Diverse Creation Stories (hint they are all unsatisfactory for same reason) (points, nature)

[jbgusa]

I put this thread in "philosophy" out of the sense of wonder I get staring into the night sky on a clear night. We see stars, but we are not seeing what's happening now. Where did this all begin?

There are all kinds of creation stories out there. The problem with al of these theories is that they are unprovable. None of them, understandably, tells what happened before the elements of water, animals and man were created. Even worse, the "scientific" explanation, the Big Bang, posits a constantly expanding "universe." So, are areas lying outside the "universe" also part of the "universe"? Is the "universe" universal? The explanation(s) don't satisfy. My poll that accompanies this post asks posters to select among the stories.

The one that we are most familiar with is the story in the book of Genesis, starts off like this (link):

Originally Posted by Genesis excerpts

When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and called the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day-- God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.**** And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.”

From a book called The Vikings, by Robert Ferguson (link to citation of book) I excerpted one of their creation stories. There is, I believe, a human need to explain creation. Obviously, the reasoning is circular since no one really knows what happened and why.*

Originally Posted by The Vikings, by Robert Ferguson

The Prose Edda opens with a section called Gylfaginning, or the 'Beguiling of Gylfi', that describes how a legendary Swedish King Gylfi visited three Heathen gods in order to question them about the origins of the world. Snorri uses the replies King Gylfi receives to layout the creation myth and cosmological structure of northern Heathendom. Gylfi learns that everything began in an empty chaos that contained a world of heat and light called Muspelheim, and an opposing dim, dark and cold world called Nifelheim. The two worlds were separated bya chasm, Ginnungagap. In the extreme physical forces that operated across Ginnungagap a giant named Ymir came into being. He was nourished by milk from the udders of a primordial cow, Audhumla. Audhumla next licked the salty stones around her into the shape of another giant, Buri. By an unspecified process Buri fathered a son, Bur, who wed a giantess, Bestla. The couple produced three sons, one of whom was Odin. Odin and his brothers created the physical world by killing Ymir and, in an act of prodigious violence, tearing the body apart and flinging the pieces in all directions. The giant's blood became the sea, his flesh the land, his bones the mountains and cliffs, his skull the vault of the heavens. Later, as Odin and his brothers were walking by the sea, two logs washed up on the sands, and from these the gods created the first human beings by breathing life and consciousness into them. They named the first man Ask and the first woman Embla. Ask means 'ash', the meaning of Embla remains obscure.

*I believe, given that this excerpt is about 0.05% of the book, that it is within copyright guidelines. Google books excerpts far greater percentages of many works.

The "scientific" rendition is, of course, the currently fashionable "big bang" theory. This is explained, in a University of Michigan website (link):

Originally Posted by University of Michigan Website

One of the most persistently asked questions has been: How was the universe created? Many once believed that the universe had no beginning or end and was truly infinite. Through the inception of the Big Bang theory, however,no longer could the universe be considered infinite. The universe was forced to take on the properties of a finite phenomenon, possessing a history and a beginning.
About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What exisisted (sic) prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurance (sic) was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang lay the foundations for the universe.

The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxys (sic) velocity is proportional to its distance. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. Another consequence is that the universe is expanding in every direction. This observation means that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position to its current position. Just as the Big Bang provided for the foundation of the universe, Hubbles (sic) observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.

[king john IV]

"Where did this all begin?"

in your or my mind.
ends there, too.

[jbgusa]

If the universe is everything there is, what was the thing that expands drastically to create the Big Bang? What did the universe expand into? Bob-universe? In other words is everything nothing or is nothing everything?

[jbgusa]

^^^^^^
My post above is incoherent. Re-written:
If the universe is everything there is, what was the thing that expands drastically to create the Big Bang? What did the universe expand into? The non-universe? In other words is everything nothing or is nothing everything?

[webster]

Robert Graves provided the Pelasgian creation myth in his classic The Greek Myths. It answers the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. In his version, Eurynome danced until Ophion appeared and as a result of their union, the Universal Egg was laid out of which all things which exist came. Thus, the egg came first.

[Michael Way]

Well, first of all, none of the creation stories of the ancient peoples, including the biblical story (and I'm a Christian) are true accounts of the creation of the universe. Scientifically speaking, the available evidence best points to the so-called big bang being the beginning of the universe, at least as we know it. We do not know what happened before the big bang, though one speculation is that 'nothing' as defined in Physics is inherently unstable, and because of the uncertainty principle, a fluctuation resulted in the expansion of a quantum virtual particle. There is no such thing as true nothingness and a true vacuum does not exist. There are always virtual particle and anti-particle pairs popping into and out of existence.

Big bangs may be happening all the time, creating new universes. We don't know. We don't even know if our own universe is infinite or not. It depends on whether the shape of the universe is flat, saddle shaped, or closed as in a sphere. If it's flat as it appears to be, or if it is saddle shaped then it could be infinite. If it's closed then the universe would curve back on itself and if you could travel far enough you would simply come back to where you started.

[jbgusa]

Thanks for jump-starting the thread. I'll have read more of Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian, and may have more of substance to add. I find the topic fascinating.

[jbgusa]

Recently I read a translation/assembly of the epic Gilgamesh. The similarities between it and the Noah story are well-known. Less well known is that it has a creation story. All creation stories other than Big Bang seem to have the division between water and land, and man's founding in common.

[msgsing]

Sometimes it’s better to just exist in our own little slice of the universe. Trying to solve mysteries beyond our intellectual capacity leads to a dead end of frustration and unanswered questions. Be at peace where you are.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by msgsing

Sometimes it’s better to just exist in our own little slice of the universe. Trying to solve mysteries beyond our intellectual capacity leads to a dead end of frustration and unanswered questions. Be at peace where you are.

That's great for the insert to a fortune cookie. It's obviously human nature to want these answers. Otherwise every single culture would not have sought an answer. Scientists can limit themselves, not people as a group.