THEISMATHEISM  Intelligent Design by a higher power  Random Chance- the universe created itself

 Narrative of a culture that describes the earliest beginnings of the world they know and how people first came into it  Develop within the oral tradition  Usually we acknowledge them as claiming profound truths but not is a literal or historical sense

 Stories with plot and characters  Setting: non specific past  Focus on questions held by a society  Reveal the worldview and identity of a culture

 Ex nihilo – out of nothing (world is brought forth from speech, breath, dream, secretion of creator)  Creation from chaos – chaos bad and order is good  World Parent – eternal union of tow parents and world is creating from the splitting apart; or creation comes from the body part of the creator

 Emergence- humanity emerges from one world into the current world  Earth Diver – a supreme being sends an animal into primal waters to find habitable land

 What type of creation story is Genesis?  What symbolic truths are present in this story?  What is the time period for this story?  What questions does this story answer?

 What type of creation stories are these?  What symbolic truths are present in this story?  What is the time period for this story?  What questions does this story answer?

 Many once believed that the universe had no beginning or end and was truly infinite.  Discoveries were made (1920s) which indicated that the universe was not infinite and therefore had 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 existed prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurrence 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. 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 galaxy’s 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, Hubble’s observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.