Why do we have creation myths?

The other week, the New Scientist published a lengthy report about an Amazonian tribe called the Piraha. They are, it is believed, unique: they have virtually no notion of time, little oral history, almost no art, and the simplest kinship system known. They are also believed to be the only society with no creation myth. But why are there not more like them? The simplistic explanation is that everyone - apart from a relatively small number of South Americans and decadent western atheists - believes the world to have been created, and so needs a story to explain how. But the fact that large numbers of people, even the vast majority, believe something is not a good enough reason to suppose it is true. The real reason creation myths are near universal was given by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Fortunately, nature has bridged this logical and empirical gap for us. It is as though we are causation-greedy, preferring a bad explanation to none at all.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2006/mar/28/features11.g21

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The Book of Genesis, part 1: God created Genesis 1 and 2 must be among the most hotly debated texts in the Bible. But our obsession with whether and how they can be reconciled with scientific descriptions of the beginning of the universe is distorting our understanding of where these "creation narratives" fit into the wider concerns of the Book of Genesis. In its printed form, Genesis has 50 chapters, only one and a bit of which directly concern the origins of the universe.

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