GOD AND THE SCIENTIST
A creation story included in the e-book Revisions of Genesis.
GOD AND THE SCIENTIST
God came to Earth in a spaceship. God had been traveling a long, long time, looking for the perfect place to live. He was on a journey looking for Heaven. While searching for Heaven, God discovered Earth.
God found the earth to be a beautiful place, with days and nights, land and water, and plants and creatures everywhere. There were, however, no creatures like God on earth. God felt lonely and decided to create human beings in his own image. From the dust of the earth, God formed a man and a woman and brought them to life. God named the man Adam and the woman Eve, and called the place of their birth the Garden of Eden. For a while God enjoyed Eden and the company of Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, it did not take long before God became bored and restless and unhappy.
One day God announced to Adam and Eve that he was leaving them to continue his mission to find Heaven. Adam and Eve asked God if they could go with him to Heaven, but God told them that he only had room for himself in his spaceship. God was sad to be leaving Adam and Eve behind and wished that he could stay, but he felt driven to go. He told Adam and Eve that they were blessed to be living in such a special place as Eden. God then said goodbye, blasted off and disappeared into space in search of Heaven.
Almost immediately Adam and Eve experienced something they had never felt before. They felt bored with each other and bored with Eden. They began to miss God. Their boredom turned into restlessness, and they became obsessed with following God to Heaven. They felt trapped on earth and suffered greatly. Adam and Eve constantly dreamed of Heaven, trying to imagine it and how wonderful it would be. Adam and Eve’s unhappiness and suffering motivated them to obsessively think about the knowledge they needed to build a spaceship.
During their lifetime, Adam and Eve made some progress towards their goal of reaching Heaven. They discovered fire. They learned how to plant seeds and harvest food. They domesticated animals for food and labor. That was as far as they got. But Adam and Eve had many children and taught the children their creation story. They told them about God coming to earth in a spaceship, creating them and leaving in his spaceship to go to a better place called Heaven. All of Adam and Eve’s children wanted to leave earth and go to Heaven. Adam and Eve taught them the knowledge and skills that they had learned.
The children had children, who had children, and generation after generation the creation story was passed on. Slowly knowledge accumulated. The obsession to get to Heaven continued to cause them unhappiness being on earth, but their unhappiness inspired progress. The wheel was invented, copper and steel, swords and plowshares, chariots and boats were made. Mathematics, physics, astronomy, mechanical engineering, architecture and economics developed. Progress continued with gunpowder and cannons, steam engines, factories, trains, gasoline and oil, medicine and genetics, relativity, quantum and string theory, nuclear energy and big bombs, TV, radios and computers, microscopes and telescopes, airplanes and rockets. Knowledge advanced knowledge with the shared goal of building a spaceship capable of going to Heaven.
Progress was not without destructive consequences: overpopulation, depletion of resources, pollution of land, water and sky, climate change. And wars and more wars. The people did not care about the destruction of earth. They were on their way to discovering how to get to Heaven. Earth’s destruction fueled faster progress.
It took a long, long time for humans to become as intelligent as God and advanced enough to build a spaceship. By that time earth was dying. It was a place where humans could no longer live. Earth had become a hell.
All of mankind’s history and knowledge culminated in the building of a spaceship in the 21st century. The spaceship was a scientific and technological wonder, but it was only large enough to hold one person out of the billions who desperately wanted to go to Heaven. The most intelligent scientist was chosen to go on the first flight to find Heaven.
Final preparations were made. The long awaited day arrived. Adam and Eve’s dream was finally to be fulfilled. The scientist said goodbye, boarded the spaceship and blasted off into space in search of Heaven. As he looked back at Earth, he saw it burst into flames. The scientist wept for days.
For a long time the scientist traveled onward through the universe looking for Heaven, looking for the perfect place to live, looking for God. As he traveled he contemplated the history of the earth and the mysteries of life.
One day the spaceship was pulled into a black hole. When the scientist came through to the other side, he was confused. He did not know if he had traveled backward or forward in time and space. He continued onward, searching for Heaven.
One morning the scientist woke from a deep sleep and looked out the window of his spaceship. And there it was, Heaven. He knew it was Heaven the instant he saw it. He quickly landed his spaceship and got out and began to explore.
The scientist found Heaven to be the paradise he had imagined, with land and water, and beautiful plants and creatures everywhere. He did not find any creatures like himself and God was nowhere to be found. Not until night, when he saw familiar stars in the sky, did the scientist realize Heaven was the planet Earth. He wondered if he was on Earth from a distant past or a distant future.
Eventually the scientist felt lonely. Using dust from the earth, the scientist formed a man and a woman and brought them to life. He named the man Adam and the woman Eve. The scientist loved them. They called him God. The scientist taught Adam and Eve the importance of living in harmony with the earth. He taught them that happiness comes from loving the earth and loving one another.
The scientist never told Adam and Eve the original creation story nor did he tell them where he came from. He himself believed in mysteries. The scientist lived to be very old and when he died, Adam and Eve buried him in the dust of the earth.
Adam and Eve had many children and taught them what they learned from God. They loved the earth and each other and lived happily. And when they died, they returned to dust.
The descendants of Adam and Eve spread throughout the lands, inhabiting all the earth. They continue to tell stories about God and Adam and Eve and about living in harmony with the earth and each other. There remain unsolved mysteries in the stories told. Some people wonder how the world was created and where God came from. Some believe that God created himself and then created the universe, then made Adam and Eve. Others believe God was created by another God or evolved from dust of the earth. Still others think that Adam and Eve made up the story of God. And there are even some who believe that God came to Earth in a spaceship.