The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 41: Unraveling Creation Myths, Theology, and Science in the Quest for Origins

March 21, 2024 • Paul

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Discover how the timeless pursuit for understanding our origins transcends through ancient myths to modern scientific theories.

Join us for a profound exploration into the Christian theological perspective of creation; envision a cosmos born not of chaos, but from the divine love and purpose of a triune God.

Contrast this peaceful inception with the tumultuous cosmos of the Enuma Elish, where the Babylonian pantheon wrestles with power and mortality to bring forth existence. We dive into the fascinating myths, drawing connections between these ancient stories and the enduring human quest to make sense of the universe.

Step into a world where the fabric of creation is interwoven with themes of conflict, fertility, and the relentless force of evolution. As we traverse the mythological landscapes, we uncover the intrinsic links between life's beginnings and its perpetual advancement, highlighting how various cultures have shaped their understanding of the cosmos through rich and complex tales.

Journey with us as we discuss how today's scientific community continues to grapple with the enigmatic origins of the universe, postulating explosive beginnings and the emergence of life amidst cosmic calamity.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization. And we're continuing to look at the foundational principles of Christian theology that have enabled not just the scientific project to flourish but really civilization as a whole. So the first one was about how God, the eternal Son, the eternal Son, has understood, thought through, displayed truth eternally, that he is the visible form of the invisible God and he is that before the incarnation, throughout the Old Testament. He's the visible form of the invisible God and there's a way in which that is eternally true. Also, that he is this manifestation of the Father in the power of the Spirit for all eternity, meaning that he is or he has thought through, understood, comprehended, expressed truth in its perfect, proper way In eternity, before the universe began. That knowledge, truth, wisdom, understanding is already achieved in God, the Son and that he is able to bear the weight of the meaning of the universe because of this, and therefore truth is not something that has to be invented but in a way it's discovered because he already has achieved it. So we thought about that. There's so much more to think about that, and it impinges on the doctrine of the Trinity and how the Father, son and Spirit relate to that they are utterly inextricably bound together in this way of from the Father through the Son, by the Spirit, in the economy, but also in eternity as well. But the second principle is this the creation was, or the universe was, freely made, or freely created from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, and is ruled by God the Son, jesus, the great High Priest. Now, that is important because it's this strong assertion of how the universe existed, the fact that it comes it's from the will of the Father, in the power of the Spirit, through God the Son, and that that is done out of love and generosity and it's a completely positive action and doesn't involve conflict.

Speaker 1:

See, most of the ancient and modern myths about the origin of the universe start from the idea that the universe came out of conflict. This is really universal for ancient and modern cosmogony myths, myths of the origin of the universe and even the structure of the universe they all essentially have the same character of conflict death, death and death, and corpses being the basis for life. Death is sort of celebrated in ancient and modern myths and it can be deaths of animals, humans, gods, angelic beings, whatever. Let's think that through. So the classic ancient myths described how the gods fought and fornicated with one another to produce the world. Now that sentence sounds quite extreme, but having read through many of these origin myths for the universe, after a while to me they become a little bit samey, although I find them quite fascinating each configuration. But the basic format is very similar that there's a kind of soap opera of the gods and it's multi-generational typically, and then out of conflict, and Well, yeah, I was gonna say it's not always fornication, sometimes you have, you know, like a successful marriage between gods that then produces offspring and so on. But typically there's kind of an unbounded or unrestricted sexual activities as well between gods and divine beings and things. But all of this conflict, fighting and fornication, all of this is considered to be the explanation for the world. The land and the sea and the sky are typically described as corpses or bodily fluids of the gods left over from conflict and messy sexual liaisons. And this you might think, if you're not used to studying this sort of thing. You might think, oh well, surely that, no, that that can't have been part of any major religions. Oh, no, abs, it absolutely was part of major civilizational religions and still is those things that I just mentioned and I don't want to go into the details how it relates to modern day religions, but you find that in modern day religions also.

Speaker 1:

But let me pick an one of the most famous ancient myths, the, the example of the Babylonian creation myth, which is called the enema alish. Now I'm gonna, I'll tell you, I'll tell you it, I'll tell you the basic, the myth, and then it gives you a good sample. So in this account, the salt water of the sea is Tiamat and the fr, and that's a goddess. And the fresh water is apsew, that's a God. These are the primal gods. Apsew, the male, and he's fresh water. And then there's Tiamat and she's the goddess. She, um, yeah, she's salt water, and these are the primal gods. That the kind of beginning you might want to probe and say, well, what is before them? Probably, not Probably. They are always the kind of always been around the salt water and the fresh water.

