Well, seeing as I haven’t been able to start the creation myth assignment, I haven’t really gotten the chance to study them (it’s been such a busy week and I’m falling wayyyyy behind on all my work lol). But I do know a little bit about some cultures and their creation myths because my high school thought we should know about them and not just our own. As far as calling them creation myths, I think that that sort of defeats the purpose that they are beliefs, and not myths, to the people who follow them. I read a little blurb from Lisa’s blog and she said something about how the myths were similar in the fact that they all seem to believe in a higher power that created the earth, and I agree with her. From what I’ve studied, many different cultures seem to believe in this higher power and they all have different interpretations of what it looks like and what its teachings are. I saw a lot of this in The Secret Life of Bees. I think that believing in this higher power gives people hope that there is someone out there who hears them when no one else does.
By studying other creation “myths” we can learn not only about another culture but also how they came to be the way they are now. People’s beliefs have a lot to do with how they act and interact with other people. People tend to behave accordingly to their beliefs and sometimes that can be mis-communicated because of a sort of culture clash. I definitely think it’s important to learn about other cultures and their beliefs because it’s ignorant to go on in life thinking that your way is the only right way to be. In order to understand people we have to know what they think and believe and we have to do that with an open mind. Sure, some people’s beliefs are hard to accept, but you have to remember that they have been raised that way and know no other way to believe. It was especially hard for me when I switched into the Catholic school system. I was like “they pray to saints? They pray to mary? They can’t do anything this is pointless.” This is why I think that people often times alienate each other; because they think what they believe is weird or stupid. I, myself, have had a lot of time to learn how to accept other’s beliefs and I think it has made me a more mature and better person for doing so. For the longest time I didn’t understand how people believed what they believed and then I remembered, “hey, I feel the same way they do about their religion. Duh, they’ve been raised Catholic, of course they’ll disagree with me. THIS is pointless.” So in conclusion, ladies and jelly spoons (you’d have to watch Eddie Izzard to laugh at that), by learning about other creation “myths” we can also get a deeper look into a person’s culture.
First of all, I just have to comment on this, I completely get you when you say you’re falling behind with homework and everything, I’m the exact same way right now! The end of the semester is killing me! lol But back to the creation myths, I felt the same way about calling them creation “myths”. It didn’t feel right for me to call them myths because these are things that people do believe is true. I don’t consider my belief of how the earth was created as a myth because I believe it to be true, so I didn’t really feel right about calling other’s beliefs “myths”. I also agree with your point about the importance of learning about other’s beliefs in how the earth was created. I wrote something similar in my blog as well, I think we need to be open minded to other’s beliefs. We can’t be so narrow minded and stubborn to assume that one’s belief is the only logical belief that exists. I think ignorance won’t get us anywhere in life and I think in order to completely understand what we believe in, we need to learn about other’s beliefs. We learn and grow through the education of others.
ReplyDeleteI am in agreement with you I think that people do learn from cultures other than their own that's what makes the world so diverse. But what I wonder is how does one decipher religion from a myth; I mean within every religion there is a higher power that is worshiped somewhat like we seen on the website. I think what we call a myth might have been what the people at that time considered religion. Myth’s slash religions are the center of one’s culture like you said and people learn how to accept and interact with others based on their belief system. Just like myths have become a thing of the past and not too many people believe in them, I wonder will religion also become a thing of the past. I’m not too informed about scientology but I wonder with all the new found discoveries will there be numerous religions based around the different discoveries that are made, if that make sense. All in all I think creation myths began as way to give people a sense of purpose therefore guiding them through their journey on Earth.
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