Creation Myth Quotes

Comparing the vast knowledge base that has been accumulated, tested and proven for evolution, the continuing flow of new information that further adds to the knowledge base and a century and a half of unsuccessful attempts to falsify it by the scientific community, it becomes inconceivable that anyone still believes in the bizarre details of the Genesis creation myth. ~ Al Stefanelli

Creation is organized liturgically. The sun, the vast galaxies of stars, the light of the silvery moon, are set up to show the Bride when she can be with her Beloved. ~ Peter Leithart

Darwinism has become our culture's official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Once, on a walk by a river- Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow- his daughter quoted to him an opening verse by her favourite poet. Apparently, not many young women loved Phillip Larkin the way she did. 'If I were to construct a religion/ I should make use of water.' She said she liked the laconic use of 'called in'- as if he would be, as if anyone ever is. They stopped to drink coffee from a flask, and Perowne, tracing a line of lichen with a finger, said that if he ever got the call, he'd make us of evolution. What better creation myth? An unimaginable sweep of time, numberless generations spawning by infinitesimal steps complex living beauty out of inert matter, driven on by the blind furies of random mutation, natural selection and environmental change, with the tragedy of forms continually dying, and lately the wonder of minds emerging and with them morality, love, art, cities- and the unprecedented bonus of this story happening to be demonstrably true. ~ Ian McEwan

If the students were taught about shuttle flights, plate tectonics and submarine volcanoes, they were also immersed in the traditional myths of their culture - the ancient story, for example, of how the island of Pohnpei had been built under the direction of a mystical octopus, Lidakika. (I was fascinated by this, for it was the only cephalopod creation myth I had ever heard. ~ Oliver Sacks

According to Eliade, the shamanic ladder is the earliest version of the idea of an axis of the world, which connects the different levels of the cosmos, and is found in numerous creation myths in the form of a tree. ~ Jeremy Narby

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival. ~ Edward O. Wilson

We wish we could offer you a creation myth, an exact reason why you are the way you are, why when you read this sentence, you will know it's about you. ~ David Levithan

The story of evolution is more dramatic, more compelling, more intricate than any creation myth. Yet like any creation myth, it is a tale of transformations, of sudden and spectacular changes, eruptions of innovation that transfigured our planet, overwriting past revolutions with new layers of complexity. The tranquil beauty of our planet from space belies the real history of this place, full of strife and ingenuity and change. How ironic that our own petty squabbles reflect our planet's turbulent past, and that we alone, despoilers of the Earth, can rise above it to see the beautiful unity of the whole. ~ Nick Lane

New Rule: You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach "intelligent design" alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is "just a theory." Then the president renewed his vow to "drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth."

Here's what I don't get: President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He's the man who proved you could mix two parts booze with one part cocaine and still fly a jet fighter. And yet he just can't seem to accept that we descended from apes. It seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys that you have to make up fairy tales like "We came from Adam and Eve," and then cover stories for Adam and Eve, like intelligent design! Yeah, leaving the earth in the hands of two naked teenagers, that's a real intelligent design.

I'm sorry, folks, but it may very well be that life is just a series of random events, and that there is no master plan--but enough about Iraq.

There aren't necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an opposition party. And an opposition party would point out that even though there's a debate in schools and government about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by the guys on lin ~ Bill Maher

But Viv, if I've learned anything at all in the last eight years of my life? It's that people just like to tell themselves stories about where they came from. They can't help themselves. They don't trust the world around them--it's too good for them, or not good enough--so they tell themselves stories about it. They tell themselves an old magician who lives up in the sky made them out of clay and put them here until whenever he makes up his mind to take them out again. Your parents didn't like their creation myth, that's all--it had pain in it, and chaos, and their own parents were ashamed. So they told themselves a story that was at least partially true: about two good people who deserved happy lives. And probably at some point they started to believe that story. But the thing is, really, that it doesn't matter. For your parents or anyone else. It doesn't actually matter where we came from, or where we're going, or when. The only thing that matters is what we have to do while we're here and how well we do it. ~ Katie Coyle

The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer ... They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth ... [Then the Creator said]: 'They know all ... what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth! ... Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods? ~ Anonymous

What are you? From where did you come? I have never seen anything like you. The Creator Raven looked at Man and was ... surprised to find that this strange new being was so much like himself. ~ Eskimo Creation Myth

By asseting the creation myth, in which God is a man over ealier creation myths in which God was viewed as a woman, men hoped to prove that the position of supremacy that they had assumed was Divine Law. ~ Frederick Lenz

Religious warriors are not an anomaly. It is a mistake to classify believers of particular religious and dogmatic religionlike ideologies into two groups, moderate versus extremist. The true cause of hatred and violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism. Faith is the one thing that makes otherwise good people do bad things. Nowhere do people tolerate attacks on their person, their family, their country - or their creation myth. In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality - including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth - the faith - of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else's sacred creation myth is "religious bigotry." It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat. ~ Edward O. Wilson

