An Interpretation of Christian Creation Mythology

Ancient people created and passed down stories or myths about how the earth was formed. These myths helped people to understand their relationship with the earth, and cemented a few of their core beliefs into their society. The ancient Israelites were one such society, and their creation myth is now preserved as the first three chapters of the book of Genesis in the Holy Bible.

Although the bible's creation mythology is not an accurate description of how the earth was actually formed, it provides a good visual representation of the different types, or levels of intelligence.  Due to the myth's ability to teach this concept, I believe that one purpose of the creation mythology was for God to help his people understand how intelligence works, while at the same time helping them understand their relationship to God, nature, and each other.  It is expressed in language, and in concepts that could easily be passed down from generation to generation as an oral history.  This gives it an incredible ability to be understandable, relatable, and beautiful. 

Unfortunately is difficult for us to appreciate the myth today, because our understanding of nature has changed dramatically over the last 3000 years. Therefore it will be nessisary for us to go over what the ancient Israelites believed about nature. The most important belief for us to understand is that they believed that before the world existed the universe consisted of a vast ocean. In that ocean swam a monster called the leviathan. The next most important belief for us to understand is that they believed that the earth is flat, and that heaven (where God dwells) is located above the earth. With these two beliefs we are now able to understand the creation story.

In the story of the creation God creates the earth by commanding the elements. In the first three days he creates the foundations of the earth. In each of those three days God provides for one of the earth's basic needs. The basic needs of intelligences are outer completeness, outer consistency, and outer stability, which God provides in that order.

Day 1:

On the first day God gathers the materials for the earth. This is not told explicitly in the story, but instead via an allusion to an older Mesopotamian myth. When the scriptures state that God's spirit brooded upon the water(Genesis 1:2) it is meant to allude to a story where God uses the wind to slay the leviathan, and uses the pieces of its corpse as material to create the earth inside of the primordial sea. By slaying the leviathan God recieved the materials to make the earth complete. God then said "let there be light"(Genesis1:3), and the stormy heavens calmed, then he separated the dark from the light(Genesis1:4), and the dark earth settled out of the water, making the heavens and the earth.

Day 2:

On the second day God creates a domed roof over the earth called a firmament. This separates the water of the primordial sea into two tiers, the earthly water, and the heavenly water.(Genesis 1:6-8) It also provides order and consistency to the earth by placing it below the heavens. God is able to either reward or punish the people on earth by making the waters of heaven seep through the firmament. When he is pleased he rains down blessings, and when he is displeased he causes tempests, floods and droughts.

Day 3:

On the third day God created the dry ground and made vegetation grow out of the ground.(Genesis 1:9-13) The dry ground provided a stable place for life to grow, and the vegetation was a stable source of food and shelter.

The Last Four Days

In the last four days God created entities to govern the earth: the earth’s intelligences. Each intelligence governs a habitat created three days previous.  On the fourth day of the creation God created the sun, moon, and stars, and placed them in the firmament, these govern the distribution of light in the heavens; on the fifth day animals that live in the water and the sky; on the sixth day he created animals on the earth and two people named Adam and Eve, and on the seventh day he gave Adam and Eve the ability to know right and wrong.  These correspond to the four levels of intelligence.

We are going to analyze these creations according to their identity, method of intelligence, and relationships. These aspects of intelligences are elaborated on in my first post titled the Basics of Neurological

Intelligence.

Day 4:

The Sun, moon and stars are responsible for bringing light to the sky, and for giving us the months and seasons.  They do this in very consistent cycles which are governed by their orbits, the tilt of the earth and so on.

Identity: The sun and moon are unique in the sky, but the stars all appear almost identical. Despite this the scriptures describes them all as lights in the sky as if they are all different brightnesses of the same light.(Genesis 1:16) They were likely described in this way to deter people from worshipping the sun and moon, but it contributes to our understanding of intelligences. The different lights in the sky are essentially the same, so they have only a collective identity.

Method of Intelligence: The celestial objects move only in predictable patterns, so they follow the epistemological method of proposition.

Relationship: The lights in the sky do not appear to interact with each other, therefore their only relationship is a role play relationship.

Day 5:

Fish and birds were created on the fifth day.

They clearly are more intelligent than the lights in the sky. Let's see how.

Identity: Animals are individuals. They have unique life experiences, and each one is different both physically and behaviorally from other animals.

Method of intelligence: Animals alter their behavior in order to survive. This could be understood as a form of abductive reasoning.

Relationship: Fish and birds are often seen flying in flocks, or swimming in schools. To form these intricate formations they have to coordinate one with another, which could be understood as having a personal relationship with each other.

Day 6:

On the sixth day God created the first man and woman, and the animals that live on the land. We will focus on the first people Adam and Eve because it is obvious how they are different from other animals.

Adam and Eve were created as innocent people, not knowing right from wrong.  What distinguished them from animals is their ability to make goals, and to govern others. 

