Hey all, I have a simple experiment I would like try, for anyone willing to participate. What I would like is for anyone willing, to type up a 1 paragraph creation story and post it here. To not influence your stories I will wait till we get some posts to divulge the purpose of this experiment.

Thanks
Cam

You mean, fabricate a creation story? Regardless of personal opinion?

I would participate, if you explained a lil more on what you mean lol

A creation story, be creative. Tell us a fictional story of the earth and universe and people being made. "A big blue light named Ectuse, went to the bathroom and the universe was born". Anything you want.

Include the beginning of time or the universe, people, animals, earth, solar systems etc. whatever you wish.

Correct, creativity is welcomed. This is not meant to be a rehash of genesis, so think of something wacky new and original.

There was infinity, but this was exceedingly boring. And so, after infinity came Perfection. But, alas! By defining Perfection, by giving it life and a soul and a way, Imperfection also took form. Though there was great labor, naught could be done to separate the first from the second, save to wipe the slate clean. And, considered the One who could consider because now there was something considerable—might this not have happened before? If Perfection had ever been formed such that there was no complement, would it not have existed everywhere, always, past and present? But there had only been infinity; the only solution It saw for Imperfection. The One deliberated for a time; luckily, for us, It did not decide (as It might have) that infinity itself was the most perfect of creations. Instead It sought to seek higher Perfection with us; and so It does.

OK lets go


There was this beautiful FEMALE being...who was bored of doing her usual godly stuff, untill one day she descided to be a lil more creative, she thought of making another planet, only this time giving it differnt kinds of life to see how it all went.

She sat down one day on her comfy chair, and designed many different little tiny objects, and there she planted them to evolve and grow into living things. She gave all female things the power to reproduce more and more, but only produced a male version to help out. She did this knowing it would take some time, but she was a patient being, and a billion years on her new invention called - earth, would be like a billion mins in her kingdom. Lots of living things evolved, including humans, but she wanted these humans to discover life for themselves, which is why she gave then the power of thought, called it the brain. Being baised lol she made the female nicer to look at, and when the humans evolved, she descided to plant the idea of mother nature into their heads, so when they all admired how beautiful nature was, they all called it - Mother nature ha ha!! The female being the only being that could produce new life, was to be the most dominant of all living things and the male was just the seed provider. The females were also given the power of compassion and to never show violence or hate, the male was forgotten about..he had the left overs..that turned a lil bad, therefore man himself, ended up with a defect in his mind, to have the urge to take over, kill, destroy and hurt others....sadly this was the goddesses only mistake...but all should even itself out in the end

HA HA HA...only joking..well you did say make something up..so I did

The centre of the void was home to a single sphere, a gathering of a splintered light that broke the cold bitterness of the viod, joined in fear of unknown, gliding upon the skyless sky without a voice. She knew not where she traveled but knew the road of which she paved, her colour was a simple grey and her skin was motionless. She ripped apart every second from inside, unfathonable pain brewed from within but with no voice to scream she grew dark and dying. A tremble, a shiver, her pain threw a small chunk of her skin out into the vastness of the darkness. Unlikely to be seen or felt again, until her road came to an end, she had no choice but to turn and follow a now known path. Blindly she went along her self-made passage. An arrow peirced her skin, her own skin rushed into her and her voice shreiked in sheer pain, her voice broke through the darkness and shards of light emerged, awakened, unknowing. They followed the shrill voice until they surrounded her, her pain still unbearable the lights rushed under her skin. She was quiet now, unknowing if she were still moving or if she had stopped completely. An uneasyness of whether the pain was what made her aware of herself, she begged the once again darkness to allow her to scream in agony once again. Her skin broke, cracked and peeled as it trembled with fierce motion. Numbness turned into sensations, and when she could endure no more ectasy she puffed up her cheeks and blew out the sky.
Knowing the pain of numbness, she vowed life to thrive upon her skin. But so afraid of that unknowing she vowed that she would no longer be silent and burn in her sorrow. A single light emerged, the last one that remained while the others sped out in the vast dark. It vowed she'd never be alone and called to the others to die and crumble, and to seek out their nearest cousins and remodel what they knew. The single star itself asked her to shed her skin and allow her siblings to reign the blackness alongside her, in return the light gave her colour of various sorts. She bore new life, tiny beyond sight, they slowly grew to giants until a dead light, in all it's jealousy attacked her from the void. She screamed and the mighty fell and death took them. The few that remained feared her, and so stayed small and grew in plenty of all different speices. In her guilt she let out her name, "Gaia", to quwell there the fears of unknown.

