Creation (Full Episode) | The Story of God with Morgan Freeman

[Music] my home is here in mississippi i've lived in many other places new york l.a san francisco chicago but this place defines me got him when he was four and a half months old undernourished but he had attitude got a great walking game [Music] it's the smell of grass in the spring sound of birds i just know i'm home my parents live right here on this land you can't understand me without understanding where i was created every religion has a creation story so what did those stories tell us about who we are and where we came from i'm setting out to discover where we begin jerusalem is conceived of as eden as paradise to unearth civilization's oldest roots this is the mayan life that's the myogenesis story to locate the genesis of religion itself people are literally living with ancestors and i'll go back to the dawn of time hindus do not believe in one creation they say that these are cycles of creation to discover if science and religion can coexist the big man is not creation because we don't know what was before the big bang [Music] there are billions of us on this planet it's hard to believe we all came from one man and one woman but we did [Music] who were they when and where did they live jewish christian and muslim traditions trace us all back to adam and eve the book of genesis says they came from a place called eden near the tigers and euphrates rivers somewhere in the ancient near east no one has yet found the location of the garden of eden though many have tried but why do we want to find it well the reason is interesting the garden of eden doesn't just represent the beginning of humanity it is the beginning of our conversation with god and finding out when and where that took place would tell us an awful lot about who we are so i'm off to jerusalem this is one of the oldest cities in the world there's evidence of people living around here for more than seven thousand years today is the religious center of the jewish world it was here that genesis was first written down about 2500 years ago archaeologist jody magnus is taking me to the church of the holy sepulcher where there is a little known link to the garden of eden so this is it this is the church of the holy sepulchre many christians believe this is the site where jesus was crucified and buried but another ancient tradition says there's also the burial place had them the area that we're walking into here is underneath the rock of golgotha which is the rocky outcrop on which christians believe jesus was crucified and this is called the chapel of adam there's a tradition which goes way back in christianity which connects this spot to adam the first man when jesus was crucified on top of the rock above us his blood flowed down through a crack in the rock and adam the first man lay buried underneath and when jesus's blood flowed onto adam adam was then resurrected almost 1700 years ago when roman emperor constantine built the church he also made a shrine around this crack in the rock of golgotha the chapel of adam but doesn't this contradict that section of the bible that says that the garden of eden was located somewhere near the euphrates and the tigris cycles well the version of the story that ended up in the book of genesis seems to place the garden of eden somewhere in mesopotamia which is the area of modern iraq how do you think the tradition of adam gets to be here in jerusalem well i think adam probably does have a very special connection with jerusalem the garden of eden or paradise becomes conceptualized as a spot where the presence of god dwells in early judaism in the time of jesus the presence of god dwelled in the temple on the temple mount and hence jerusalem was conceived of as eden as paradise so you're saying eden could also be a metaphor right well yes of course adam was the first human and in hebrew the word adam adam just means man hold up hold up you just said something now they're word just means man yes adam yes also the name adam if you take off the a and you just leave d-a-m in hebrew dom that means blood or if you add an a-h to the end adamah means land and itself into blood yup okay all right could the story of adam and eve's explosion from the garden also have metaphorical meanings adam and eve lived in a land of plenty but when they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree they were cast out and forced to work the land in other words they became the first farmers i'm heading to a region where researchers are digging up some of humanity's oldest farming communities in central turkey [Music] i'm interested in finding out if the birth of farming and the birth of belief in god are connected could this have been eaten [Music] amy hello come on over archaeologist amy bogard has been digging with a team here at chattahooia for two decades welcome thank you so shuttle 9 000 year old settlement 9 000 years old amazing isn't it so at its maximum extent it's 13 hectares that would be like 20 football pitches in extent right nfl football pitches or soccer pitches i don't know probably soccer uh but but they were all they're all pretty much the same yeah you can see that these houses are densely crowded together there isn't much space between them there's no space between them yeah they had no windows or doors every house would have its own entrance from above yes chateau huyoke was a city with no streets the people who lived here walked across town over the rooftops roofs were also where they worked the people of chattahook were some of the world's first city dwellers but i want to know whether they were also some of the first believers did they think their world was created by a god amy takes me to a house that may hold the answers what's the point of that red rimmed hole that looks like very definite has a definite reason it's a typical sort of feature that's found at chateau which is a niche for hiding things away like they cache obsidian you know volcanic glass because it's a valued you know cutting material don't find it everywhere right the most important