h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of my favourite reference books for browsing is the Oxford Dictionary of Creation Myths. It's fascinating how isolated races can differ so much in the way they believe their world came into being.

It's a subject which caught the imagination of Douglas Adams, of course. One of my favourite little scenes from Hitchhikers is:

"The Jatravartid People of Viltvodle Six firmly believe that the entire universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called The Great Green Arkleseizure. They live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming Of The Great White Handkerchief. "

Amusing, certainly, but by no means as bizarre as some. There's a wide range of stories including creation by secretion. One of the most printable is, for example, that of the Eskimos of Kodiak Island:

"A bladder, containing a man and a woman, came down from the sky. By pushing and stretching it, the man and woman made the bladder into the world. By pushing with their hands and feet, they made mountains. Trees came into being when the man scattered his hair about. The woman urinated and spit to make the oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds. The man made a knife out of one of the woman's teeth and cut some wood to make woodchips, which he then threw into the water to make fish. The man and the woman had a son, who played with a stone that became an island. They left another son on that island with a female dog that became his wife. These were the ancestors of the Kodiak people."


I'll probably raid the book again later in the month when I run out of ideas

I like that myth.

"They left another son on that island with a female dog that became his wife."

Rhymes with witch.

[Amy P]

Who made the female , and how?

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The story clearly implies that it was already there.

Next question.

Okay then - so many questions spring to mind:

Where did the stone come from?

What would have happened if the man had cried or vomited? Or chopped off one of his fingernails? Or ears?

What living creaturs would the woman's belly button fluff or man's ear wax have created?

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Well, if you're not going to take this seriously...

Women don't have belly button fluff. Only men do.

How seriously do you want me to take it? How about:

'The hair that turned into trees was DARK BROWN and anyone who thinks it was a different colour is an infidel who must be burned at the stake.'

I still think that a woman whose spit and urine forms all the world's oceans might have belly button fluff...

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Incidentally, do you know what the Christian view of Creation is?

Why do I get the feeling that you're going to say neither 'In the beginning God created the Heavens and the ' Genesis or 'In the beginning was the word' John is going to be the correct answer?

Is this turning into a 'compared to Mithras' conversation?

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Some people were clearly a barrel of fun during bedtime stories.

"What living creaturs would the woman's belly button fluff or man's ear wax have created?" [Bluebottle]

The belly button fluff would be all furry animals, even bumblebees. The wax would have turned into honeybees, who use wax to protect their honey.

The Christian creation is the "in the beginning was The Word" one.

It's as far as I know the only instance of a Terry Christian Channel 4 TV show as a creator being.

Or, perhaps even more frightening, a Microsoft writing app.

'En archi en o logos' is from John 1:1.

The original Creation story comes from Genesis 1:1: 'Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz.'

Now, 'logos' could be translated different ways...you could say, 'In the beginning was the Operating System, and the Operating System was with the Programmer...'

Most Christians, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, accept the fact of evolution.

There is a fairly comprehensive Creation myth right here in hootoo, in the Ballad of Grimley Moer A1070786 (I just did a lengthy search but couldn't find the location of the creation myth. It's there all right, somewhere... beware ye who enter.

"Most Christians, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, accept the fact of evolution." [recumbentman]

That is just good sense. If you believe that God can do anything, it follows that God can operate by means of evolution.