I would like to get a few more if we could. Come on people I know there are plenty creative types floating around here!

One day while cruising the "big black", Spencer decided that he wanted to make something. So he through some sparks from his hand and the sparks became the stars. He then blew out a big ball of fire and that became the sun. After a while he decided he was lonely and he made a ball big enough to put some friends on. He made the friends from the wax that he found in his ears. Then he decided they all needed other friends and he made some things out of his hair and out of his fingernails and they could swim, fly, and play. He wasn't lonely anymore.

In the beginning Ralph created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Ralph moved upon the face of the waters. And Ralph said, Let there be light: and there was light. And Ralph saw the light, that it was good: and Ralph divided the light from the darkness. And Ralph called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And Ralph said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And Ralph made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And Ralph called the firmament Heaven. And Ralph said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And Ralph called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and Ralph saw that it was good. Dang, this is becoming too unbelievable – I’ll come back later and try again!

Jack P. Jehovah believed deep down inside that nothing existed outside of himself. The external world was merely a figment of his mind. Then one day, his wife left him for another man, he lost his very lucrative job, the bank foreclosed on his house, his dog was run over, his auto insurance policy was cancelled and he was involved in a very serious automobile accident that was entirely his fault and put in the hospital with injuries that would make him an invalid for the rest of his life. At this point Jack decided to actively test his belief that only he existed. First, he willed the stars from the sky, next he willed all life from the planet, next he willed the sun and moon into non-existence and finally he willed the Planet Earth out of existence. Floating in the blackness of nothing, Jack willed his body out of existence and finally he tried to will himself out of existence. Surprised that he still existed, he tried and tried again to will himself into nothingness. Finally stopping to rest, he heard a voice in his mind. “I too believed that only I existed and followed the same path as you. Now that you are here, I can finally cease to exist after all of these billions of years – Goodbye and good luck! With that finally salutation the voice ceased and the feeling that another person existed went away. Jack pondered and pondered on how to end his existence. Finally after aeons of thought it came to him – AND GOD SAID, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” - I hope this attempt is better than the first – I did not originate it, but read this at some point in my misspent youth. I have no recollection when or where or who the original author was.

...Wait. We were meant to be funny?

...Crap.

im not falling for this, i can feel a presence of a joke

I have a feeling the intent is to show that the Biblical creation story is typical of what the human imagination would come up with, when asked to explain the orgins of life. We are seeing essentially the same format used by the storytellers here. It will most likely be used to explain that the Genesis account follows the expected form that a creation story would follow if it came from the human imagination, thereby lessening greatly the possibility that the Biblical account is divinely inspired. IMO that is the hope of the original poster, but I could be very wrong.

The explanation of any similarities between creation stories posted here & Genesis would rather be that the authors are influenced by an account, a trait, ingrained in their culture, or in cultures they were exposed to . A general or unified 'human imagination' which crosses differences of culture could only be biologically/ genetically based, that would be an absurd assumption! Maybe the experiment is about how far people can be innovative & deviate from the prevalent account in their culture?

Is it fair to say that you seem to think that human similiarities in imagination don't exist? What is absurd about humans sharing similiar traits outside of their cultural connections? Do you think that only humans who share the same culture have similar brains?

You think there is no basis for humans having the same type of imagination, only cultural groups share the same type of brain activity as each other? There is no human brain structure, only culture-specific brain structure? What are you saying?

