The "final" thought about the Arceus/Mew "problem".

[Baron Dante]

Errr. What other places than the Dex claim Mew to be the ancestor? As far as I recall, none.

The Dex is made by humans, and humans make mistakes/stupid assumptions. It was said that Mew contains the DNA of all Pokemon. If this is all the ancestor claim has for it, it can just be plain wrong.

Depending on how DNA follows, it can be possible for Mew to have the DNA of 'em all by simply Arceus creating (By breeding... with itself?), thus creating the Sinnoh legendaries (or some of them), them all breeding together, giving Mew the DNA of 'em all. After this, Mew just created the rest.

...okay, that sounded wrong. More likely is that it doesn't contain DNa of all Pokemon. What it does, however, is have the DNA of all known Pokemon. Considering the slightly legendary status of some Pokemon, how would the Professors know of their DNA?

 

[CliveKoopa]

Ditto has the DNA of all the pokemon too. What makes Mew more special than Ditto?

 

[Articwolf10]

Ditto has the DNA of all the pokemon too. What makes Mew more special than Ditto?

I remember somone theorysing that Ditto is a mutated Mew or something/... maybe
Ditto's the first pokemon to branch off of Mew?

 

[Master Mew]

Why can't both be true... if you think about it Arceus and Mew can be a shout out to the Bible and Genisis... Mew is essently the Poke Version of Adam and Eve really. and since humans subosibly evolved from Pokemon (We had to come from somewhere right?) I like to think both are true.

Perhaps they are. I merely contend that, if only one is true, it is more likely to be theory than legend.

 

[The Outrage]

I'll concede that the explanation for Mew's origins don't stand up to close scientific scrutiny, but you're not looking at the Arceus myth with equal scrutiny. One what basis are we supposed to believe that it created certain Pokémon? All we have to go on is a bunch of in-universe fairy tales and the fact that, in an event, it can cause a specific Pokémon to appear from nowhere. Who's to say that's not just how legendaries breed? They have to come from somewhere, after all.


I've heard this "all myths are true" argument before, and I don't buy it. Just because the Weather Trio exist and fight each other doesn't mean that every detail of their Pokédex data is true. Entries which, for the most part, are worded very specifically as myths. "Groudon has long been described in mythology as..." "Said to have..." "Kyogre is named in mythology as..."

Even if myths have a tendency to line up with reality in the Pokémon universe, when information conflicts, what are we supposed to believe? Millennia-old legends about a Pokémon that nobody has seen, describing it in the kind of hyperbolic language used to discuss deities, or the actual first-hand findings of real, present-day scientists who found a Pokémon, studied it, and understood its genetics well enough to not just clone it, but to make an augmented clone? The description of Mew's genetics doesn't line up especially well with real-world evolution, and there are, as you point out, some logical paradoxes. But what you're doing here is elevating unverifiable ancient myths above the discoveries of scientists who were smart enough to do some heavy-duty genetic engineering... and your justification of that is that the scientists mustn't have understood basic genetics?

I think we have to concede that certain people just aren't willing to accept that Pokémon, while being a work of fiction, has a nice way of reflecting reality with the whole religion vs. science debate, and people will always ignore that reality no matter how many times you mention it, and will undoubtedly believe in the position that all myths are true, even when Game Freak themselves go so far as to put a canon researcher of myths giving an explanation of how these 'god' labels may have come about in-universe:

Dialga's Roar of Time... Palkia's Spacial Rend... To the people back then, those Pokémon really must have appeared to rule over time and space. Seeing them must have shaken the people to their very core. This painting represents those feelings of awe, wonder, and everything else. It passed that memory to countless people, eventually becoming a myth...

What's reality is their power. Whether they created the universe is not fact, so much so that Game Freak created an entire encounter with Cynthia just to spell that out.

Then again, Game Freak seemed to have gone through great lengths to tell us Team Rocket is done with and there's still those fans...

Anyway, to get back to the discussion, this time defending the 'Arceus is god' camp...

I hear a lot of arguments that Arceus can't be a god because it gets captured in a Pokéball or because of its failure to foresee the consequences of making the Jewel of Life. The idea of omnipotence and omniscience isn't a universal thing. Now I'm not a scholar in Greek mythology, but from random bits I read here and there, those gods weren't perfect, in fact, they seemed to emphasize the human imperfection. From what I've read, this is because ancient Greeks can't believe in a perfect god that makes imperfect beings. It's painfully obvious how many people here only see Arceus as a god through a Christian lens, since a great deal of posts trying to reconcile this goes with "Arceus is God, Mew is Jesus" even though Arceus' myth fits other religions much better than Christianity ever would.

Point is, you're all evaluating Arceus as a god through a mostly Western lens. Even if you claim to be Atheist, you can't say haven't been exposed to religion and probably what made you atheist came from bible thumpers misquoting scriptures.

Not saying Arceus is trufax creation god, but that god concepts are not universally the same. Arceus can certainly be considered a god while being beaten to a pulp by a ten year old's Pikachu.

Ditto has the DNA of all the pokemon too. What makes Mew more special than Ditto?

The fact you got your facts wrong? Ditto copies the opponent's genetic code, and rearranges its cell structure. It doesn't have an archive of all DNA so much as a print-screen function.

Really, this is one of the problems with the arguments here. Some people aren't even getting established facts right. I see people making claims that things like the Weather Trio being forces of nature that brought themselves into existence on their own. There is nothing to suggest that. For all you know, three Mew's eventually became the Weather Trio in response to the environment they lived in.

 

[Pyradox]

Ditto has the DNA of all the pokemon too. What makes Mew more special than Ditto?

Well, Mew can learn pretty much any move permanently, unlike Ditto.

But I digress.

