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You Can’t Get Here from There: The Logical Paradox of Creation Myths

WHEN: Thursday, February 24, 2005 at 8:00 PM.
WHERE: 110 Peterson Hall at UCSD.

The speaker is Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Professor of Religion at the University of Chicago.

Wendy Doniger [O'Flaherty] graduated from Radcliffe College and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and her D. Phil. from Oxford University. She is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and the author of many books most recently The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade and The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was.

Her lecture will address the logical paradox of creation myths. The problem that most creation mythologies, including scientific theories of creation, must face is the basic problem of creation ex nihilo, getting from the original putative moment ofnothing to the present moment of something. The texts (which I will draw primarily from ancient India) devise indirect strategies to cover up the unavoidable but inadmissible fact of (the origin of) life, the fact that you can't get there from here.

For further information call Dick Mauro, 858.453.4618