Speaker 1:

The idea of an absolute origin to the universe doesn't really occur in any of these ancient myths and in a way it doesn't in modern ones. Either. Not really there's this implication, or anyway, let, we'll come to that shortly. So we've got Tiamat, the salt water goddess, apsew, fresh water, and they mingle, they start to mingle together. The fresh water and the salt water, tiamat and apsew mingle together as a sort of primal chaos ocean. And this mingling of salt water and fresh water is um productive, because from this chaos ocean other gods emerge, the sort of implicitly offspring of them. And there are first the gods of silt. So you can see that the mixing of between salt water and fresh water is like what would happen at an estuary. And then the silt, that kind of um, I suppose fertile soil um is a feature of that. You can think of the Nile Delta, but anywhere around the world.

Speaker 1:

So this idea then the salt water and the sea water mingle and produce two gods of the silt and then two more gods of the? Um sort of of boundary or horizon. So sometimes it's called the gods of the horizon, but it's really the notion of boundary, because you've also got the boundary between sea and land and so on, and sea and sky. So it's um the silt, so boundary between um, the, the, the water and the land, really. But then there's the horizon, the boundary between the water and the sky, and those gods of the horizon produce the sky, god Anu, who in turn produces a god called Ea, so you can see them, that we've got water, a horizon and then sky. You can see how it's filling out, a kind of picture where you've got all the elements coming together, but now we've got the sky, god Anu, who produces the god Ea Now.

Speaker 1:

So now you've got quite a few gods milling around and they are uh, sort of rowdy, noisy, um chaotic, I guess, and uh, this annoys Tiamat and Apsu. They were, remember, they were the primal gods of saltwater and freshwater. So Tiamat and Apsu become aggravated by the rowdy behavior of these younger gods, and so Apsu wants to kill them. He's the father figure and wants to bring well, I suppose he's given up, maybe, on bringing some discipline into the household, the god household, so he just decides to kill them.

Speaker 1:

However, ia and that's the youngest god so far, so far the youngest one, ia casts a I suppose we call it a sleep spell. He has access to magical powers and he casts a sleep spell on Apsu, the primal god, one of the primal gods, and then kills him. Now again, like if you're not used to this sort of thing, you're like well, hang on. That's like one of the primal, original gods who've always been there, sort of is overpowered by this youngest, like, is he a grandson? I guess no, he's a great grandson, I think. Is he yeah, I think, or maybe more, I don't know, I've lost track slightly but say a great grandson who has magical powers more greater than Apsu? Yeah, all this.

Speaker 1:

But this sort of thing is quite typical in these myths, like you've got to roll with it, like, yeah, ia has access to magical powers, casts a sleep spell on Apsu and kills him. And then Ia, because then there's this enormous corpse of Apsu. Now, remember, apsu is fresh water, so how? Or he's the god of fresh water, but so what is his corpse? Is that water? Nah, isn't really like. He is the god, maybe he's the god of fresh water, but he himself has a, like a more solid corpse, or did have, because the corpse of Apsu becomes the foundation on which Ia builds a kind of temple home, and then he gets Ia, then gets married to Damkina, so they set up home on the corpse of Apsu and they've built the temple home and I think and because I'm trying to remember it, all the other gods, I think he invites the other gods to come and also live on the corpse of Apsu and they make that corpse of Apsu their home. I guess maybe he's like the land mass at this point.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, ia and Damkina produce another god called Marduk. Now, this is important because Marduk now were several generations down the road of the soap opera of the gods now, but Marduk, he's the key god. So this always happens in these stories, in the Greek and Roman ones also, and in the Norse ones as well. You have this generational succession and then you arrive at the god who is, like it's usually a new generation of gods are the ones that matter to us and they're the ones who are good for humanity and involved in humanity, and they're the heroic gods. And I won't do the Greek ones and the Roman ones as well, but the same thing happens where you have primal gods who produce children or create creatures, and there's titans who rebel, and then all these things happen. But anyway, forget those. This is the Babylonian one. So we've got Ia and Damkina building their temple home on the corpse of Apsu, and then they have a kid, produce another god called Marduk, and he's the key god who is going to sort everything out. And this is necessary.

Speaker 1:

The heroic nature of Marduk comes out because Tiamat is unhappy because Apsu had the sleep spell on him and was killed and they're all living on the corpse of Apsu. So in her grief and rage over the loss of Apsu, tiamat spawns a whole host of dragons and also kind of monstrous beings. So some, if you play certain games, you'll see that that figure of Tiamat, who is a kind of leader of dragons or monstrous beasts, come I've seen it in loads of games and films and things. So this old Babylonian thing is kind of brought in there, but anyway. So Tiamat does this out of rage and grief and then she leads them, the army of dragons and monstrous beings. He leads them into battle against the other gods, all these upstart younger gods. But Marduk is a good leader as general and warrior and he overcomes Tiamat. In fact he cuts Tiamat in half, completely, dissects Tiamat and then and this is the bit that we're now getting to the business end of the origin of the universe and the explanation for the universe Then Marduk uses one half of the corpse of Tiamat to make the heaven and then the other half of the corpse of Tiamat he uses to make the earth.

