Throughout recorded history, humans have felt the need to have some sort of being to worship that was always above or beyond them. This area will give some account of the various gods, goddesses, and assorted deitys across history and cultures.
Where did man come from? This question has preoccupied human thought for thousands, conceivably for tens of thousands of years. It is responsible for a large number of myths and for many of the world's relegions, each of these grounded in efforts to explain the creation of the earth and of man. Many of these explanations are exceedingly interesting and beautiful, but much of their detail is no longer regarded as strictly factual. Instead, they are more properly interpreted as reflections of mans yearning to fathom the mysteries he could not possibly understand, his fear of the unknown, and his often poetic attempts to construt a kind of theological prehistory to satisfy his desire for a good and moral world. Man cannot get along without faith and the highest ornament of any great civilization is the ethical system by which it lives. The strenght of any such system lies in its ability to continue to serve as a moral force while adjusting to changes in mans knowledge about the universe and his place in it.
The story of creation as told in the Bible is a fine case in point. It is seldom taken literally now. Its simple, sweeping concepts are interpreted by most modern Christians and Jews as being symbolic of the spirit and majesty of God. The world, in effect, was not created in six days even though the Bible says it was.
