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Never accept things as they are presented. Only stories matter.
Not that long ago I was in Los Angeles. Having a little free time, I decided to go to the Griffiths Observatory at the top of a small hill in Griffith Park. There is a planetarium in the Observatory and in order to escape the hoards of school groups that seemed to be swarming everywhere, I went to the planetarium—the first time I had done so since I myself was part of a school-swarm many years ago in New York at the Hayden Planetarium. I bought a ticket. I went inside.
The buzz of early adolescence continued until the lights dimmed, and suddenly the place grew quiet. All eyes turned to the “heavens.” A young astronomer began to explain that the images we were staring at represented “the dawn of creation” not as understood by modern astronomers, but from the perspectives of different peoples across different times. She related the Biblical tale of the creation of heaven and earth in seven rather eventful days. Another saw creation as the issue of a divine sexual union. She told another of how the Earth passed into being through the Universal “navel.” As she spoke I realized that each of the tales seemed nearly as persuasive and compelling as any “big bang.” I wondered why that would be.
It was then that I began to realize that each theory of creation that she described was a story. It also dawned on me just how much of what we know—organize, imagine, understand—is