©2008 by Patrick Justus

Since the beginning, children have always asked the same

question:

In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void, with a darkness over the face of the abyss, and a mighty wind that swept over the surface of the waters. God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light, and God saw that the light was good, and he separated light from darkness. He called the light day and the darkness night. So evening came and morning came, the first day.

Creation story according to the Holy Bible.

• For many hundreds of years, the Genesis story of creation was “reasonable” to Europeans. They had no other story to confuse them. This time period is sometimes called “The Age of Faith.”

With “The Age of Exploration,” Europeans began to sail around the world. Columbus, Magellan, Balboa, and others discovered other lands with other

explanations for the age old question: “Where do people come from?”

The Americas

• In the beginning, the surface of the earth was covered with water and everything was dark. The First Creator and Lone Man were walking upon the surface of the water when they saw something move – a little duck……

Africa• In the beginning, Chuku,

the Great Spirit, created the world and humankind. He sent a dog to the first people to tell them that, if anyone died, they should lay the body upon the earth and sprinkle it with ashes. Then the person would come back to life. But the dog dawdled on the way, so Chuku sent a sheep with the same message.

Australia• In the beginning the earth was a bare

plain. All was dark. There was no life and no death. The sun, the moon, and the stars slept beneath the earth. All the eternal ancestors slept there, too, until at last they woke themselves out of their own eternity and broke through to the surface.

Japan• In the beginning, heaven and earth

were not divided. Then, from the ocean of chaos, a reed arose, and that was the eternal land ruler, Kunitokotatchi.

Then came the female god, Izanami, and the male, Izanagi. They stood on the floating bridge of heaven and stirred the ocean with a jeweled spear until it curdled, creating the first land.

China• At the beginning of

time, all was chaos, and this chaos was shaped like a hen’s egg. Inside the egg were Yin and Yang, the two opposing forces of which the universe is made. Yin and Yang are darkness and light, female and male, cold and hot, wet and dry.

The Age of Reason• All of these stories about

the beginning were different in some ways, but in one way they were the same: they all were based upon Faith.

• But the Europeans and their descendants introduced a completely new explanation for the beginning, one based on The Scientific Method. This method turned the world upside down.

This new explanation said that the earth and man were not made by a Creator at all, but that humans, along with all life, had evolved gradually. When the people of faith heard that

they were not descended from gods, but from monkeys, they were not happy.

Could this be your long lost relatives?

Here is yet another possibility for the evolution of humans.

What do you think? Do we need faith or reason to find the truth?

Can we have both?

Bibliography

• MSN Encarta, the Bettmann Archive• Microsoft Office Online Clip Art and Sounds• Little Joanne• Neil Philip, The Illustrated Book of Myths, DK

Publishing• The New English Bible• Time Magazine, “Evolution Timeline.”• Discovery Channel, “Walking with Our

Ancestors.”• © 2008 by Patrick Justus