myth

Blog 7: Backward vs Forward?

by rambler on Dec 14, 2020 category animals, athlete, Creation, evolution, evolution, Genesis, god, human ancestors, human ancestors, myth, plant-based, poem, subdue, vegan, vegetarian, working the earth

Is the Genesis story meant to cause reflections and lamentations on the world as it was, in the “good old days”, and nothing more? We often tend to read these stories as reflections on human history, stories to listen to in church or Sunday school, maybe memorize some characters from them for treats at the end of the lesson, then move on to Monday. My general experience in American church is that these stories are reviewed briefly, but almost all focus of teaching is on the New Testament. Maybe that is not ubiquitous in the USA, but I have noticed that. Subsequently, I had fallen into that mindset as well, not really thinking much relevance of the Torah. I would read it as part of a pursuit from the first to last page of the Bible, mostly without thinking of what it may be trying to say.

As Spencer points out, the idea of an era that is void of conflict and violence is common to religion, and that this is suggestive of an era of veganism or vegetarianism, in which life does not have to kill other life in order to ensure its survival. He shares an opinion that this thread comes from a historical memory buried within the make-ups of early humans, who perhaps unknowingly inherited such a history. These legends are meant as a reflection back toward that period of peace and tranquility, and the roles of them in religion are to allow us to have self-soothing visions of such a time and place in the middle of a bloody, aggressive world geared toward taking out animals for food.

I would venture to say that some people brought up in religion might see the texts of Genesis similarly, as a reflection to a better time. It is how we are taught to read stories written in the past, as narratives that happened then, separated from us in our present context. It is how I read the Bible for years, which caused me to feel pretty disengaged. But is this the correct way to read it? Might it have something to say in our current day situation, more than just a memory of old?

Perhaps we should view the creation account as a prospective possibility rather than a retrospective history. There is some idea that the myths of the Ideal Age in many cultures are stories of a paradise never realized rather than a description of a past that is lost. As I stated earlier, God puts people in the Garden to work it, to create something from what already exists there into a better state. We may think that Eden was perfect and complete as it was made, but this isn’t the idea behind it. The mission of God was to rule with humans to progress toward something bigger and better than what they started with. In the intended progression of time, this theme would have continued into the future had humans not fallen.

We take for granted our ability to perceive information as infinite and beyond face value, evidenced in that we see situations, assess them, and inflict an external force into that situation to bring about a new, desired reality. We constantly receive and process data, then we come up with a response that may totally change what we found, often through experimentation. We do not accept our knowledge base as intrinsically bounded. If we did, when we came upon some unexplained phenomenon, we would simply accept it without thought. This likely describes Homo erectus, as the evidence suggests they themselves didn’t change much in their million-year existence. By accepting the world at face value and taking what they could to survive, they remained essentially a stagnant species.

Interpreting knowledge as beyond the immediately observable, something to be discovered with a little forethought, is a big step in the evolution of Homo sapiens. The production of better tools enabled humans to experiment with and exert control over their environment, thus allowing for the acquisition of new knowledge from experimentation. This ability to manipulate the environment, to coerce it to do what one wants it to do, is a game changer in the evolution and extinction of species. Humans now would have been able to cultivate the earth, providing a more reliable food source than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would have provided. Hence Homo sapiens was moving toward becoming the dominant species, and Homo erectus was moving toward extinction.

That’s not to say that the only thing humans did with technology was cultivate the earth. Obviously, early bands of humans used tools to kill and eat larger animals that they would never have been able to take down on their own physical abilities. What is interesting is the manner in which many groups approached the hunting and killing of animals for their consumption. Growing up in the USA, we learn about Native Americans in school. Most of us may remember that they always used every bit of the animal that they killed (bison is the typical example) for food, clothing, and shelter. They never killed (or gathered) more than they needed to live. Many people have romantic memories of Native Americans and thoughts about that kind of kinship with the ecosystem, using only what you need and leaving the rest to flourish.

