What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?

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Anyone who reads my blog responses regularly has probably noticed that I tend to answer the questions that are a little bit more simple.  This is not because I’m lazy but because I find that it is the simple questions who’s answers are often overlooked.  King brings up so many basic topics and yet he approaches them with a complexity that makes you question how simple they really are.

Take this question for example, at first glance I jumped to the creation story of Adam (or Ahdamn, which I find hilarious!) and Eve.  Then I realized that just because I know the story of Adam and Eve does not mean that it fits within my belief system, and it seemed unfair to chose a story that I feel has no place in my own life.  At this point in my consideration I had to think about which story I accept.  I decided fairly easily that I would discuss the story of the Big Bang.  This led me to an article titled “The Big Bang is Hard Science. It is also a creation story.” This article discusses that while the Big Bang Theory is based on empirical data and quantitative reasoning, it shares the same unobtainable thoughts as other creation stories.  It is, and will likely always be, that we will not know what came before us, all we are able to understand pertains directly to how we live now.  We live, we die, we change matter and create new life.  This is a formula which we all know, even as a child you understand birth and as you age you discover more and more about death.  All of the stories that we tell ourselves are to explain the unknown, what happened to start this process.

I feel that it is more relevant to discuss the similarities of the Big Bang Theory and King’s story of creation because it is much simpler to point out the differences.  Yet another example of something simple that is in reality much more complicated. One of the most noticeable similarities is the use of the sky and the ocean.  The basic principle of the Big Bang Theory is that there was a speck smaller than an atom which was incredibly hot and dense.  This speck exploded and our universe was created in a fraction of second.  As this new universe expanded it cooled, first creating matter and antimatter followed by protons and neutrons which came together to create hydrogen and helium nuclei which after 300,000 years had cooled enough to capture electrons and create atoms allowing the universe to be filled with hydrogen and helium gasses.  While this is incredibly scientific and likely not without its own flaws it does create an image of the sky as where everything began. This is very much like how in King’s story Charm falls from the sky and is the start of humans on earth.  Many scientists believe that life started in the ocean and that our planet was mostly covered in water to begin with.  This is another way that the big bang theory and King’s story are alike.  Charm falls into the ocean where all of the animals live and only when she gives birth to her children and they need more space than the back of the turtle do they create land.

As you can see these two stories really could not be any more different however there are shared ethos between them that create an equal acceptance of beliefs and the unknown.

Works Cited

King, The Truth About Stories, Chapter One: You’ll Never Believe What Happened Is Always a Great Way to Start.

The Oxford English Dictionary Online. The Oxford University Press. 2015. 8 Mar 2015.