eflect the worldview of the culture and mandate the worldview to its ongoing heirs. The creation stories in genesis's, the Hebrew bible, and the Babylonian Enuma Elish have particularly, shaped the Christian world. Their social message induced a view of earth as dead matter to be possessed and shaped, and the animals, plants and humans to be ruled, dominated and exploited by other humans. Plato's creation story, the Timaeus, defines the primal dualism that underlies reality, it separates and juxtaposes mind and body, good and evil, male and female and human and animal. The Timaeus not only divides but gives value and inferiorises one side in relation to the other, legislating domination, class hierarchy and patriarchal order. Further more there are links between the dualism; the female is body, evil, and animal/nature while the male is mind/reason, good, and human/civilization. Reuther indicates that western Christianity viewed the creation story in genesis from the "Platonian" perspective. In chapter two of her book, Reuther explores the split between the Christian biblical view of the world and a post-Newtonian cosmology and earth history. The author observes that, after the initial hostility, science and religion appropriated themselves separate domains of control. Mechanistic science embraced scientifically verifiable truth, all that could be measured and observed objectively. Religion controlled the unreal realm, spirituality, value judgment, and the aesthetic. However, the author points out that in the 1960's the belief in the "value-free" method, was being shattered, "the observer is an integral part of the reality observed" (p.39). The technology proved to become the problem (nuclear bombs, environmental damage) instead of the promised solution. The author suggests that the scientific account of origin have the potential to provide a new and shared creation story. The elements of ethics and spirituality can relate the story of e...
