genome has been produced) that they had some of the genes that code for speech. How much speech ability they had nobody can be certain, but the discoveries at Shanadir Cave in Iraq in 1950-51 (by Ralph and Rose Solecki) proved that the Neanderthals had some idea of the afterlife--so they probably had their own creation myths...it would be very interesting to get the DNA sequences of some Homo Erectus to see whether they had the genes for speech as well. They spread from Africa ca 2 mya, and reached as far as northern Siberia (at Diring, on the Lena River) by 250,000 years ago, and Indonesia (Trinil and Mojokerto) by 1.8 mya. They reached Flores by sea ca. 800,000 years ago. You need language to do that, surely--you don't communicate enough with mere grunts to be able to spread that far. It could be that they had also developed ideas about the afterlife, or some form of mythology.
Is there evidence to indicate their throats were significantly different? I have suggesed that the reason humans destroyed the larger, stornger, bigger brained, humans is that they were (unintentionally) accelerating our rate of evolution by keeping the human gene pool under more stress, and posibily smaller and more confined in it range. This may be why humans evolved the Real Time Simulation, RTS, first and destroyed them. (I.e. they still preceived the enviroment with several stages of neural processing delay and could not duck a thrown rock or spear as well as humans with their RTS perception of the enviroment. See more on the RTS at: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1294496&postcount=52 It is a long read, about 8 pages if printed, and focused on the free will question, but the RTS is described and defended with evidence.
In her Clan of the Cave Bear series, Jean Auel bases much of the hostility between the Neanderthals and the sapiens on the inability of the Neanderthals to speak well and that of the sapiens to even notice the elaborate sign language she postulates for the Neanderthals. There are other possible reasons. The Neanderthals were poorly adapted to the warming European climate, for example too dense to swim in the melting rivers. It's also been hypothesized lately that we didn't wipe them out, but simply outbred them while assimilating them through hybridization. I guess we haven't yet found a Neanderthal corpse in good enough condition for a DNA analysis, but European DNA has a suspicious component that people on the other continents lack. That still doesn't make it a myth. Joseph Campbell, Jung's most successful popularizer, tried to standardize the definition of "myth" to include only archetypes: beliefs preprogrammed by instinct, and therefore common to all societies. The Big Bang hypothesis was developed by applying scientific reasoning to empirical observations of the natural universe. Nonetheless I agree that in vernacular language "myth" tends to be used imprecisely. Despite my references to Jung and Maslow in my management classes I still regard psychology as the softest of the soft sciences. So I think to say that Jung's model (based on the striking similarity of the pantheons of the ancient religions, the dramatis personae of Shakespeare's plays, and even the comfortably familiar characters on every soap opera) is a psychological hypothesis leaves it up to you to fill in your own definition of psychology as a science vs. witchcraft in a necktie.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Nonetheless it's an analytical model of mythology, and is not itself mythology. It is perfectly at home on our Comparative Religion board. One does not base a myth on faith. It is the other way round. People are born with the archetypes, and because this instinctive impersonation of knowledge that has been in their brains since before birth has a way of feeling more true than the real knowledge they acquire subsequently through reasoning and learning, they readily develop faith in the myth. After all, so many of our instinctive beliefs are true, such as not stepping off a cliff or into the path of a bison stampede, that we don't get much practice learning to doubt them. We have faith in our instincts because most of them help us survive. Religion is a collection of archetypes, which are instincts, and we unconsciously apply that same faith to them. I guess you didn't go to Caltech. We spent a few drunken evenings laughing over that one. At any rate you're talking to the Linguistics Moderator so you can expect my perspective on science and religion to focus on their words. That's my own name for it, after typing all of my wife's papers and being exposed to Joseph Campbell's dumbed-down rendition of Jung's philosophy. Every Jungian I've mentioned it to scratches his head at first but then says, "Yeah, okay, I guess that's an interesting way to describe it." One day you need to let your Healer be in charge, the next day your Warrior, and if you're lucky on Friday night the Reveler has his turn. Everyone has them in different strengths but everyone has them all. To suppress one consistently because you just don't want to ever be the Lover or the King is to shove him down into your Shadow, a dungeon where he sits in frustration getting angrier every day until finally he has a chance to break out and take over your life in an orgy of rage long enough to ruin some or all of it. I use a dimensional model specifically because it highlights the contrast between the rich ancient religions and the pathetic ones spawned by Abraham. Monotheism is a one-dimensional model of the human spirit. Everything lies somewhere on a spectrum between Good and Evil. The god of Abraham tells us that entire parts of our spirit are evil and demands that we permanently lock them in our Shadow. As a result, the Abrahamist communities erupt into orgies of hatred and violence every few generations, as their Collective Shadow (yes AFAIK I made that one up too) bursts out. Jung himself said that the wars among the Christian nations have been the bloodiest in human history.
