Discussion Post I submitted for my Atlantic University TP5110 Course –August 19
At the heart of who we are is a longing to know where we originated. In all of the hero’s journeys, the protagonist, whether it’s Odysseus, Luke Skywalker, Katniss Everdeen, or Frodo, leave their comfortable surroundings on some type of epic quest, only to discover themselves along the way. If you believe in reincarnation and multiple lives, which I do now, our souls are on one long hero’s journey, analogous to a Netflix series. Each life is like an entire season with one arc, while the multiple lives represent a whole series, which has a longer arc. Each phase of growth along a singular life is like one episode with its own arc.
The arc of an entire series, or the theme of all of our lives, is to discover the Creator. It’s why creation stories are not only essential but exist across all cultures and times. Genesis is a compilation of many of the myths present at the time of its writings. For example, most cultures feature a flood story. The story of Noah and the great flood is the most familiar to us here in the West. The Big History Project’s booklet on the Mayan’s Origin Story notes that they believed that along “came a great destruction. The wooden carvings were killed when the Heart of Sky devised a flood for them.” (Tedlock, n.d.). Cleansing and rebuilding are essential themes in our existence and can be seen on an everyday basis as we shower and renew at the beginning of each day.
The story of Adam and Eve is also an analogy of our hero’s journey. They began in a comfortable surrounding, and they and their future progenies must learn to make it “by the sweat of” their brows (Gen. 3:19). Genesis means beginning or commencement, so the story at this point is just in the infancy stages. The goal since the two were banished is to return to God and live in paradise. And that is the goal for all of us through the various lifetimes we’ve led. Greek and Roman mythology, with their various gods and their interactions with humans, presents this same theme across numerous myths.
The Chinese origin story is very similar to the scientific myth presented in The Big History Project video we were assigned this week. According to another Big History Project booklet, the Chinese believed that in “the beginning was a huge egg containing chaos, a mixture of yin and yang — female-male, aggressive-passive, cold-hot, dark-light, and wet-dry.” (Leeming, David & Margaret, n.d.). The voiceover in the The History of Everything episode says, “Before the first second has passed [after the Big Bang], the fundamental forces appear that will govern all of existence forever.” Jonathan Markley, a Cal State Fullerton historian, then adds the “Big Bang is the creation event that lays the ground rules, it lays the ground rules of the fundamental forces – the strength of gravity, the speed of light – all of the things that will shape the rest of the history of the universe” (Cohen, 2013).
The History of Everything episode, however, has a serious and fundamental omission that all other origin accounts include. That’s the presence of a universal watchmaker, whether it’s known as God, Yahweh, Allah, or a myriad of pantheistic gods. As I’ve written previously, the introduction of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the late 1800s was a departure point for science’s recognition of an author of the universe. Science, ever since, has been stuck in a box that they can’t escape. They now boil their explanation of fantastic events like the earth’s location at the perfect distance from the sun so it doesn’t freeze or cook to death, and the fact that our moon keeps us at the right axis, as random occurrences. They develop lofty terms such as a “threshold moment” to explain things they have no clue about, like what existed before the Big Bang, where all that energy originated, and how it self-combusted like a drummer from a 1960’s rock band.
The “threshold moments” presented in the piece include humungous holes in the scientific myth, which for me blows apart their attempt to tie it all together. The show would have been credible if it stuck with an unidentified scientist statement early on in the piece. He said that everything “begins [with the Big Bang] as far as we know it and from the moment it appears, physicists can offer a very coherent account of everything that happens since” (Cohen, 2013). It’s similar to Robin’s presentation in last week’s video about Beethoven’s 9th Symphony’s sound wave footprint. Science can do a tremendous job measuring matter and using physics and incredibly complicated math equations to explain how the universe is expanding, at what speed, the impact of gravity, and what will likely occur billions of years from now when the sun eventually flames out. It offers zero ability to explain the how and why behind it’s eight “threshold moments, which include: 1) The Big Bang theory; 2) the formation of matter; 3) the creation of complex elements; 4) the formation of the earth; especially 5) how life begins; 6) collective learning; 7) the farming revolution; and 8) the modern revolution (Cohen, 2013).
Instead, like any religion or philosophy that encounters the unexplainable, the scientific myth relies on open-ended statements to gloss over the most relevant and exciting parts of our story. For example, the following phrases are used throughout the ninety-minute special: “lucky break,” “out of nothing everything begins,” “most mysterious,” “a series of improbable events now line up,” “by a stroke of luck,” “one of our most profound questions,” “a series of mysterious transformation,” “all of them suddenly appear,” and “it almost didn’t happen” (Cohen, 2013). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re ask to accept at face value that after a couple of million of years, seemingly unintelligent creatures decided to escape the carnage of the sea by crawling on land (Cohen, 2013). Or, our ape ancestors got bored of swinging through the trees and jumped into an open field only to discover the grass was too long so they decided to stand upright (Cohen, 2013).
For a field that emphasizes proof and replication, much of what the show presents is fiction and fantasy backed by little evidence. Most of all, in their effort to do backflips to avoid any concept of a universal intelligence – a much more logical hypothesis to explain the threshold moments they’ve identified – they created a myth that keeps our culture ignorant of our real purpose. A Divine Source is not only the impetus behind the Big Bang and author of the blueprint of life for all creation but, most importantly, it’s the ultimate destination of our journey.
References
Leeming, D&M. (n.d.), “A dictionary of creation myths,” Brown, C.S. (Ed.), Chinese origin story, Big History Project [website]. Retrieved from https://www.bighistoryproject.com/BH/assets/downloads/U1_ChineseOriginStory_2014_1050L.pdf
Rotello, G. (Writer & Director). (2103). “The history of everything” [Television series episode]. In Cohen, D. (Executive Producer), Big history. Brooklyn, NY: History Channel 2
Tedlock, D. (n.d.), Popol Vuh: the Mayan book of the dawn of life, Brown, C.S. (Ed.), Mayan origin story, Big History Project [website]. Retrieved from https://www.bighistoryproject.com/BH/assets/downloads/U1_MayanOriginStory_2014_760L.pdf