In 1616, the renowned astronomer, mathematician and physicist, Galileo was busy teaching to anyone who would listen the Copernican theory that the world was round. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church didn’t take kindly to Galileo’s scientific challenge to religious dogma. It denounced him as a heretic before the Inquisition when Galileo attempted to argue that the Bible should be read as an allegory when its text differed from physical and scientific evidence. Ultimately, Galileo was spared the death penalty for his “blasphemy,” but he was sentenced to house arrest where he remained for twenty-six years until his death in 1642.
In Galileo’s day, public opinion largely adhered to the flat-earth view taught by the Catholic Church and few were willing to risk death by openly challenging Biblical writings with scientific analysis. We now know the public’s view in Galileo's time was all wrong, but public opinion is often susceptible to error, especially when religious authority suppress reason, freedom of thought and critical analysis.
Over the past 400 years some things haven’t changed.
Several years ago, a local school board instituted the teaching of “Biblical Creationism” as part of their high school’s biology curriculum. Despite U.S. Supreme Court rulings that creationism is not science and thus, teaching it in a public school science curriculum violates the constitutional separation of Church and State, the creationism proponents on that school board wanted it taught anyway alongside the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Taking that step of including creationism within the framework of teaching biology in a public school classroom ended up costing that school district dearly when the federal court's held their actions unconstitutional, but those who initially championed the idea were not the ones who ended up footing the bill. Taxpayers paid it.
If school board officials really want to teach biblical creationism as an alternative scientific theory, they should also include over 500 other creation theories that gained acceptance by one group or another. Let students examine and subjected to reason, questioning and critical scientific analysis all the different theories that exist. If school boards are going to dispel the notion that they’re only interested in spreading religion and not advancing scientific knowledge, nothing less will do.
Here are just a few of the other creation theories school boards could consider teaching:
The Ancient Astronaut theory has had a wide following in one form or another dating as far back a 600 B.C. The current version is that aliens happened upon the earth & mixed their genetic make-up with the sub-humans, presumably apes to form modern humans.
Ancient Babylonians believed there was a god named “Marduk” who cut the “Great Mother” in half. Babylonian theory held that Marduk made one half of the great mother into the sky and the other half into the earth.
Various tribesmen in northeastern Siberia believe that the first humans were created by a female raven. The first humans were twin males. The raven’s mate created the land by defecating and the oceans by urinating. According to their creation theory a spider woman created the first human female.
There are multiple Hindu views of creation. One view is that the universe began as the body of a single male named Purusa. Purusa was sacrificed and part of his body became the earth and part, the heavens. Castes of humans were created from Purusa’s arms, legs and feet.
Many Native-American Navajo Indians believe creation to have started with insects that inhabited 6 lower worlds in the earth. As the insects were forced by the gods towards the upper worlds they created men and women and eventually led them to the outer world they now occupy.
The ancient Mayan civilization believed in a feathered serpent that created the earth by talking it into being. Animals refused to pay homage to the gods forcing the serpent to experiment with humans. The first humans were made of clay but they proved too brittle and broke apart. A second attempt was made with wood but the wooden people lacked flexibility and caused a multitude of problems. A great flood washed away the second group but a few managed to escape and live today as monkeys. A third attempt at creating humans produced the peoples of the Mayan civilization.
The Aztecs in Mexico believed in a “five sun” theory. The suns created the universe and all its inhabitants.
In Mali, Africa a group known as the Dogon believe that humans evolved from horrible looking beings known as “Nommos”. The “Nommos” were mermaids and mermen that lived comfortably in and out of water. When the “Nommos” arrived on the earth they created oceans on earth in which to live. A few “Nommos” chose to stay exclusively on the land and evolved into modern humans.
The ancient Egyptians had a creation theory involving a god named Khepri who created less powerful gods and humans from his own body fluids. It involved actions that the writer of Leviticus would have deemed forbidden.
It’s hard for me to envision high school students out on an archeological dig searching for “Nommos”, feathered serpents or pieces of “Marduk”. Then again, it’s hard to believe a majority once thought the earth was flat! Who knows, maybe in parts of the United States, it still is!
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