With the various crises in our ecological world today, we often question whether the earth can sustain life as we know it, whether the world holds the resources to house all of us. Life has mechanisms of controlling a level of homeostasis, whether it is in sustainable populations and ratios of species, the food chain, or intermittent epidemics or natural disasters. With our ever-progressing technologies beyond simple hunter-gatherer tools, humans have intervened in the stabilizing life cycle, i.e. vaccinations, protective measures against certain natural disasters, best efforts to prevent wars, etc. It appears that the pessimistic answer is the most accurate, that the earth cannot sustain us all. That is probably true if we feel we own the right to ravage it of all resources, above and beyond what we need to survive and thrive. In our current world of overabundance and materialism, it is easy to subscribe to this attitude of “having it all”. If we were to follow a similar wisdom of some of these ancients, taking only what we need, our answer to the question may change. We may find ourselves in a more generous world that can sustain us. Eden represents an abundant world that is enough, but only if we decide that we won’t pursue wisdom on our terms, and rather opt for the Tree of Life.

Some of that sounds like the takeaways from Sunday school, that the world used to be such a great place, and now it isn’t. Like with the Genesis narrative, we can look at Native American history, ruminate over it, and return to our original worldview. In line with the anthropologic purpose of legend, we can take these images and soothe ourselves with them, have a break in our otherwise mundane existence. But, rather than treat these stories passively, what if we approached them as another tool to use toward our evolution? What if they represented what could be in our world today? And now we have the other “nuts and bolts”, both physical and digital tools, to more effectively make that happen. I would hope that our desire is that we as humans are progressing toward something better that what we were. We all have periods of regression, individually and societally. We can choose, in various circumstances, whether we will exert the Genesis 3 human idea of our wisdom in our lives, and dwell in the desert to scrounge out a living, thus finding that our earth, despite all its generosity, is in fact a desert in our eyes. Or we can use our developed brains and tools to mold our world in the reflection of the wisdom superior to our own and maybe begin to realize what was initially intended for us: an abundant world that becomes evermore abundant.

Blog Post 5: Human Choice

by rambler on Nov 22, 2020 category animals, Creation, disorder, evolution, evolution, fruit-bearing trees, human ancestors, human ancestors, myth, plant-based, Uncategorized, vegan, vegetarian

An anthropologic approach may be helpful to shed some nuanced light on Genesis wisdom. Many people feel the two vantage points of science and religion are inherently antagonistic. But if they are read and interpreted on their terms in their contexts (not on our terms or our expectations on what we think they should say), I think we would find that utilizing both together could shed much light on understanding our present situation. The archaeological records provide some clue as to the diets that human ancestors consumed, though because those records have holes in them, a lot of what we deduce from them is conjecture. But that is how we use science: taking available information and explaining the story that correlates with the data. So it would be a worthwhile exercise to consider the different relations between what the fossil record indicates and how those conclusions relate to our world today.

The fossil records indicate that hominoid ancestors lived as vegetarians over 20 million years ago. One of the more obvious indications of such is their dental structure. They had flat molars with a large grinding surface and thick enamel, and large incisors, which are good for grinding nuts and plants. Carnivorous animals had sharp molars and underdeveloped incisors, which is more suited for tearing into flesh. Later hominoids (Ramapithecus) developed the ability to chew laterally and vertically, as opposed to the strictly vertical movement of the ape jaw, which is also a noted feature of carnivores. This would suggest more specialization in the ability for rotational chewing which would be even better suited for crushing hardier plant foods, likely more abundant than softer more exotic foods during the Miocene Ice Age. So that development perhaps was more a result of a climatic shift forcing adaptation for available foods or extinction, the appearance of hardier nut- and grass-containing savannah lands and less forested ones.