God creates the sky as a liturgical calendar. Sun, moon, and stars exist to indicate the appointed times. Created time is liturgical, and Israel's time ticks and tocks along with the movements of the universe. ~ Peter Leithart

The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.
People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.
There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere. ~ Terry Pratchett

There are two kinds of creation myths: those where life arises out of the mud, and those where life falls from the sky. In this creation myth, computers arose from the mud, and code fell from the sky. ~ George Dyson

It wasn't until I began to see my own trauma as a creation myth that I could truthfully begin to heal. A myth is only a myth after all. It is not set in stone. It was truth, but shouldn't be truth forever...The myth can change. ~ Javier Zamora

Every culture has its own creation myth, its own cosmology. And in some respects every cosmology is true, even if I might flatter myself in assuming mine is somehow truer because it is scientific. But it seems to me that no culture, including scientific culture, has cornered the market on definitive answers when it comes to the ultimate questions. Science may couch its models in the language of mathematics and observational astronomy, while other cultures use poetry and sacrificial propitiations to defend theirs. But in the end, no one knows, at least not yet. The current flux in the state of scientific cosmology attests to this, as we watch physicists and astronomers argue over string theory and multiverses and the cosmic inflation hypothesis. Many of the postulates of modern cosmology lie beyond, or at least at the outer fringes, of what can be verified through observation. As a result, aesthetics - as reflected by the "elegance" of the mathematical models - has become as important as observation in assessing the validity of a cosmological theory. There is the assumption, sometimes explicit and sometimes not, that the universe is rationally constructed, that it has an inherent quality of beauty, and that any mathematical model that does not exemplify an underlying, unifying simplicity is to be considered dubious if not invalid on such criteria alone. This is really nothing more than an article of faith; and it is one of the few instances where science is faith-based, at lea ~ Dennis J. McKenna

A holy moonlit night turned into day, when the Sun appeared from the bosom of the Light - the Most High. The Sun became the Son of God. It stood as the Master in the center of its own system, radiating energy in all directions, towards and throughout the circumference. In that circle, the planets - disciples of the Sun - followed an order of strict consistency. They breathed in its heat, and looped around it in an act of worship. ~ Karim El Koussa

Maps of Time attempts to assemble a coherent and accessible account of origins, a modern creation myth. ~ David Christian

Humans are a story telling species. Throughout history we have told stories to each other and ourselves as one of the ways to understand the world around us. Every culture has its creation myth for how the universe came to be, but the stories do not stop at the big picture view; other stories discuss every aspect of the world around us. We humans are chatterboxes and we just can't resist telling a story about just about everything.

However compelling and entertaining these stories may be, they fall short of being explanations because in the end all they are is stories. For every story you can tell a different variation, or a different ending, without giving reason to choose between them. If you are skeptical or try to test the veracity of these stories you'll typically find most such stories wanting. One approach to this is forbid skeptical inquiry, branding it as heresy. This meme is so compelling that it was independently developed by cultures around the globes; it is the origin of religion - a set of stories about the world that must be accepted on faith, and never questioned. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination's activities. ~ Gertrude Atherton

Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. ~ Lawrence Lessig

No I don't think it was a myth at all, anymore than what the recession that the whole country was experiencing was a myth, which obviously seems like it's going to get worse and worse. ~ Lester Bangs

Only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art. ~ William Butler Yeats

None of them, not even he, seemed to realize they weren't just physical beings, that God had left a mark upon them by the simple fact of his creation. They preferred their idols, tangible, possessing, capricious characteristics like themselves, easily understood. They wanted something they could manipulate. God was inconceivable, intangible, incomprehensible, unexploitable. ~ Francine Rivers

It's a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It's the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for. ~ Ricky Gervais

Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them. ~ Joseph Campbell

In Hindu philosophy the whole creation is regarded as the Vishnu Lila, the play of Vishnu. Lila means dance or play. Also in Hindu philosophy, they call the world illusion; and in Latin the root of the word illusion is ludere, to play. ~ Alan Watts

This is the myth of the Dark Ages, the idea that history and progress pretty much stopped for a millennium after the fall of Rome. The trouble is that the myth is just that, a myth. ~ Ehsan Masood

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation ~ George Bernard Shaw

Most of all, there is this truth: No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy's reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself. Eventually, the teachers won't be there anymore. The walls of the school will fall away, and you'll be on your own. The hours that you will then put into practice, study, auditions, and creation will be entirely up to you. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

All creation has come to existence because of God and continues existing because of God. Were God's sustaining power suddenly removed from creation, it would immediately vanish into nothingness. This includes the soul, which - precisely because it is a creature and not the Creator - cannot subsist without God's sustaining power. It is not that we live because we have a soul, but rather that we have a soul and we live thanks to God's sustaining grace. ~ Justo L. Gonzalez

