anthro@ut-ngp.UUCP (Michael Fischer) (06/30/84)
<> I agree that it is pointless to attempt to discredit a body of myth by finding fault in its internal structure. Any well developed mythology will have an internal coherence that will withstand fierce attack from the outside. I can think of two probable reasons for this. A common theme in myth is to account for happenings in the world, present, past, and future. The people who use myth will probably notice discrepencys and build 'fixes' in the myth to patch these up. If the myth survives many generations (of people), the myth will be reasonably debugged. A second possible reason is the emphasis of myth on relationships and form, rather than factual content. The actors (and actions) in myths are often quite fantastic by our (and often the adherents) day to day standards, but the relationships in the myth are not. One of the beautiful things about myth is the ability to transform objects, but not the relationships. These relationships are usually redundant throughout the text of the myth, so that if one collapes, the others will stand, ie there is a high resistance to noise. In reference to 'proofs' of the theory of creation and the theory of evolution, I imagine the emphasis on 'origins' is due to the low involvement of most of the participants of either persuasion of the use of their theory as a tool. However I am confused over what the explict definitions of these are with respect to this discussion. From the names, which is not always a good gauge, I assume that the theory of creation is about creation, but of what. The theory of evolution is concerned only with the development of different life forms, and their relationships to each other. My interests and knowledge focus on primates, and are far from the creation of anything (at least days). If creation is the only subject matter, than equal time in schools should be no problem, since zero time is usually spent on this point in high school biology. What are the thoughts of some of the creation people on micro-evolution, ie sub-species level change (or even speciation). The only stuff I have ever seen on this was in 'The Plain Truth' (Garner Ted's mag), and little of that holds together. In short, what is the arguement about??? Michael Fischer anthro@utngp