hiding places archaeologists have found that chateau huyok are beneath the sleeping areas okay so what are those holes over there those are actually burial places those are burial pits wait a minute wait a minute a human being is not going to fit in there a baby maybe the way they can fit mature adults in pits like that is to bind them up very very very tightly in a flex position and the holes are periodically reopened and new individuals added through the lifetime of the house wow people are buried under the platforms so that people are literally living with ancestors it sounds like this has some religious content i i think you're right and they start to raise questions about what you might call ritual practice which seemed to have been crucial for life in this community could these burials be evidence of belief in god anthropologist harvey whitehouse is trying to get inside the heads of these early city dwellers so this is a pretty authentic mock-up of what a typical kind of house in chateau it would have looked like these are the kinds of objects that we'd expect to find in one of those houses over here we've got examples of wall art you know here we've got bull heads we often find these inserted into the walls in one case i've seen them arranged almost like a sort of protective shield around one of these clean spaces and we know that these clean spaces were used for sleeping on so harvard you're an anthropologist so you're more into what people are mentally into right well my imagination runs right in an environment like this because i've seen the kind of stuff that comes out of the walls and that they've been taking out of the floors we know that there were very interesting rituals surrounding the burial of human remains but those objects would be periodically in many cases brought out what they were doing with them we don't really know but in many cases they were put back very carefully and replaced it's almost as if this isn't just a domestic dwelling this is like a kind of living temple who used that word temple well what is a temple you know if not a sort of uh an environment in which uh the ritual life of a community is conducted and and i think that's what is going on in these houses here in chattanooga they were obviously all kinds of rituals particularly burial rituals but no sign of an organized religion so the question remains unanswered for me did religion allow man to live together grow food or did civilization give rise to our belief in god while in chattahooch i heard about another excavation just a few hundred miles to the east that may hold the answer for me it's an 11 000 year old site that lies between the tigers and euphrates rivers the biblical location of eden okay we're now in enclosure d um the best preserved of the enclosures that we have here so we've had radio carbon data and they've come back as 9400 plus minus bc it's called gobekli tepe and here i may find evidence of the very first moments humans worshiped the divine stone age architects built 20 monumental circuits here made from large t-shaped pillars archaeologist lee claire leaves the team trying to decipher his mysteries the two central pillars stand in the middle of a round oval building and the wall surrounding it at regular intervals we see smaller t-pillars fearsome animals were carved into some of the pillars but the stones t-shapes may represent the human form they could be men or they could be gods if you look closely you have the top the t is that there's a head and then we have on the side the broad side the arm coming down you can see a belt buckle here they could be mythological ancestors alternatively they could be really the first deities first gods that these people were possibly worshipping in this in this circular structure lee and most archaeologists believe these stone circles were used for rituals but no one appears to have actually lived here the people of gobekli taffy were roaming hunter-gatherers not settled farmers so why did they build a permanent place of worship tied to one spot it's one of the main questions we ask ourselves at this site so why did they come now the thing is at this time the communities were growing larger and larger there was more stress on the local resources and because communities were growing there was obviously a risk of conflict people have problems keeping track of relationships keeping track of networks the growing population meant that people who scarcely knew each other had to work together that was the recipe for conflict the religious rituals that go back to tepe may have eased those conflicts for the first time in human history people from different groups came together around sharing beliefs and in those first formative moments of religion they may have shared stories about where they all came from stories that celebrated a shared past and drove them together to the future go back to taffy traces the birth of religious worship back more than 11 000 years long before there were muslims christians jews hindus buddhists people came together to talk eat worship it could be that the driving force behind our greatest achievement civilization was god but today we no longer share one story of creation we live in a global society made up of many different cultures and science has given us a new perspective on creation it even claims to know the ultimate secret of our cosmic origins can science and religion agree on creation the story of our creation has puzzled me ever since i was a boy it began right here in a church in greenwood mississippi [Music] so [Music] i was about their age when it happened i remember the minister reading from the book of genesis there are eight hundred and seven thousand three hundred and sixty one words in the bible it doesn't take eight hundred seven thousand words for you to believe the bible it only takes ten words in the beginning [Music] god created are y'all gonna get away man the heavens and the earth but for me this beginning was a profound puzzle one moment there was nothing the next everything you're looking good if god created the universe who