Chapter 16 – The New Creation Myth

The modern age has not merely rejected old stories—it has forged new ones. In the absence of a transcendent Creator, secular culture has not settled into a narrative vacuum. Rather, it has constructed new myths to explain human origins, purpose, and destiny. These myths—though clothed in the language of science, psychology, or progress—function in ways deeply religious. They offer meaning. They define sin and salvation. And they shape how millions live and die.

This chapter explores the rise of the modern creation myths: stories not carved on temple walls but embedded in curricula, media, and policy. These are the creation stories of materialism, evolutionism, environmentalism, and transhumanism. Each tells us who we are. Each tells us what to hope for—or fear.

1. From Genesis to Genes: The Evolutionary Genesis

In the biblical narrative, humans are created in the image of God—endowed with purpose, responsibility, and dignity. In the modern myth, humans are the result of blind processes: natural selection, random mutation, the survivor of chance. Evolution is not merely a scientific theory—it becomes an ontological framework. It tells us that we are animals with instincts, not souls with purpose.

The implications ripple outward. Morality is reframed as tribal survival. Love becomes biochemical illusion. Sin becomes maladaptation. Salvation becomes genetic improvement or societal engineering. The myth of evolution becomes not merely how we came to be—but what we are.

2. The Environmental Gospel: Earth as Mother, Carbon as Sin

In many parts of Western culture, especially among progressive intellectuals, the environmental movement has taken on theological features. The Earth becomes a sentient organism—or at least a moral actor. Pollution becomes sin. Carbon becomes the original guilt. And salvation comes through sustainable living, carbon offsets, or political conversion.

This new mythology produces its own prophets (Greta Thunberg), its own commandments (net zero), its own eschatology (climate catastrophe), and its own liturgies (recycling, ritual confession of consumption, social media penance). It often appeals to real scientific concerns, yet it crosses into metaphysical territory. It frames human beings as parasites in need of redemption through sacrifice.

3. The Digital Gospel: Transcendence by Upload

A third myth, growing rapidly in Silicon Valley and beyond, is the transhumanist story. This narrative proclaims that humanity will transcend its limits—not by prayer or moral growth—but by technological augmentation. Consciousness will be uploaded. Mortality will be defeated. Pain will be patched. The soul is no longer necessary when the machine becomes immortal.

This story mimics religious hopes: resurrection through replication, heaven through cloud storage, omniscience through big data. It replaces spiritual formation with software updates. It sees human nature not as sacred but as buggy code to be debugged. The future is not heaven on earth, but man as god.

4. Salvation without a Savior

All these myths share a common feature: they offer redemption without a Redeemer. They redefine what it means to be human, to sin, to be saved—but without appeal to divine grace. These stories are compelling because they are grounded in modern institutions—science, media, academia—and because they provide existential answers. But their gods do not love. Their salvations cannot forgive. And their paradises remain perpetually deferred.

5. The Cost of Forgetting the True Story

When a society forgets its true creation story, it loses more than religious ritual—it loses its anthropology. The result is confusion about identity, value, and destiny. If we are not made in God’s image, we are made in the image of what? Beast? Machine? Accident?

The great challenge of our time is not merely to contest these new myths, but to re-tell the old one: that we are creatures of dignity, made by a loving Creator, broken by sin, and offered redemption. The biblical creation story is not naïve pre-science. It is a truth deeper than mechanism—a truth about who we are, why we matter, and where our hope lies.

In this age of new gods and rival gospels, remembering the beginning may be the only way to find our end.