Other differences between hominoid ancestors and carnivores exist. Hominoids did not have the clawed structure that carnivores did, neither the ability to sprint at 60 mph for brief spurts. Their gut, like herbivores, was much longer to allow slower digestion required for the breakdown of fibrous foods. That of carnivores is notably shorter, which is quite important for them in order to expel waste promptly through shorter bowels, as animal is more toxic than plant waste. Carnivores also had smaller salivary glands, good night vision, a rasping tongue, and skin without pores, features that would aid in the hunting, consumption, and processing of flesh for food.

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As time progressed, some of our more recent ancestors continued to rely on primarily, if not solely, various plants like fruits, roots, and leaves. A very famous fossilized hominin, Lucy, was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. She is estimated to have lived around 3.2 million years ago, and her scientific name is Australopithecus afarensis. Her structure suggests she was bipedal, which would be more important for leaving the forests to live in the expanding African savannahs around this time in history. A similar relative, Australopithecus robustus, arrived almost a million years later and was similar to afarensis except that it was larger and had a remarkable crest at to top of the head, allowing for powerful jaw muscles to originate from that ridge. That plus the fact that it had thick, large molars suggest it also ate mostly roots, bark, seeds, and grains, which would have required such an oral structure for pulverization. While meat could have been a part of their diet, it likely would have been miniscule as there is no evidence that they used tools and did not have the strength to kill other beasts (Lucy was 3’7” tall). The dental remains strongly shows they consumed a varied plant diet.

Around 2 million years ago is when homo habilis arrived, the next of kin so to speak of the genus Australopithecus. Remains from this species reveal a larger brain and primitive small tools, mainly axes. They were likely scavengers rather than hunters, feasting upon the remains left by more adept killers like felines, and they could climb trees to reach the remains left by cat predators. From habilis came Homo erectus. Evidence reveals they utilized more varied tools. Fossils of both smaller and larger animals have been found at H. erectus excavation sites in East Africa. These appear to be the first hunters and regular consumers of meat, and their dental records show that the large grinding cheek teeth are gone, and the front teeth are sharper. The fact that meat became a more regular dietary staple may in fact have enhanced both brain development (though encephalization was already advanced well before evidence of hunting was found in the fossil records, putting that idea into question), and provided a highly dense energy source that would allow them to develop skills other than food gathering. But food gathering was still a significant portion of the diet, still more than half, according to Rosalind Miles Women’s History of the World.

This jump from eating plants to hunting animals may have initially come not from the desire to kill for meat, but from the need to kill for plants. In some archeological sites, baboon bones are found alongside Australopithecus bones, with the idea that Australopithecus killed baboons according to Peter Wilson (Man, the Promising Primate). The idea is that early humans had to kill competitors in order to secure a food supply. As they were not nearly as strong as their competitors, they had to use their developing brains and work together, with assistance of newly developed technologies, in order to have food. Based on their biology, humans are built more for plant eating and not for direct competitions of strength with larger animals. But because of the pressures of the environment, competition for food, and the attributes of encephalization, they were able to come up with ways to kill other animals in order to preserve their diet.

Other than simply taking out competition, early human precursors Homo erectus and, to a more advanced degree, Homo sapien neanderthalensis also began migrating off the African continent. As they could take advantage of more varied environments than other animals, yet were in many ways inferior in direct one-on-one combat, they were more suited for migration than other more specialized species. Their developed brains permitted them to retain the necessary skills for successful migration. Herbivores are committed to a specific niche, needing only to remember the seasonal cycles of blooming and ripening. Nomadic life demands adaptability, extensive use of memory, acuity of senses, recall of detail, assessment of new landscapes, acquisition of new technologies (including fire), and sharing that data with others of the group in order to be successful. The processing of large amounts of data is essential to surviving in an ever-changing environment with the ebbs and flows of migrating food sources and unfamiliar seasonal patterns of new plant life. I like how Colin Spencer puts these new phenomena in the perspective of the developing mind:

Nothing is more comforting than the thought of power and control over one’s environment. Not to make tools, not to migrate and trek, not to hunt and kill other creatures, would seem like a return to a lesser, more primitive state of development.