was around to create god when i got older i heard scientists had found evidence of the big bang according to that theory the entire universe burst out of a single point in an instant of fiery creation now that science knows so much about our cosmic origins what place is there for religious belief in the beginning i want to know about the islamic story of creation so i'm going to cairo [Music] one of the largest and oldest cities in the muslim world islam has deep roots in science muslim astronomers were charting the heavens soon after the time of muhammad i haven't noticed that what is it this is the minority of al hussein mosque harvard historian of islam ahmed raghav is taking me to one of cairo's spiritual centers the al hussein mosque [Music] and the lines are all closed you don't you shouldn't have any kind of uh space between yeah in other words it just kind of told to toe [Music] muslims come here every day to give thanks to god for all that he creates [Music] and afterwards some had just around the corner to the two and a half century old el tishawi coffee shop speak to me about the the islamic concept of creation in islam the beginning of the story starts with this massive cloud of smoke from which the heaven and earth are pulled from inside the smoke and then the earth after that gets formed into what it looks like uh before the beings are created interestingly that is very cosmic right you think right away about the clouds of dust in the cosmos that form worlds so this ideas about these massive clouds and things coming out of them is actually very powerful in a lot of mythological traditions around the world and it is part of this islamic narrative of creation in islam the moment of creation exists alongside the scientific view of earth's formation the same is true for traditions much older than islam aboriginal people have lived in central australia for tens of thousands of years they've told the story of this land's creation for as long as anyone can remember oh this is beautiful my grandfather's family have been caretakers for his place you know it's coming past time to be warren williams and the orende people call this place home this place is so big you'd have to see it from space you could probably see it on satellite i mean cultural astronomer dwayne hammacker tries to connect aboriginal creation stories to modern science so warren is taking him to where his ancestors say it all began a bowl-shaped basin called noralan it's traditional for the arunde to tell their creation story at night when they can see their creators the sky guards these guys they're gonna be really good tonight they're all coming out now the story takes place in an era called the dreaming when the sky gods lived in the milky way the dreaming is a period of creation when everything was beginning and the ladies were dancing at a ceremony and one of them had a little baby so she put the baby in a toner like a it's a wooden cradle but all the dancing started vibrating shaking the milky way and the turnip fell down and it fell to earth and created the crater that we see now that's fascinating because according to scientists it was an asteroid or a comet that hit the ground and what it did is you know the massive explosion created this big meteorite crater dwayne wants to know more about the turner or cradle that warren and his ancestors see as the cause of their creation so you can see the milky way quite clearly and that looks like that tournament from the front falling out of the milky way in western astronomy we call that corona astralis that constellation means the southern crown but you're right it looks exactly like turnip falling out the milky way it looks like an upturned cradle at daybreak dwayne asked warren to show him exactly where the star baby landed goes right through here check it out it's right in the center of the meteor impact crater geologists called goss's club so this is it this is where it began when the rocks fell down here to the ground and um performed this then the first man could create the first woman got created and now i'm here because of that it started here just fell from this guy had made made all this science has never really considered some of these old creation stories to have any validity what we're finding out is that the creation story from the aboriginal perspective and from the scientific perspective like here at nora are identical they're exactly the same for the arende life began here and tradition requires a greeting to the ancestors whenever you enter this sacred space [Music] science can live side by side with aboriginal and islamic accounts of our origins now i'm curious about science and the judeo-christian creation story so i've come to rome michelangelo's breathtaking sistine chapel ceiling depicts the book of genesis in six days god creates light makes the sun and the moon and creates man [Music] i've come to speak with the pope's chief science representative monsignor marcelo sanchez sorondo now you are the chancellor of the pontifical academy of sciences exactly when did that get started and why in 1603 1603 and three years and the leader of the first generation was galileo and the idea is to have a new academy to develop the scientific reason of things so we have the two different approaches to the idea of creation levels of genesis and then there's the big bang the big bang is not creation exactly because we don't know we don't know what was before the big bang my question exactly and for this reason creation is nothing to do with the big man the other thing is that the idea of the bible is not a scientific idea of creation in other words science can't prove it or disprove it exactly we say in the bible is the idea of creation but in the theological sense of creation not the scientific sense of creation thank you thank you the catholic church no longer sees the book of genesis as the literal description of creation in fact the first scientist to propose the big bang george lemaitre was a priest and a member of the pontifical academy of science so how exactly does belief in god fit