[though I'm not implying that I expect such long and detailed responses every week and from everyone, though I'm not discouraging them when you have a lot of important and interesting things to write about!!]

Whether originally composed or borrowed, spoken or written, explained in myth or scientific fact, almost every culture has devised some sort of explanation for their questions of ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology.  Many ancient cultures looked to their gods for answers invoking myths that explained from where they came from, for what purpose they were made for, and how they knew these things.  Today, many cultures look to scientific reason.  To ask which method is better is to ask an unanswerable question: to those who support the scientific method the idea of divine beings who’s existence is impossible to prove through physical means is unacceptable; likewise, to a culture that believes in the existence of many gods the idea of life created through an infinitely small cluster of mass and energy exploding into the universe we know today is just as mind boggling.  Either method answers at least to an extent the questions of ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology some with greater satisfaction in one area than other but in the end to the same result.  The question can not be which method produces better results but which method agrees best with our culture, with the way we perceive the university, with what evidence will arrest our curiosity. 

Mesopotamian cultures, Egyptian cultures, Hebrew cultures—all believe in the formation of humanity and the world through the will of a divine being or set of divine being.  Does Enuma Elish not answer the questions of epistemology, metaphysics, and ontology that every culture asks?  Surely it does; it explains that humanity was created through the blood and bones of the slain Kingu to perform menial tasks that the gods once performed, and humanity knows this because they were told by the god Marduk.  As well as this method worked for the ancient Mesopotamians, for many people in modern America this method is insupportable.  The modern scientific community views the world not through divine intervention but through physically provable facts.   For them a new creation story is needed such as the one provided by David Christian in Maps of Time who instead of explaining humanities creation through the will of the gods, uses the sciences of geology, climatology, biology, chemistry, physics, and social science to an explain a creation through the quest to a more stable and beneficial state. 

Christian’s story “like the story in genesis…describes a temptation, a fall, and an expulsion”; but unlike genesis, he provides physical proof (Christian, 225).  All the disciplines of science—chemistry, biology, physics to name a few—can agree, because of physical proof, the age of the earth to be approximately 4.5 billion years old; they can prove through genetics, fossils, and modern examples of diverging species that all life form have evolved from one living cell probably the fluke combination of organic materials.  As for the evolution of the human species to the culturally advanced civilization we are today, Christian describes multiple “gardens of Eden” forming where nature allows for an abundance of plants which attracts an abundance of animals which in turn attracts an abundance of humans (Christian, 231).  This story paints a picture far more fantastical than any story involving deities, yet modern scientist believe this story because there is physical proof available.  Scientific creation stories and deity creation stories speak in different languages; for the modern scientific community, Christian’s Maps of Time speaks in the language of science with evidence from multiple sources, with experiments easily duplicated, and with a constantly skeptic view which ever looks for contrary evidence and a broadening of our theories to encompass that evidence. 

As eloquently suggested by Emile Durham, “our thinking about the way the universe works often mirrors the way our own societies work” (Christian, 261).  Many societies work in a hierarchy that parallels the hierarchy in their divine universe; therefore, creation stories that explained existence through the interference of their gods make sense.  Modern scientific societies see the world as working through purely physical interactions that basic laws of nature must be able to explain.  Every creation story provides answers to questions involving ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology, but to modern scientific communities only creation stories such as Christian’s Maps of Time provides the proof that allows the story to be viable.