Such a perspective would be essential for Neanderthals to survive in the cold, barren northern wastelands during the Ice Age. With limited plant life to consume compared with the temperate regions of Africa and the Levant, they would have to assert their will over their environment in order to survive. A failure to control their environment would result in death.
While obviously not a direct correlation, it resonates ideas of Genesis 3. Humans are in the Garden, not in competition with other life forms because everything they could possibly need to thrive is set before them. They are given a role as caretaker and meant to create order in the world. Then the Fall happens when they see something that they consider good, despite being told it will kill them, and rely on their own wisdom and take the forbidden fruit, exerting their authority over their lives, and resulting in expulsion from the Garden out into the wastelands of the earth to wrench sustenance out of the ground. It is as if humans were banished to the outer edges of an Ice Age world, out of a paradise and into a desert with severely limited food options and a requirement to in fact exert their superiority over the rest of creation in order to survive.

This is certainly not an attempt to explain how early human ancestors ended up in the higher latitudes during a prehistoric Ice Age, or why they ended up living a lifestyle of meat consumption over plants. Both the religious and scientific narratives are created from different sources and have different expectations of and from the reader. But I think there are many areas of overlap between them, with this being one of them. When we try to exert our will, our definition of what is good and bad for ourselves, and rule the earth according to our own wisdom, we end up where God never intended us to: in the proverbial desert struggling to survive, in our own version of a barren Ice Age, a place where we continue to reinforce our own law if we are to survive there. To us, that seems like progress. From another point of view, that seems like regression. Is it better to live in the Garden under a better Wisdom or to live in the desert under our wisdom? We see many examples in the Bible in which humans, in attempt to become God, become like the beasts of the field, the first example being when God covers humans’ skin with the skins of animals in Genesis 3:21. Neanderthals did not result from reverse evolution; rather they were more advanced from those previous species that ate the plants. And I don’t think the Bible is saying we need to be more simple creatures like the plant-eating precursors of Neanderthals. There are some ideas that Neanderthals were not precursors of humans, but rather the end of a line that died out with no long-term progeny. If that were true, it would make the correlation with the Genesis narrative even more curious.

The Cosmic Landscape

by rambler on May 7, 2020 category chaotic waters, Creatio, Creation, disorder, elohim, fruit-bearing trees, Genesis, god, myth, order, poem, Uncategorized

In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the entirety of the structure of the world and our relationship with it can be found on the first three pages of Genesis. Everything that happens forward from there, from the stories of the first ancient peoples, to those of the Hebrew nation starting with Abraham, to a resolution for Christians in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, can draw roots from this introduction. I never realized this until recently, thanks to The Bible Project Podcast, which I cannot recommend highly enough, whether you are religious or are curious to know more about the basis for Christianity. This understanding has revolutionized the way I see the entire story of humankind and the earth.

Before any word of creation is spoken, Genesis narrates that the world was Tohu wa-bohu (translations include formless, void, wild and waste).

We find the initial structure of creation, including time and space, as God turning disorder into order. Before any word of creation is spoken, Genesis narrates that the world was Tohu wa-bohu (translations include formless, void, wild and waste). There are many different interpretations of what was actually there, but the wording suggests that the earth did exist in the beginning, at least before God’s first act of speaking, though it was in a “nothingness” state. That changed the way I looked at the creation story as traditionally taught. We like to have definitively established boundaries in describing our world, and are uncomfortable when boundaries get blurred. It is much easier in our minds to comprehend the universe starting at an instant, the beginning of time. We want to think that at some point there was nothing, then suddenly something appeared. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is a bias we should recognize, the need for a firmly established order of events. It is what the singularity of the Big Bang attempts to explain. The same holds true for those of us wanting the creation narrative to say the same thing: a fundamental starting point, a sequence of events, then here we are.