Identity: Adam and Eve were stewards over the Garden of Eden. They represented God being created in his image and likeness.(Genesis 1:26)

Method of Intelligence: When they named the animals, and tended to the garden where they lived they showed that they could make inferences about how the garden should work, and plan for the future. (Genesis 2:15,20)

Relationship: God made Adam and Eve stewards over the garden of Eden, and they were made to help each other.(Genesis 2:15,18)

Day 7:

On the seventh day of the creation God did not make any new creations, so the scriptures state that He rested on that day.(Genesis 2:1-3) However that does not mean that nothing important happened that day. The scriptures do not make it apparent on which of the days of creation Genesis chapters two and three happen. They sort of appear to both be part of the seventh day, however the story from Genesis chapter one ends on the third verse of the second chapter, so the next story could overlap in time. The theory of neurological intelligence suggests that the seventh day of creation started when Eve, and then Adam partook of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil(Genesis 3:6) because this act let them achieve the final level of intelligence and become like God.

Identity: Adam and Eve gained new moral identities because they could understand the moral consequences of their actions. (Genesis 3:22)

Method of Intelligence: Adam and Eve gained the ability to self reflect. This is shown in the story when they notice that they were naked. Genesis 3:7) They also gained the ability to feel joy and sadness. (2 Nephi 2:23)

Relationship: After partaking of the fruit Adam and Eve were cursed to become mortal. This meant that they would experience heartache, sickness, injury and death, but it also meant that they could have children. The new relationship they have is as ministers. They have to help themselves and the children they would eventually have to meet the needs they have as mortals. (Genesis 3:16-24)

Generalization

Learning about the creation of the world like this worked well for ancient civilizations, it was easy to remember, and along with teaching the basics of intelligence it taught many different religious things.  Such as the nature of heaven, earth and hell;  the importance of not working one day every seven; that nature was made for man, not man for nature; and that God is great and good. 

The ability for the creation mythology to pass along these truths is timeless, however the ancient science taught by the creation story is now long outdated.  The science taught by the scriptures would have us believe that the earth is flat, that there was light and vegetation on the earth before there was the sun, that the entire earth can be made in a single week, and that there is a dome holding up the sky. 

By the 1800s science had advanced enough for us to realise many of the errors in the science of the creation mythology.  The prophet Joseph Smith who lived in the early 1800s would have been aware of these inconsistencies in the creation origin story, and through the inspiration of God he changed the story so that it taught the same principles, while at the same time agreeing with the science of the 1800s.  This story is taught in the temple of the Lord.

But now even the science of the 1800s is outdated, and we either need a more accurate story, or we need to accept that the creation myth has a different purpose than to tell us how the earth was created.  Neurological intelligence offers us a new explanation of the creation in a more general manner.  It explains to us the general sequence of how to build intelligence. 

The theory shows that the creation of all fourth level intelligences ideally occur in seven distinct periods of equal length.  In the first three periods systems are created to fulfil the needs of a first level intelligence. 

Providing the material to make it complete during the first period,

Presiding over the system to make it consistent in the second period, and

Protecting and providing stability in the third period.

  In the last four periods different level neurons are created, perfected, and organised into a functional intelligence.

During the 4th period first level neurons are created

During the 5th period second level neurons are created. 

During the sixth period third level neurons are created, and there are two special intelligences created. 

The first of these intelligences is good at helping others with their collective needs, because of this it can be assigned a male gender.  The second intelligence is made from the first, and it is good at helping intelligences with their individual needs.  So it is assigned a female gender. However in the general case it may be more helpful to just avoid assigning them genders since these neurons are usually not people or animals.

In the creation story these two intelligences are Adam and Eve. Adam is created first, and since he has been given all the tasks in the garden he is created genderless. Later, when God creates Eve, the work on the garden is subdivided between the two of them, and they are given opposing genders to help them with their tasks.

During the seventh period neurons with the fourth level of intelligence are made. This starts with the female neurons and is quickly followed by the male ones.

Some Differences Between Myth and Reality

The creation story makes it seem like each intelligence can be completely different, as different as the sun and birds, but we will see in some examples that the intelligences must be very closely related, like Adam and Eve before verses after gaining wisdom. And we will also see that all of the neurons are made from a previous one, like when Eve was created from a rib of Adam. (Genesis 2:21-22)

Another thing that the creation story misses is that while the neurons in the intelligence are being created and organised there are also anti-neurons being created and organised.  These grow in step with each other, and often behave as if they are warring against each other. There are other scripture stories that explain this, such as the story of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30), which explains that every time God tries to build his kingdom Satan is there trying to build his as well, but the closest the creation story comes to explaining this is introducing the snake which lives in the garden and tempts Adam and Eve.(Genesis 3:1)

In the coming intelligence lectures I will go through several examples of intelligences and explain how they were created by splitting their history into seven equally lengthed parts. One of the intelligences that I will explain is evolution by natural selection, and how the earth was created.