We went into NY City today to the Museum. There was an amazing exhibit: Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art. There were amazing pieces of art dating back almost 1500+ years.
What struck me as truly amazing, was the fact that the Mayans date the birth of the earth to August 11, 3114, BCE. That year is an interesting landmark. The Jewish calendar shows this year to be 5783. Taking the Mayan calculate year of creation and adding the Gregorian calendar year 2023, one arrives at the year 5137. The Gregorian calendar was first adopted in Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain in 1582, and is now universally accepted. The change to the Gregorian calendar was because the previous calendar was thought to be inaccurate. Thus the mere 546 years difference brings you to the question, how could two so diverse ethnic groups date the birth of the earth so similarly?
As a scientist, I "know" the earth is many millions of years old, and the Universe, billions. So why the mismatch, when 2 distinctly different societies are so similar in their calculations?
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"One reason creation stories are universal is that people from every culture have wondered the same basic questions about life, such as, “Where did the universe and the earth come from?” “Why do we humans exist?” “How did we get here on earth?” “What is the end purpose of life?” These questions have given rise to a broad variety of myths about creation in an attempt to understand our place in the world (Sproul 1979; and Zeitlin and Raschka 2000)."
"All nations and cultures share a common quest to understand where they came from. For this reason each culture has forged its own creation myth (cosmogony) to explain the origin of the universe, earth, and the human race. Records preserved from ancient times testify to the central role questions of origins play in establishing the identity and religious heritage of every nation. (Whorton and Roberts 2008, 8–9)"
"Some Conclusions The fact is, as stated by one scholar, often “opponents of the Christian faith assume that the biblical creation account is nothing more than yet another in a long line of such documents, in this case a Hebrew creation myth that sought to establish a preeminent place for Abraham’s descendants” (Whorton and Roberts 2008, 8). In fact, as documented in the few examples noted above, this claim is incorrect. Most creation accounts are not only unscientific, but nonsensical and in great contrast to the Genesis account, which makes no claims that anything created God or that he achieved his position since he is the only God and he pre-existed the creation."
