tales he tells his children about gods and heroes of the past, he wouldn't know what you were talking about. He'd say 'As far as I know there is nothing like that in our culture.' What is your creation myth? We don't have a creation myth, unless you are talking about the one in Genesis. If you were invited by an eighth grade teacher to explain how all this began, would you read the class the first chapter of Genesis? No. What would you tell them? I would give them a factual account. And, naturally, you wouldn't consider it a myth. No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It's just the story. So tell me the story in your culture of how this all began. Ok, here's the story. Parts of it are in question I suppose, and future research might make some revisions on it, but it is certainly not a myth. Ten or fifteen billion years ago, the universe was created with a big bang, or something. Blobs of material coagulated and cooled and biological organisms appeared in our ancient oceans three and a half billion years ago. They formed into more complex forms until mammals appeared, about a quarter billion years ago. Species followed species until man finally appeared about three million years ago.That is a myth. That is not myth, and I don't think that many people would disagree with me that this is indeed how things came to be. I agree that you could find much support for your account, but did I not say that the story is ambient in your culture? There are indeed facts embedded in your story, but, the arrangement of these facts is purely mythical. Is it because I used the word, "appeared"? No, it is evident from the context that this is just a synonym for "evolved". Maybe this will help, let me tell you a story. Imagine that you are an anthropologist wandering about on a shore a half billion years ago. There is not much to see, just dirt and water. You notice a blob floating out in the water; you wade out to it and see that it is a c...