Speaker 1:

So I guess the corpse of Apsu was enough for them to make a temple, home on, kind of, but to make the whole of the heaven and the earth. That needed the corpse of Tiamat, so her corpse presumably is much larger. She's more I don't know more impressive, I don't know. Okay, so then, having created the heavens and the heaven and the earth, marduk then organizes the whole universe. And Marduk creates human beings. And then he, because he'd invited the gods to come and live in his temple, home on the corpse of Apsu, and what he also does now is he, he kind of organizes the gods and gives all these other gods to take on specific responsibilities so that they, you know, for day and night and all the running of the universe. These are the gods. Instead of mucking about, which presumably was the reason why there was the original aggravation between Tiamat and Apsu because of the irresponsibility of the younger gods, marduk organizes them and gives them responsibility so that they now take on the running of the universe.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I've probably given too much detail about all that, but I wanted to do that to give a real sense of how these ancient mythologies work, explaining the universe. And I have a look at the Greek ones. The Greek one, that's quite a good one as well. I like the Norse one that is simpler in a way, but that's got good features to it Now. So there's a fairly typical example of these ancient cosmogonies and in that the gods there's many of them they're not united together. There's no unity really, there's all. Even if there seems to be for a period of time, things usually kick off and the gods are pretty messed up due to the fact that the gods are pretty messed up generally, at least the earlier ones and then the universe is born out of sex and violence. In this one it's more violence, but other ones, some of which I wouldn't really be able to repeat because of the whole issue of bodily fluids and things like that, but you can luck them up if you find them fascinating. So that's ancient cosmogonies.

Speaker 1:

Now the classic modern myths and all these myths are told effectively, I say, round a campfire, even if I use that metaphorically, in the sense that they are places where a culture, a culture kind of, comes together and wants some story to make sense of the universe and the real explanation which we are examining, the real explanation of the universe that everything is created from the Father through the Son, in the power of the Spirit, and these three who are not set against one another but are inextricably united as one being one God. The three are one. So that sense of the three, the one and the three and then the many of creation, all of that finds, is the true explanation for that that's given in the Bible is the only one that makes of course, it makes sense of everything and is utterly satisfying to heart and mind. But if culture, when cultures reject this living God who is the one, god, who is the three, from the Father through the Son, in the power of the Spirit, that when a culture rejects that, they have to generate some alternative. And that's what happens. And the idea is the culture comes together around the campfire and the people who are the experts or the people who are trusted to make sense of reality, come up with such a story and weave the myth, and then that sets the context for the culture and gives a sense of what the meaning of the universe is and what can be done with it. And then were you as an individual find your place. So the classic modern myths. We don't so much have the campfire, as maybe the television is the flickering light that we gather around, or the computer screen or whatever it is, but we also have the same idea of the sort of priests that are have access to this genosis, this hidden knowledge, and they will make sense of the universe and they weave these stories. So the modern myths do it as well and they see, and there's it always.

Speaker 1:

I found it incredibly strange when I was, when I did some postdoctoral research on scientific method. I found it, and I still find it absolutely strange how much time and energy and interest there is in trying to generate cosmogonies, trying to come up with stories to explain the origin of the universe, because to me I always thought there will be almost no time spent on that. This is before I really studied science in depth. I thought there will be almost no time spent on that because surely much more pragmatic, much more practical, more relevant is to understand the universe as it is now. Let us engage with the universe here and now and understand how it works, what we can do with it, although sort of very practical, pragmatic questions I felt would be the vast, huge focus on that and maybe a little bit for fun trying to generate cosmogonies. And then I discovered no, there's like a crazy obsession, a huge amount of time and energy, not necessarily in all the individual research scientists, but in the culture, in the culture around science and the culture at large, an enormous amount of fascination with generating these cosmogony stories, trying to account for the origin of the universe.

Speaker 1:

So the classic modern myth see the physical world as the leftover remains.

Speaker 1:

So that's a similar thing to the ancient myth the leftover remains of an explosion rather than the cutting open of a god. So it's the cutting open of kind of reality itself. It's as if there was this enormous explosion, a ripping open of whatever was there before. And that get things get very hazy if you say, well, what is this an explosion of? But it is this like a ripping open of something that some, some prior reality, even if that is itself considered to be ineffable or utterly incomprehensible. But the is that idea that there is this, this incomprehensible, ineffable, infinite origin thing and that we can't say anything about it. It's beyond our powers of investigation, all the language that a religious priest would use of a kind of primal divine essence kind of thing, if they're not a Christian, I mean.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, so the classic modern myth, the physical world is the leftover remains of an explosion, followed by this constant cycle of conflict and reproduction, sex and violence, life and death, the bloody and painful struggle to survive. So a typical version of this goes something like this many ages ago will say 14 aeons ago, there was nothing at all or nothing that is capable of analysis. But then suddenly something, all time and space, matter and energy began then as an infinitely tiny point which, in this ripping open, exploding moment, the universe is created out of this ripping open, tearing apart moment. And then that began to expand outwards impossibly rapidly, all within the first second of the universe. The universe effectively wrote its own laws and formed its own principles, including gravity, which was important because gravity at that time was in this opening second of the universe. Has this slowing down effect on the expansion of the universe? And that was an important decision to make, to have gravity like that, because if there was just too rapid an expansion, nothing would come, there would be no productive universe. So anyway, it continued to expand like this, in this slightly, in this slowed down form, for many long ages. But then, nine aeons ago, five aeons after the initial explosion, the universe began to expand more quickly due to a mysterious power. I suppose we call it that a mysterious power. It's mysterious because there's an. It cannot be detected and nothing is known about it, but this mysterious power enabled the universe to expand more quickly and it's known as dark energy and, as of the time of making this podcast, the research I call it research in inverted commas says that maybe 68 to 70% of the universe is this dark energy.

Speaker 1:

According to the NASA website dealing with what it calls Big Bang Stories, quote some scientists think that dark energy could be a type of energy fluid that fills space. Again, that notion of this kind of cosmic ocean, the primal chaos ocean, the fluid that is there, that gives that accounts for the universe. So scientists think that dark energy could be a type of energy fluid that fills space continuing the quotation and that it behaves in an opposite way to normal matter and can vary in its amount and distribution throughout both time and space. Continuing the quotation this version of dark energy has been nicknamed quintessence after the theoretical fifth element discussed by ancient Greek philosophers. I'm continuing the quote from NASA. It's even been suggested by some scientists that quintessence could be some combination of dark energy and dark matter, though the two are currently considered completely separate from one another, while the two are both major mysteries to scientists, dark matter is thought to make up about 85% of all matter in the universe. So that's NASA itself distilling a key element of a modern creation myth.

Speaker 1:

We'll just conclude how that works as it comes to life, because in this context of the universe, where there is 70% of it is dark energy, 85% of the matter is dark matter and the whole of it is produced by the splitting open of some primal reality. In this context, we eventually arrive at planet Earth, which is many you know is far down when we thought about the soap opera of the gods in the ancient mythologies and there were these generational things and then you eventually arrived at Marduk, who produces Earth. It's a similar thing in the modern cosmologies that you eventually, after all these processes and generations and eons, you arrive at Earth. And that's the point of the story. Just as Marduk was in the Babylonian one, marduk creates Earth. And so in the story we end up at the creation of Earth and the cooling of the Earth and the formation of Earth, and in this idea of a sort of primal chaos of Earth and there's a highly productive or fertile soup I don't like using that phrase because it isn't really how people talk anymore, but they used to.

Speaker 1:

In older literature there's this idea that there was a kind of primal soup on Earth. But now that language is avoided, but the idea is, life emerged and there is no explanation for exactly how that happened. But this, let's say, a cell of some highly complex living cell emerged and replicated and began a generational succession. One generation after another, this living cell replicates and then produces many more and begins an ascent, an evolution, and then this cell is able to join with other cells to form more complex organisms. Again, it doesn't matter. You may be thinking well, what's the mechanism for this? Now, don't worry about that.

Speaker 1:

The point of this is just to tell the story. There isn't really mechanisms offered really for these primal stages. But then we do get to a stage where more mechanisms are offered, that these complex organisms then begin to fight with each other for precious resources necessary to maintain life. So here conflict is right at the heart of this process of growth and evolution, and productivity, fertility. Really, fertility and violence go together in this mythology, and that's important, because the conflict and the fight, the competing for the resources for survival, is the engine of improvement. They had to keep on improving in order to win these ever more complex organisms as they go on. They had to keep on proving in order to win this fight for survival against other forms of life the other, I suppose, their siblings in this, and these forms of life diversify and compete with each other, and that competing produces improvements is the idea. So the fight for survival blood red in tooth and claw once teeth and claws have been developed, that obviously, as the story goes on, the cosmogony leads to higher and higher levels of complexity, including, in the end, levels of ability to see, hear, speak, intelligence. And then we get to the end of the story human beings, all the civilization and culture, and this is just.

Speaker 1:

I've tried to make a sort of simple form of this modern creation mythology. But these, if you start getting into them, they get increasingly more complicated. And the creation myths now they become much more expansive, modern ones, into more esoteric forms involving multiple or infinite parallel universes. And well, the sky's the limit with these things. They're all fascinating. Maybe I don't know if there's as many as the ancient ones, but they have a. Anyway, make of them what you will.