into modern cosmology so this incredibly high water ceiling just like reaching for heaven yes in a certain sense it's a representation of a heaven of a theological heaven i'm meeting with father giuseppe tanzeliniti a scientist at the vatican observatory i'm very very fascinated by you you're an astronomer and you are a holy man yes my field of study was radiographics quasars extra galactic objects and it was another kind of hammond i remember that when we take a galaxy spectra i used to pray during the waiting for the spectra and to say god i thank you for this marvelous universe that you gave us there must have come at some point a question for you about the nature of creation we think that there's like a big schism between the biblical sense of creation and the other one is the scientific sense of the big bang and it's all very different creation from a theological point of view is perfectly compatible with a big bank because you need always a first cause god the creator is outside space time it's before any time so the act of creation is an everlasting act because creation is the way in which god continuously holds the universe for giuseppe and others like him cosmology not only allows room for divine creation it offers new ways to understand god as the master of space and time i like what father giuseppe says about creation as a continuum that it didn't begin and end with the big bang it is god's ongoing activity which includes evolution i think what he was saying is god does not exist outside space and time god is space and time the idea that creation is ongoing sounds like a new one but it's not in the depths of the guatemalan rainforest lost cities reveal the endless creations of the ancient maya [Music] what if there was not one moment of creation but many i'm headed out to explore the remains of the ancient mayan empire where a new discovery sheds light on their genesis story [Music] few roads cut through the dense jungle of northern guatemala today but archaeologist richard hanson tells me that 2000 years ago this was one of the great cities of the and new york is world a modern city but these guys have the same perspective of their own cities right that water delivery system to have freeways oh yeah [Music] this pyramid is one of the largest structures in the world in terms of volume it's uh more than a half a mile long at the base at a site called el mirador richard found the remains of an ancient city the maya knew as the snake kingdom it's such a rich archaeological site he set up a permanent camp in the jungle to explore it this is the laboratory this is our doctor if you're ever getting a problem he can fix you right there outstanding [Laughter] nice to meet you yeah it was nice to meet you wasn't it what it's very let's do it richard is taking me to see something he's only just uncovered okay this is one of the most interesting excavations we have right now oh my goodness this is art that was carved in stucco hundreds of years before christ and it has incredible scenes showing the entire pantheon of the minor religion so what we're talking about is this is the actual story of creation here this is the mayan bible this the myogen is the story with all the deities that are needed to tell the story yeah this is this is unbelievable i mean if you just think about the fact that it wasn't done in the 15th century of the 16th century it was done 2000 years ago at least this is the oldest version of the maya's sacred story of creation that's ever been found the focus is on two swimmers carrying a severed head it's this head right here that gave us the clue who this might be at the first place we think this is hunapu this is the father of the hero twins that starts the whole process of creation of this creative story survive even to this day in a religious ritual in which i am privileged to take part the ritual recalls the saga of the corn god being tricked into going down to the underworld where he's decapitated his sons known as the hero twins set off to rescue him but they can only get to the underworld by being burned to ash the ash ever since the hero tweets she mixed the corn with the ashes and that goes into the water as their ash sinks into the subterranean waters the hero twins regenerate they return to earth with the corn god's head and plant him in the ground it is from this corn that the first maya people are made now the hero friends are in the river so listen to what they're gonna be serving and passing around in a sense we all become a part of the hero twin story by doing this [Music] [Music] [Music] we don't perform rituals to celebrate adam and eve but the hero twins were crucial to mayan culture their story of death and rebirth was tied to the growth of their staple crop corn an act of creation that the maya depended on every year [Music] and richard tells me their architecture also focused on creation it mirrored the source of power they saw in the heavens to show me how he takes me 40 miles away to the ruins of the city of cacao [Music] the temples here are arranged in groups of three a triad so richard now i can sense here that there is a pattern but something's missing what am i missing well there is a pattern morgan this is a definite pattern here and it's consistent through centuries of time there's one big building over here with the stairway facing inward another building over here with the stairway facing one okay and that third one the third one was right in front of us oh there's the third structure it's been dismantled of course it's gone now but the big the big building was right in front of us it was as high or higher which was built to make the triad three stones richard and other experts believe this arrangement of stone temples is a deliberate echo of a triangle of stars in the constellation orion at the center of the three stars is a fiery nebula a cosmic cloud of star creation you know from contemporary maya that there is a celestial heart the end star of orion it's in the constellation of orion even today when the maya light a traditional fire they begin by planting three