1. Creation Myths How did we get here? What do we do now?

2. By Michelangelo Creation!

3. By Salvador Dali Creation…

4. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Creation?!

5. Essential Questions: What can we learn about a culture from its creation myths? How do creation myths shape my understanding of the world? Why do cultures have creation myths?

6. Take a moment to think about ONE of the essential questions Consider: How might you answer the question? What information do you need to know in order to answer the question? How do these questions relate to the myths we have already studied? Write your thoughts down!

7. More questions! Also essential, just not OUR essential questions…

8. Why study creation mythology? Question One:

9. Why study creation mythology? Take some time to jot down your thoughts.

10. Discuss with a partner… Why do all humans have inalienable rights? Why is a week seven days long? What is humankind’s relationship to animals? Why is it like this?

11. Answer… Whether we are religious or not, creation myths construct the way we understand the world.

12. Why do we need myths if we have science? Question Two:

13. Why do we need myths if we have science? Take some time to jot down your thoughts.

14. What can we get from… Science Truth that comes to us through the scientific method. We make theories and then test them. Facts that help us understand how the world works. Myth Truth that speaks to our very existence. We don’t know how we know, we just do. Metaphors that help us understand our world and ourselves.

15. Here Endeth Part One Of This Lecture

16. Where does it all come from? An Introduction to a Problem

17. Your thoughts… Take a moment to finish the sentence: “In the beginning there was…”

18. In the beginning there was… …nothing

19. A short story In Alice and Wonderland the Red King asks Alice, “What do you see?” “Nothing,” answers Alice, and the Red King comments with a certain degree of admiration, “My, what good eyes you have!”

20. In the beginning there was… …God…Being…Something!

21. An old problem…

22. Imagine… You are standing on a patch of dirt and I ask you to see the underside of the ground you are standing on. How are you going to do it? Take a minute to think and confer with a partner.

23. Where do you come from? Your biological parents! But where did they come from? And where did their parents come from? Where does this chain begin?

24. In your own words… Describe the problem we been discussing

25. In the beginning there was… …Non-Being…Being…Both

26. CHAOS!

27. Three lenses for understanding creation myths: 1. Symbolic 2. Functional 3. Historical