Serenity within the chaos of life is there to be discovered, just look within yourself for it. ~ Stephen Richards

With nature's help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life sustaining. ~ Hildegard Of Bingen

How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren't going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how equipped you are for the weird demands of creative living. Holding yourself together through all the phases of creation is where the real work lies. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I subscribe to no religion. But I believe that in the creation of art, there can be moments of God. ~ Andrea Riseborough

How should we judge what we see? More intimately, let us consider the vulnerability of the human body and soul under these circumstances. It's all creation. It's made. It's not a given. ~ Thomas Struth

I sometimes like to think of God as a great symphony and the various spiritual paths as instruments in an orchestra. The gift that you have is like music waiting to be played. You need only to find the instrument that will best bring it out. You alone can never play all the instruments, and your music might not find voice in all the instruments. All you can do is find the instrument that suits you best, play it as well as you can, and add your music to the great symphony of divine creation. ~ Kent Nerburn

I was warned not to do it. Actors who play Jesus are supposed to have a hard time getting other roles to follow, but I felt this was a myth. After all, how can you be typecast as Christ? ~ Jeffrey Hunter

What will we answer to Him about that child, that old father and mother, because they are His creation, they are children of God. ~ Mother Teresa

Museums are obliged to denature and make dreary the impulse which led to an object's original creation. Serried rows of coins are like Panini football stickers in a more ponderous form. But as objects to be handled they tell an extraordinary story, from the most over-the-top gold monster to a clipped, almost featureless little square of rough metal used as emergency currency in the Siege of Vienna. ~ Simon Winder

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier. ~ Sarah Zettel

Welsh Incident

'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
Nothing at all of any things like that.'
What were they, then?'
'All sorts of queer things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes,
All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour,
Though all came moving slowly out together.'
Describe just one of them.'
'I am unable.'
What were their colours?'
'Mostly nameless colours,
Colours you'd like to see; but one was puce
Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish.
Some had no colour.'
'Tell me, had they legs?'
Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.'
But did these things come out in any order?'
What o'clock was it? What was the day of the week?
Who else was present? How was the weather?'
I was coming to that. It was half-past three
On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining.
The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu
On thrity-seven shimmering instruments
Collecting for Caernarvon's (Fever) Hospital Fund.
The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth,
Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth,
Were all assembled. Criccieth's mayor addressed ~ Robert Graves

This is the beauty of the Qur'an: it asks you to reflect and reason, and not to worship the sun or moon but the One who has created everything. The Qur'an asks man to reflect upon the sun and moon and God's creation in general. ~ Cat Stevens

God's Creation gives usa model for making and sharing homes with people, but the reality of God's Trinitarian life suggests that Christian hospitality goes farther than that. We are not meant simply to invite people into our homes, but also to invite them into our lives. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, is not an imposition, because we are not meant to rearrange our lives for our guests - we are meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are. It is this forging of relationships that transforms entertianment ... into hospitality ... As writer Karen Burton Mains puts it, Visitors may be more than guests in our home. if they like, they may be friends. ~ Lauren F. Winner

If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self sufficiency, yet in supreme Trial or Sacrifice' it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength which, if Heaven gave it may be called his own': for then, in the absence of all merely natural motives and supports he acts in that strength, and that alone, which God confers upon him through his subjected will. Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. In all other acts our will is fed through nature, that is, through created things other than the self - through the desires which our physical organism and our heredity supply to us. When we act from ourselves alone, that is, from God in ourselves - we are collaborators in, or live instruments of creation: and that is why such an act undoes with 'backward mutters of deserving power' the uncreative spell which Adam laid upon his species. ~ C.S. Lewis

If you look around you at the physical universe, you will see that it's nature is growth. Everything from the cells in your body to the planets orbiting the sun are constantly growing, constantly changing, constantly evolving. Nothing stays still. Nothing remains the same. So think about it - why would your life be the exception? Why would you be the only thing that exists in all of creation whose purpose isn't to grow? ~ Barbara De Angelis

Your ideas, thoughts and intentions are the seeds of creation, and your attention is the powerful tool that drives energy toward the object or outcome that you want to create. Your positive emotion and passionate action add power to the creative process. ~ Ilchi Lee

We are creature of darkness and light, capable of barbarism and limitless cruelty, and also love, and laughter and the creation of the most sublime beauty. We are both these things, clearly, but which are we more of? ~ Mark Frost

It is a very strange thing to see so many images in the world around us ... we don't realise it, but we are all impressionable beings, able to pick up off of the images that bombard us on a daily basis. We are created and moulded by images and impressions. One of the most difficult tasks in life, is to keep a steady impression of something in your sight, and to believe in it until it becomes you. Because there is just so much temptation/opportunity, to become something else. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Following the creation concept that creation processes differed from preservation processes, it is suggested that God endowed each created kind, at the time of its creation, with potential for vast variety. ~ Walter Lang