Amerindian mythologies present a rich source of creation stories. While these narratives offer spiritual alternatives to naturalistic origins, there have been few vocal native anti-evolutionists, an exception being Vine DeLoria whose books Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact and Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths: A Critical Inquiry both offer trite, predictable and weak arguments against evolution.
At Indian Country Today (“The Nation’s Leading American Indian News Source”) an editorial concludes:
Indian Country Today Columnist John Mohawk this year published a succinctly edited book, ”Iroquois Creation Story: Myth of the Earthgrasper,” which inspires with its clarity from ancient America. In fact, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) creation story is the living basis of the ceremonial cycles in the longhouses of several reservations, source of origin and the truth of existence for traditional Haudenosaunee. Yet, no one here is suggesting that it be taught as ”science” in the public schools.
Every Native culture across the hemisphere (and cultures from all over the world) would be in its right to line up, then, each with its origin story and each justifiably, as much as the Judeo-Christian Genesis, with its right to believe that its story is the true way that human beings came into existence.
Given the choice, we prefer the non-religious and secular space, such as public schools guided by universally shared scientific values and methods. Let each people have its religious approach and way of prayer. The other approach is a slippery slope to dangerous manipulation and intolerance. What little the various human cultures and societies have in common resides in the life of science and its search for open-minded truth.
14 Comments
Steve Reuland · 20 August 2005
Native Americans... Is there anything they don't know?
Seriously, this is one of the best overall pieces I've ever read about why the currnet creationist press against our schools is wrong. Read it!
Henry Neufeld · 20 August 2005
That's an excellent editorial. Thanks for posting it. It is valuable on the political front to note not only the variety of interpretations of the Genesis story that are available, but the much wider selection of creation stories from different cultures.
ID advocates make the assumption that something like the God of Christianity will fill the hole they have created by proposing an undefined designer. Would they be so anxious to use this method if they weren't confident that the dominant theology in America (in their view at least) would win?
Bob Davis · 20 August 2005
Look, they have the whole thing wrong. It's like this - anyone's local creation myth and alternate theory of evolution is not to be so easily dismissed as just another religion - rather they are the basis of an ongoing exploration by the human race to discover and catalog ALL the alternate theories of evolution, for they all have merit, and they are all theories once they have been spoken. There are more evolution theories on this earth than we can imagine, and refute.
steve · 20 August 2005
must...control...Fist...of...Death...
Hamumu · 20 August 2005
Well, if all evolution theories are equally valid, then I definitely want to throw my hat into the ring. Here's how it happened:
In 2093, the race of biomechanical robots we constructed that took over and made us into slaves that they harvest for repair organs built a time machine. A group of renegade humans from an underground resistance invaded the time machine complex, and in attempting to destroy it, they triggered it in an unstable fashion. There was an explosion of tachyon particles and the humans and biomechanoids nearby were all disintegrated and torn into bits, which were thrown back through the timestream to 4000BC (where the earth was just an empty husk, no signs of life). One of the biomechanoids remained just intact enough to attempt to rebuild the tissue he saw into more working biomechanoids. He tried and tried, for 7 days and nights, before his power cells overloaded and exploded, creating the Grand Canyon. But in those 7 days, he had made millions of failed experiments (his brain was badly damaged during the time travel), which we now know today as the incredible diversity of life on this planet. Since then they haven't evolved of course, because evolution is a ridiculous lie by atheistic neodarwinist fundamentalists. They were all made by the biomechanoid, B77301.
Luckily all the animals had wandered away before the explosion, by the way, except for the dinosaurs who were too slow and were immediately fossilized in the blast (the story of plants is an interesting sidenote: he made millions of different kinds of seeds, and fired them skyward in disgust as they turned out to not be biomechanoids like himself, where they were carried on the wind and took root all around the world). If you hear of any fossils found anywhere other than the Grand Canyon, it's all a hoax - they were collected there and shipped elsewhere by neodarwinists in order to support their perverted worldview.
Oh, and he also built the pyramids.
So put THAT in your catalog and smoke it. What? It's got merit!
Mona · 20 August 2005
Hamumu: You are in doctrinal error. When, come the great day, IDD is taught beside the (discredited) "theory" of "Darwinism" in the public schools, it will go like this:
" ...Xenu is a galactic ruler who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to cause people problems today. These events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The story of Xenu is part of a much wider range of Scientology beliefs in extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology."
For more on Intelligent Dianetical Design, from which the above is excerpted, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
Seriously, the Scienos are nothing if not litigious. One hopes they intervene in the Dover case, and demand that the space opera theory of origins also have equal time.
RBH · 20 August 2005
(sigh) I'm old enough to remember when "space opera" meant an adaption of the plot (such as it was) of a Tom Mix "horse opera" to the Buck Rogers oeuvre.
RBH
Bob Davis · 20 August 2005
Hamumu-
May I please collect your theory of the creator as biomechanoid, B77301 for my website, More Evolution Theories? I would like to quote it direct if that is OK with you.
-Bob
Pierce R. Butler · 21 August 2005
Why do the links displaying the titles of DeLoria's books connect to the Panda's Thumb home page on that home page, and to the comments header on this page?
Steven Laskoske · 21 August 2005
Hamumu · 21 August 2005
That's a great site, Bob. I'm proud to be a part of it and help spread the Truth of the gospel of B77301!
lamuella · 22 August 2005
mona, the difference here is that the Co$ doesn't want you to know about their Crazy Space-Alien Adventure until you've already dropped a few hundred grand and been so hammered into gullibility that you believe their poop is chocolate cake
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 22 August 2005
ts (not Tim) · 22 August 2005