11/10/2004 11:31:41 AM|||Mike|||As a creation story, evolution sucks. No, it would have to be improved considerably in order to suck. No POV characters, no coherent plot, barely discernible theme, and if there is a moral the moral is a soul-crushing lesson in humility.
The only thing it has going for it is truth. With a small 't'.
I think the fundamental problem is that we define "myth" as "a falsehood that the ignorant ancestors told because they didn't have the benefit of our modern knowledge." But myth is much more than that - a myth is a story that makes us who we are. Life has meaning when we are able to fit our personal experience into our mythology. Myth is more True than mere theory or fact.
Christianity (at least as some practice it) rejects the separation of the mythic and the historic. It is very, very important that Jesus was an actual person and not a mythical character.
For some Christians (myself included) the historical fades into the mythic - Jesus was (is) a person no less real than an innocent bystander in one of the pictures of Falluja yesterday, Moses a legendary leader with a mix of history and story similar to Alexander the Great, and before that, the historical connection becomes extremely hazy. The Genesis narrative as pure myth (my myth, and True even if not particularly factual) does not bother me in the least.
But if a myth is just an ignorant untruth, then either evolution is false or the Genesis narrative is wrong and those who derive meaning from it are ignorant or worse.
Contempt for myth causes a great deal of pain all around. It drives creationism - a lie that is even worse theologically than scientifically. Those for whom evolution is their mythology live in a very cold universe. And so many of the rest live on commercial mythologies from bright screens.
|||110010808125732691|||Evolution and myth