Please join us in considering this parable. A parable is a story with a deeper message. After you read the parable, we will share what we believe the deeper message would be in this case.
Not too long ago, some students were examining a little known pyramid in Egypt. They stumbled on a secret door that seems to have never been opened before. With some ingenuity, these explorers opened the door. Inside they found a large room with hieroglyphics on the walls. These hieroglyphics told a fascinating story about the Egyptian creator god Ra.
The story described how Ra had created everything a long time ago. It gave the sequence of events that Ra used in his creation.
- Formation of the universe
- Formation of the earth , which in the beginning was rough and unformed
- The earth was then described as having a watery surface
- Then the atmosphere formed on the earth
- Then there began to be land that formed on the earth in addition to this watery surface and atmosphere
- After this, Ra created the great creatures in the sea and the birds
- Then Ra made the wild animals on the land
- Finally, Ra made human beings to rule over the earth
When the students shared with others what they had found, there was much skepticism. How could this ancient document accurately describe the sequence of events that scientists have found out in only the last 500 years or so? How would the ancient Egyptians have known that this was the sequence of events that science has found? No other ancient culture had ever provided a description like this that matched the science so well.
Now this created quite a stir among everyone. After all, everyone knew that Ra did not create the universe and that there was no way for science to prove that. So, after some time, the common belief became that these students had made this all up. Somehow, they had found this pyramid and created this room and then made the hieroglyphics. So, nobody took them seriously any longer. And no-one had to be concerned about this anymore.
Hopefully this parable was entertaining and enlightening for you. There are of course many departures from reality in this parable, but let us look at the deeper meaning. The deeper meaning should be pretty obvious in this case. The meaning is that many people have a difficult time accepting new truths that are outside of their current world view that they may have been taught for many years. That is true of most of us to some extent. It is known as confirmation bias in today’s world. But to those of us who can be more objective about what we see, then we might find some really interesting new truths. We believe that such is the case for the parallel between Genesis 1 and science that we describe on this website. We hope that you will think about the things on this website for yourself, even if they may stretch your previous world view a bit.