Reading the passages of Genesis 1, I think the story expresses something more about the process of turning chaos into functionality, not specifically the start of something out of nothing, but more so the ordering of material that was already there. In an already existent realm of “wild and waste”, God’s first act of order is the separation of light and dark, our most recognizable form of energy and the lack thereof, of visibility and blindness. A stubbed toe on the foot of the bed in the middle of the night makes it clear to me that the two are separated! More comprehensively, we see different worlds come out whether it is day or night. Take a walk outside your house during the night and day and the sights, sounds, environment, and inhabitants of each time vary extensively. Most notable of the differences may be the sources of light that rule each time period, as described on day 4 (the coinciding function of days 1 and 4 is another fun pattern to talk about later).

Repetition is also a form of order that is established right at the story’s beginning by establishing a recurring pattern of evening and morning. It starts right after the initial proclamation of light and dark and continues throughout the first creation narrative. All that happens from here on out through Genesis 1, happens within the confines of repeating organized days.

The first creation day appears to establish order around the functional concept of time, rather than the start of something material out of nothing, as the watery abyss was already present before the first word in Genesis 1:2. The second day of creation is more concerned with the first ordering of the space that is present, namely waters. Waters above, heaven, separated from waters below, on Earth. Just as day 4 bore the inhabitants of day 1 creation, day 5 bears the inhabitants of day 2 creation, the waters below to be filled with sea creatures and the waters above to be filled with birds.

Day 3 focuses the ordering of space more narrowly toward the waters below, that area which we occupy, rather than the waters above, or the heavens. On day 3 we see a 2-fold origin sequence. From the waters below that have been separated from the heavens, comes forth 1) dry land out of the sea; from the dry land comes forth 2) seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees. Day 6 repeats the pattern of the creation of inhabitants for the day 3 world as day 5 did for day 2. Day 6, like day 3, contains a two-fold creative process: God makes 1) the animals which come forth from the land and 2) humans. Unlike day 3 on which plants come forth from the land, there is no specific statement that humans came forth from animals on day 6. That would fit the creative pattern seen on day 3, and those of us who wrestle with trying to make scientific knowledge and faith congruent may see this as pointing toward an evolutionary process for the creation of humans. I don’t think that is a question that this narrative is concerned with. Perhaps a connection more likely than animals from humans would be between trees and humans as the final acts of creation on days 3 and 6, which is another path of contemplation that could be related to nutrition as well. Either way, as 21^st century scientifically minded people, we need to be cautious of the presuppositions we bring to the text, the notions of what questions we think the Bible should answer for us, rather than letting it speak to us on its terms in its context.

At this point we can see the pairings of creation days: days 1 and 4 (light/dark and the inhabitants of both domains), days 2 and 5 (waters above and below, and the inhabitants of both domains), and days 3 and 6 (land bursting with green vegetation, and the land’s inhabitants). I was certainly never taught this growing up in an American church environment, which is disappointing to me now that the story of Genesis 1, reading the patterns in this way, has a suddenly new significance for me that is so much more beautiful and purposeful in describing our world and the functionality of it! Understanding these patterns has brought to light a new concept of the order of the creative process, one that is more nuanced and dense in imagery than I could have imagined.

I wonder if part of missing these patterns has to do with the contemporary way we learn and interpret our world. As I stated earlier, as moderns we look for literal, black and white sequential events or points in time from which to tell our stories, whether it is creative fiction (though the magical realists may differ on this one), guides for assembling Ikea furniture (that seems a pretty practical reason for such story-telling), or the origins of our place in the universe. Genesis 1 refuses to comply with this world-view. How can green plants thrive on dry land before the arrival of the sun? But by reading Genesis on its terms, understanding the design patterns from which it originates, we find an incredible world of wisdom that can open our minds to the structure and purpose of the created world. This in turn may help us begin to comprehend the Order behind it all, the Order which resides in us as image-bearers, that which has established an ideal existence for all living things.

For further reading on these ideas, The Lost World of Genesis One by John H. Walton is a great book that discusses this subject in more detail. It is very accessible for us nonscholars and challenges the approach many of us have taken to these ancient scriptures to provide a rich interpretation of the first book of the Bible.

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