Creation Stories

I think that human cultures form some sort of  creation story/myth because we are always in pursuit of knowledge.  We generally don't like the unknown and therefore create some sort of explanation for everything.  Humans are also very curious and always like to explore new things.  I think that myths still have a place in the world today because we still sometimes use myths to explain things that we cannot explain.  When modern science can come up with no explanation we still tend to come up with stories in order fill our need for knowledge.  Today there is also the debate of how the earth was created.  It can be looked at from a scientific evolution point of view or from a religious view. 

The Maori creation story reveals that they value they elements and nature.  The story mentions how the children were the gods of wind, storms, sea, and other elements.  I think they also looked down upon greed because the children wanted to separate the parents and this was portrayed as selfish.  In the Australian Aboriginals story they also valued nature, but they seemed to be more focused on the animals and plants.  The story talks about how the mother brought all the creatures and plants to life when she came down to earth.  This story talks about greed as well.  The animals were given the gift to change forms, but they took advantage of this gift and the mother was not pleased with them.  Both cultures seemed to value the same things.

Some similarities between the creations stories were that they both had a mother and a father figure in the beginning.  These figures were the creators of life on the earth.  In both stories the male was dominant.  The father of the story had more power in the story than the mother figure.  In the Australian Aboriginal story the mother was afraid of the father and was always commanded by him.  In the Maori story the mother and the father were more equal, but they had 70 sons and only one daughter.  The stories were also similar because they children became envious and rebelled against the parents.  Both stories talk about love and compassion as something that should be treasured.  Light and dark imagery is present in both stories.  Some differences between the stories were that in the Maori story there was nothing.  There was only blackness and the mother and father created everything.  In the Australian Aborigine story everything was still in the beginning.  The mother spirit had to go down to earth and awaken the spirits.  I think that there were these differences because stories can be changed when passed down.  This causes different versions of stories, but they can have some of the same ideas.

Although most myths are proven to be untrue, they still reveal eternal problem of the world.  They do this through the use of morals or lessons.  Most myths contain some sort of moral in the story.  It can be about things such as love, greed, truthfulness etc.  These stories create commonalities between different cultures, but it can also create conflict.  The stories change and there can be different versions of the story and this can cause tension between cultures.  Today there are still some problems between cultures. This is because of religion clash due to different creation stories. 



black and white moths
on a polluted tree



I don't really believe in a specific creation story.  I know that there is the debate between evolution and a god creating the earth.  I do believe more in evolution though because there is scientific proof.  I like knowing that there is something to explain the creation of the world.  Although I believe more in evolution and science, it is still interesting to think about the idea of there being some sort of god/spirit that helped shape the earth.  Evolution has made me view environmental influence differently.  It makes me more aware of how much humans impact nature.  For example, researchers did a count of black moths and white moths.  The count of black moth had become greater because pollution caused by industry caused moth's environment to change and caused white moths to become more scarce because of predation.  It makes me see how much we change the world through the things that we do.