Your View — Some rely on ancient folk tales to explain world
The Mankato, Minn., Free Press
A recent ABC News poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe the biblical creation story is literally true. This apparently includes the writer of the Oct. 5 Your Views letter, who endorsed the Creation Museum.
Among evangelical Protestants, the poll found, 87 percent believed that man was indeed created from mud and that Noah gathered all the animal species in the world into an ark 450 feet long — pandas, giraffes, bison, llamas, polar bears and Australian fruit bats.
Virtually all primitive tribes elaborated wondrous creation myths and claimed a special arrangement with their god(s). The books of Moses recount the Hebrews’ creation story and their covenant with Yahweh, including a fable about a naked lady, a talking snake and a magic fruit tree. Because of that encounter, every child born is cursed from birth — unless the proper ritual/incantation is performed to lift the curse. Moses also describes a donkey and a burning bush that talk; food raining from the sky for 40 years; seas parting; rivers turning to blood; and men living to 900. His “books” condone slavery, attribute mental illness to demons, order the slaughter of women and children, and decree that unbelievers, witches, blasphemers and adulterers be killed.
Even were this story remotely plausible, the evidence is overwhelming that the books of Moses were written hundreds of years after his death by at least four different authors.
Creationists nonetheless insist that the story is literally true, and that Noah’s “Mission Impossible” trumps evolution. The fact that educated people still use ancient folk tales about talking animals and magic fruit trees rather than science to explain the world is, well … unbelievable.
Tom Maertens
A recent ABC News poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe the biblical creation story is literally true. This apparently includes the writer of the Oct. 5 Your Views letter, who endorsed the Creation Museum.
Among evangelical Protestants, the poll found, 87 percent believed that man was indeed created from mud and that Noah gathered all the animal species in the world into an ark 450 feet long — pandas, giraffes, bison, llamas, polar bears and Australian fruit bats.
Virtually all primitive tribes elaborated wondrous creation myths and claimed a special arrangement with their god(s). The books of Moses recount the Hebrews’ creation story and their covenant with Yahweh, including a fable about a naked lady, a talking snake and a magic fruit tree. Because of that encounter, every child born is cursed from birth — unless the proper ritual/incantation is performed to lift the curse. Moses also describes a donkey and a burning bush that talk; food raining from the sky for 40 years; seas parting; rivers turning to blood; and men living to 900. His “books” condone slavery, attribute mental illness to demons, order the slaughter of women and children, and decree that unbelievers, witches, blasphemers and adulterers be killed.
Even were this story remotely plausible, the evidence is overwhelming that the books of Moses were written hundreds of years after his death by at least four different authors.
Creationists nonetheless insist that the story is literally true, and that Noah’s “Mission Impossible” trumps evolution. The fact that educated people still use ancient folk tales about talking animals and magic fruit trees rather than science to explain the world is, well … unbelievable.
Tom Maertens
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