homework 4

In this third reading I was most interested by the "beginning" of the creation story that the narrator told Ishmael. At first he was confused as to what story Ishmael was referring to. He thought about the one that was told in Genesis. But, then he said that if he was teaching a school class about the creation story he would definitely not tell the one in Genesis. So, the narrator told a story that had to do with evolution and how things came to be after millions and millions of years. I was actually very unfamiliar with this story, or at least the details of of it such as how many years it actually took. I am different than the narrator in that if somebody asked me to tell the creation story or myth, as Ishmael referred to it, I would not have even thought about the one that the narrator told, but I would tell the one in Genesis because that is what I believe.

In this reading of Ishmael another thing that had a big impact on me was a point that Ishmael made to the narrator. He said that as humans tell the story, the climax or the ending point is the creation of man. Humans believe that they are the most important and should rule the world or have dominion in the world because as they tell the story, evolution ends with the creation of man. I began to think about if I have fallen into this trap and believe the the world was created for me, or humans. I also like the point that Ishmael made when he was talking about what would happen if the world was created for jelly fish and what if evolution ended with them. But, neither of these ideas are the case. Ishmael points out that evolution did not stop with the creation of jelly fish and it certainly does not just stop with the creation of human kind.