A question that’s bugged me for years…

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming to… well… to be honest, I’m doing it because I’ve been curious about something for more than 30 years, and I think it’s time that I ask the question.

Here it is:

When folks argue that we should teach creationism instead of evolution, why do they only want to teach the Christian version?

There’s some really good ones out there!

One of my favorites is the old Babylonian story from the Enûma Eliš (there’s nothing quite like the original Akkadian Cuneiform!) from roughly the time of our old buddy Hammurabi – around 1775-ish BC. It’s a rousing tale of Marduk’s defeat of Tiamat. He rips her dead body in half, and uses one half to create the earth, and the other half to create the skies – and then, as an afterthought, whips up time, the calendar, the stars and other planets, and the behavior of the sun, moon, and weather. Pretty cool!

There’s a Mayan story about two gods, Kukulkán and Tepeu, the Makers. One day they decided to preserve their legacy by creating beings on Earth that looked like them. First, they made folks out of mud, but the mud crumbled into dust. Then they tried wood. Unfortunately, the wooden men had no souls, and they weren’t loyal to the Makers, so the gods destroyed them in a flood (hmmm… where have I heard that before?). Finally, they made us out of maize. I don’t think that’s corny at all!

What about the story of Pangu from China? As it turns out, in the beginning there was nothing except formless chaos (again, hmmm… ). Eventually this chaos coalesced into a great cosmic egg, which contained the essence of yin and yang. When the egg hatched, Pangu was born. He took a swing with his giant axe, separating Yin from Yang, thus creating the earth and the sky. To keep them apart, Pangu himself pushed up the sky. When the sky was high enough, Pangu allowed himself to die – his breath became the wind; his voice became thunder; his left eye the sun, and right eye the moon; his body became mountains, his blood the rivers; his beard became the stars; his fur became the forests; and the fleas on his fur became the animals of the earth. His brain became the goddess, Nüwa. She used mud to create humans. Since they were crafted individually, they were awesome – smart, creative, compassionate, etc. These, of course, were the Chinese people. Eventually Nüwa got bored of making them individually, so she started mass-producing people. They weren’t as smart as the first batch – thus the non-Chinese people were created.

Notice how often mud/dirt is used to create us? In Cherokee stories, Dâyuni’sï (Beaver’s Grandchild) dove to the bottom of the water and brought up some mud. When the mud came out of the water, it expanded in every direction and became the earth and all animals and people.

The Yorùbá of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo tell of how Obatala crafted us out of handfuls of earth.

For the Mongols, a Lama named Udan made us out of clay.

Obviously I could go on and on… there are a lot of great creation stories out there, and I haven’t even mentioned Scientology’s fascination with the Galactic Confederacy, ruled for 80 trillion years by the space tyrant Xenu.

The question again: why do creationists only want to teach the Judeo-Christian version in schools?

Once upon a time, I would have said that this is a rhetorical question. But now I’m not so sure.

Clearly that isn’t a fair position – but fairness rarely has anything to do with most theological views. Obviously that position doesn’t take the full First Amendment into account…

The answer that keeps coming to my mind is a bit provocative, so I don’t really want to put it out there until I’ve had a chance to read some other answers… so let’s see what kind of responses I get.

Do you have any thoughts? I’d love to read them!