stones a fire of creation emanates from their center just as it does with the triad of stars in orion you're telling me that the lions got this triad this manifestation of creation from the constellation orion it looks like this is what they were looking at we know that they were very aware of three primary stars so the maya were able to replicate that pattern with these three stones in these three structures and that is replicated over and over and over again they're tying us to the heavens they're letting us see the creation symbolically [Music] looking around here i'm struck by the scale of what the maya created huge cities colossal pyramids it was a civilization whose religion was focused on creation and the continued regeneration of creation and yet it all crumbled everything the maya created collapsed it strikes me that we don't spend enough time celebrating the paths our ancestors tried to get here all giving thanks for the forces that sustain our lives but there is one culture that gives thanks for its creation every day and i'm in varanasi india to see it [Music] india is home to a billion hindus the third largest faith in the world it has many gods and many creation stories one of the best known centers around the river that gives them life the ganges or ganga morgan now we are at the river ganga manga ganga the holiest of the holy rivers and the center of hindu universe it only exists because it is the sacred the pure the holy from the heavens it only exists because you believe you believe yes okay historian bender parang japan takes me to a shrine to ganga careful yes ganga is not only a river but a goddess so the idea is that you bow down even before you enter the shrine but not for a short person like me and then you come to a place where you see mother ganga what's she holding in her upper left hand she's holding a lotus that is supposed to be a mark of purity right because lotus emerges out of mud but it does not take any stains of mud in the beginning hindus believed ganga flowed in the heavens but she was held captive by the creator god brahma then brahma decided to send the river ganga down to earth but there is one problem that ganga has got such mighty force and if she comes on the earth the earth will drown so the god shiva blocked ganga's fall gathering her waters in the locks of his hair so she would just open one lock of his hair and the ganga flew [Music] she is the mother because she gives birth to everything this holy river came from the river in heaven that we call the milky way they say that milky way actually is a reflection that you see in those waters which are still beyond sciences have dated the universe to about 14 billion years best we can figure hindus have it at what hindus do not believe in one creation they say that these are cycles of creation okay and the primordial creation could be something like 8.6 billion years ago actually this whole creation myth is very difficult to comprehend because we say the gods like brahma has created the universe but then they ask a question who created brahma right and then always to question them creation happened and then the gods happened they say that the sages when they were in their trance they got that revelation that how the creation happened but since it is in that level of consciousness you and me we commoners will not understand it so we believe that it's beyond us the hindu philosophy is not to try to solve the riddle of creation that happened long ago it's to give thanks every day for the forces that allow us to be here and continue to sustain us including the river ganges you can come looking close we are going to see the ritual which they call it yeah it means showing the lamp to the god the rt has taken place on the banks of the holy river every night for hundreds of years the prayer is that god you are like my father you are like my mother my whole existence is you my whole existence is you i'm just like a shadow i'm a vessel that contains that's wonderful seven priests offer all the elements to gander water air earth in the form of flowers and the most important of all light which represents our souls [Music] as the ceremony closes people gather at the water's edge to place the light of their own souls in a tiny vessel this is our individual way of offering ourselves to the river and the candy that takes our soul to the river it's the light of my soul my soul and it says that you take it wherever you think is good for me [Music] the hindu version of creation appeals to me it says the guards weren't even around at the original creation they have this great saying from the rig veda [Music] about the beginning there was neither non-existence nor existence it's saying the idea is beyond human definition beyond human intellect just accept it [Music] where did we come from a man and a woman banished from paradise to begin to work the land hero twins planting the corn they need to start a civilization a great river that gives life to an entire people these ideas about where we came from are the oldest stories we have they are shared words and distant memories that form the glue of our civilization we don't all share the same creation story we all come from different places but all of us whatever we believe can share in one thing the wonder and gratitude that we are here at all [Music] it is my fervent hope that people will open their hearts and minds and see that our beliefs don't have to divide us they have the power to unite us to allow us together to achieve remarkable things as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end [Music] you

Channel: National Geographic

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Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, photography, full episode, story of god, the story of god, morgan freeman, the story of god with morgan freeman, the story of god morgan freeman, full episodes, culture video, morgan freeman documentary, morgan freeman voice, national geographic full episodes

Id: gwIb6S8suSs

Length: 50min 18sec (3018 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022