Who knows from where such thoughts come? I certainly don't. I don't ascribe to a particular creation myth, though my upbringing would suggest an affinity for the Christian version. I was just reading a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke called "Eve." And I don't know why, but I got to thinking first of incest and same sex marriage--culled from Adam's rib, just how female is Eve? A pointless thought with no basis because of course she could be rendered female with a click of a single gene. That's when I wondered, despite the desperate attempts by politicians and fundamentalist Christian loonies to undo the tenets of modern day science, is Eve nothing more than a clone of Adam? Of course she is. The Christian creation myth is a story of cloning in order to perpetuate a species. From one cloned pair and a handful of generations of mutation and change (hey, the earth is only 6000 years old, right?) all the humans on earth have been derived. From two to six billion in 6000 years, give or take five or six days. That's a pretty good success rate. Not bad for a cloning experiment.
By the way, here's the poem:
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| | Simply she stands at the cathedral’s
great ascent, close to the rose window,
with the apple in the apple-pose,
guiltless-guilty once and for all
of the growing she gave birth to
since form the circle of eternities
loving she went forth, top struggle through
her way throughout the earth like a young year.
Ah, gladly yet a little in that land
Would she have lingered, heeding the harmony
And understanding of the animals.
But since she found the man determined,
She went with him, aspiring after death,
And she had as yet hardly known God.
Rainer Maria Rilke |
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