Science01
Biological organisms arising within a cosmos of physical processes. The chart does not treat a single origin story as established beyond that frame.
Asked of every system
Twenty-two questions
The same questions, asked in the same order. Read down a question to see where they rhyme and where they do not. No establishment is rewritten to fit the others.
- 01Where are we?
- 02What is reality made of?
- 03What is a human being?
- 04What is consciousness?
- 05Where did humanity come from?
- 06What happens at death?
- 07Does consciousness return to embodiment?
- 08Where is consciousness between lives?
- 09Are there nonhuman intelligent beings?
- 10Can those beings become human or appear human?
- 11Are there multiple realms or worlds?
- 12Is there a central mountain, tree, pillar, axis, heart, or sacred center?
- 13Is the world itself alive?
- 14Has civilization or the world been destroyed or reset before?
- 15Does history operate linearly or cyclically?
- 16Is there an opposing positive/negative force?
- 17What is humanity supposed to become?
- 18Is reincarnation a destination, punishment, school, growth process, or something else?
- 19What lies beyond the visible world?
- 20How does this tradition claim humans can know any of this?
- 21Does the structure or motion of the heavens correspond to events, conditions, or consciousness within the human realm?
- 22Why did humanity forget?
05 / 22
Where did humanity come from?
- Judaism02
Created by God, with moral agency.
Created within divine order, then entangled with heavenly rebellion (Watchers, angels, giants).
Created by God as embodied spiritual and moral beings.
- Islam05
Created by Allah, with moral agency.
Varies enormously by school. Humanity belongs to a cyclically expressed cosmos rather than a single agreed origin tale.
No single creator is required. Humanity is a conditioned form of existence among multiple realms.
Human life arises as participation in cosmic process, from the Dao preceding differentiation.
Humanity belongs to an ordered cosmos that emerged from a primordial state.
Humans occupy a relationship with the gods who established cosmic order.
Humans inhabit one of multiple worlds organized from primordial processes.
Creation understood relationally; accounts vary.
Humanity appears through successive ordering or attempts at creation, with cosmic obligations.
Humans belong to ordered creation and are moral participants in its struggle.
Premortal existence. God organizes creation from eternal or preexistent elements/intelligences.
Spiritual beings (thetans) precede present embodied existence.
Humans exist within a larger cosmic pattern. Astrology does not, by itself, replace the origin story of its host tradition.
Fashioned by gods from clay, to bear labor. Enki and Ninmah is the text filed for this. It is not the Akkadian account of Qingu’s blood.
Varies. Ages of humankind, Prometheus, and autochthony are different stories. Philosophy often does not use those stories.
- Jainism20
Not created. Humans are jīvas in a human birth within a beginningless universe.
- Sikhism21
Created by God. The soul’s series of births is not a creation from nothing at each birth.
- Shinto22
Mythic genealogies from the kami, in the written myths. Shrine life does not depend on one origin recital.
Several origins circulate, including shaping by Nüwa in some myths. Classical cosmology often speaks of Heaven’s generating rather than one founder myth.
In many myths, humanity is the work of lower powers, with a divine element from above. The myth is not shared verbatim.
Humanity is a special making, able to know and to share in the divine, in several Hermetic tellings. Not one anthropogony.
Accounts of Obatala, Oduduwa, and others shaping people differ. They are not one authorized text.
People come from ancestral beings and country, told locally. There is no continental origin myth.
Inca origin stories (caves, Lake Titicaca, Viracocha) are not the origin stories of every Andean people.
Created by God. The story is not a commentary that replaces Genesis, the Qur’an, or anyone else’s origin text. It is this tradition’s claim about creation.
Sky Woman falls from the sky world. Animals dive. Earth is set on the turtle’s back. The twins then shape that world differently. Not an Anishinaabe origin.
A Lakota account: the people emerge from Wind Cave. Dakota origin is Unclassified / Source Needed, rather than borrowed from the Lakota telling.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Emergence from earlier worlds. First Man, First Woman, and Changing Woman (Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé) are in the narratives. The count of worlds is not fixed on this row.
Emergence through earlier worlds. Maasaw receives the people in this world. Migrations differ by clan. Not the Diné emergence.
Irish legendary history tells successive takings of the island, not the creation of humanity.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Working synthesis · not a verdict
Humanity participates in the organism of living reality.