Perhaps the experiment is to see if anyone will deviate from the original bones of the story format, that is kind of what I was saying. The original poster is most likely, IMO, going to see how much anyone deviates, but is probably expecting the similarities that have so far been shown. IOW, there is an expectation that people will either stick to the format or vary within "X" degrees, but that the skeleton of the stories will all resemble each other. I will refrain from any more off-topic posts on the subject.

For some reason I am not struck by a large possibility of this being a creative writing endeavor.

You missed my point, or maybe I was not very clear. I was responding to your "I have a feeling the intent is to show that the Biblical creation story is typical of what the human imagination would come up with, when asked to explain the orgins of life" and "It will most likely be used to explain that the Genesis account follows the expected form that a creation story would follow if it came from the human imagination". A narrative that follows the lines of Genesis, the order of creation, the style of narration etc cannot be attributed to simple coincidence or a 'general human similarities'. Being imaginative & having the ability to express oneself in various art forms is universal, similarities of specific narratives are cultural. In other words, to have an account of creation is common to most cultures, but to say that the female was made from the rib of the sleeping male is culture specific.
All human beings share the' same type of brain activity' & the same 'brains' regardless of race, ethnic group,culture, or religion. I also will refrain from further off-topic comments. Ciao

i just participated in this on another forum so i know the intent ..LOL good luck here ...LOL

Ah, another "See, genesis is not like other creation stories as you had a god create it" kind of argument I see?

In the beginning was the void, two (almost) perfect waves of energy that completely cancelled each other out.

As the waves propagated, they began to gradually overlap, creating small quantities of matter and antimatter that caused the waves to desynchronise further, creating larger and larger chunks of matter and antimatter, until the void exploded.

This Universe is the result.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.

~ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Actually here was my intent.

Over the past few days I had been talking on the “In defense of Creationism” thread. While talking about creationism and the bible it seems that lots (not just here on UM either) are under the impression that the bible is metaphorical in its nature.

My personal belief is that the bible is a collection of stories, be they folklore, fiction, scare tactics etc, I believe they are only stories. So I got to thinking about books of fiction that I have read. Most of the time in said book of fiction when the author is introducing concepts such as characters, places complex events or the universe being created they normally do not use a unobvious metaphor, if they use a metaphor at all.

For instance an author may describe a new character being introduced as “short, with dark skin.” They may also say something “he had eyes like a storm”. This is a very straight forward in either circumstance. It immediately conveys to the reader the intended information.

Then I started thinking some more, as I have said I am of the belief the bible is largely a work of fiction. It seemed to me, a person would only be able to describe the world, which they knew existed. This is pretty obvious, you could not comment on Lenticular galaxy formation if you did not know what a Lenticular galaxy was, or even a galaxy for that matter.

So basically, my hypothesis is: the bible was written by men who, in a very straightforward way, describe a fictional creation of the universe.

I thought this would be a good place to test that hypothesis. There are many people here of varying knowledge levels who would be able to describe things in more or less detail of how our universe actually works. Furthermore, the authors that participated wrote their descriptions in varying levels of complexity. Some were very straightforward some not so straightforward.

If they could answer for us, very honestly, did they intend for their descriptions to be read as a metaphor or did they create a work of fiction with words and concepts they were aware of? The reason you could not post the possible intent of the experiment, people would obviously alter their responses based upon their beliefs and either in support or disproof of the "metaphorical description of creation"

I think this would be a great experiment on a larger scale and so long as those doing it had time to read creation stories relatively the length of genesis (I don’t have that much time is why I only limited it to 1 paragraph, but I thought more people would respond!).

Anyway pretty interesting concepts if you ask me, maybe someone on here will read this who is a psych grad student with an interest in story creation and design a experiment for one of their open research projects!

That would be an interesting experiment as well

no one wants to answer the question?

You didn't ask a question. 'Least... I see no question mark.

Rofl, nevermind. The bold part should have been obvious >.< Haha sorry dude.

Well, seeing how the OT is from the Torah, you'd have to go back pretty far to find the man that wrote it. Even then, he'd have - in my opinion - believed it to be true, as to write it into the religion.

Which is why there are two different begining's of the world - two adams, two eves and a Lilith.