Ditto does not have the DNA of every Pokémon. It can copy it, but only for a certain amount of time. Even so, it may be weaker than the original Pokémon. Ditto senses the genetic code and copies it. It does not have the code within.

 

[CliveKoopa]

Why can't both be true... if you think about it Arceus and Mew can be a shout out to the Bible and Genisis... Mew is essently the Poke Version of Adam and Eve really. and since humans subosibly evolved from Pokemon (We had to come from somewhere right?) I like to think both are true.

If you want to go by Genesis, God created all animals seperately and created the first humans, which is basicaly the same as to what I'm saying about the Pokemon World. The difference being pokemon came before humans. Nowhere in Genesis does it say humans evolved from animals.

 

[투 애니원]

The way I see it. Arceus created all the other Pokemon through Mew.

 

[GolemGuido29]

I believe that Arceus was like a molder, it created Palkia, Dialga, Giratina, and The Lake Trio to balance the world; But Mew created all other pokemon to aid in the creation of the pokemon world. and that Mew was made from the after math of Palkia, Dialga, Giratina, and the Lake Trio.

 

[BlueNostalgia]

I'm unsure of how old this thread is or if people are still interested in it, but after reading though some of it, I'm really sorry I missed it.

I hear a lot of arguments that Arceus can't be a god because it gets captured in a Pokéball or because of its failure to foresee the consequences of making the Jewel of Life. The idea of omnipotence and omniscience isn't a universal thing. Now I'm not a scholar in Greek mythology, but from random bits I read here and there, those gods weren't perfect, in fact, they seemed to emphasize the human imperfection. From what I've read, this is because ancient Greeks can't believe in a perfect god that makes imperfect beings. It's painfully obvious how many people here only see Arceus as a god through a Christian lens, since a great deal of posts trying to reconcile this goes with "Arceus is God, Mew is Jesus" even though Arceus' myth fits other religions much better than Christianity ever would.

Point is, you're all evaluating Arceus as a god through a mostly Western lens. Even if you claim to be Atheist, you can't say haven't been exposed to religion and probably what made you atheist came from bible thumpers misquoting scriptures.

Not saying Arceus is trufax creation god, but that god concepts are not universally the same. Arceus can certainly be considered a god while being beaten to a pulp by a ten year old's Pikachu.

Ditto has the DNA of all the pokemon too. What makes Mew more special than Ditto?

The fact you got your facts wrong? Ditto copies the opponent's genetic code, and rearranges its cell structure. It doesn't have an archive of all DNA so much as a print-screen function.

Really, this is one of the problems with the arguments here. Some people aren't even getting established facts right. I see people making claims that things like the Weather Trio being forces of nature that brought themselves into existence on their own. There is nothing to suggest that. For all you know, three Mew's eventually became the Weather Trio in response to the environment they lived in.

All of this. There are numerous things in the Pokemon canon that people seem to completly neglegt, despite being established as main series facts, simply because they have their own theory that doesn't fit or because they don't know. Furthermore, I think there are things that, although not concrete, can be assumed due to certain implications. Yes, there's no proof that Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza actually crated the earth, sea, and sky, but from what we're told in the games, and especially after the events of Emerald, we can assume that they did. Again, we probably won't ever have final proof, but it's not too much of a stretch to put together the fact that they're legendary, extremely powerful, and have abilities that would certainly assist them in performint the tasks that myth would have us believe.

As for Arceus, again, we're told by myth that it's the creator of the universe. Many people seem to disregard all of this as the usual Pokedex guff, but in the same way that we don't know for sure but cas assume what we can about Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza, I think we can assume that Arceus did indeed create the universe. The Shinjo Ruins event confirms for us that Arceus was almost definitely the one that brought Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina into existence, but I think we all agree on that already. My point is that Dialga and Palkia were both shown to have immense power in D/P/Pt; the ability to literally reshape the universe by bending time and space. Again, you can say that no Pokemon has that much power and that it's all just wild theories, but we saw it happen (to an extent) within these games. There's the localisation confusion, in that it seemed to only affect Sinnoh, but is there any evidence to suggest it definitely didn't affect the whole world? (That's not me asking rehtorically to support my argument, by the way, like, I genuinely don't know and I'd like someone to enlighten me if possible.) And even if it did only affect Sinnoh, we have to bear in mind that time and space was never actually changed, it was only nearly changed. The rift in the sky created above them during these events suggested to me that their influence was spreading rather than fixed around Sinnoh.

Back to the main point, if Arceus had the ability to create two beings with such power, it's not much more of a step to suggest that it also had the power to create the universe. As for the questioning of Mew's ancestory or status as a weilder of great power, I had always thought it was reasonably obvious that to say Mew was the ancestor of all Pokemon was a slight exaggeration. Pokemon like the Weather Trio, I think it's safe to assume, are not descendents of Mew, but rather they are either beings appointed to care for that aspect of the world (possibly by Arceus) or simply came to be because they were needed for the circumstances as @The Outrage suggests.

I actually think that we often over complicate it. Yes, there are a lot of myths and legends in Pokemon that don't seem to make sense and are open to interpretation, and I adore topics like this, but we have to remember that Game Freak aren't exactly set to create some kind of huge lore to it all. While there are some things that seem to contradict each other, I think we can dismiss (a certain amount of it, anyway) it as the slight clumsiness of GF, and we allow for minor tweakings to make things fit together more nicely. And I don't mean major things, I do just mean things like Mew supposedly being the ancestor of all Pokemon but Arceus's egg being the only thing in the beginning; obviously those to 'facts' can't exist as they are side by side, and is it really so difficult to make minor allowances to clear up confusions like this?

 

[Ranger Jack Walker]

How can Mew be considered the ancestor of all Pokemon when scientists don't even know for sure how many Pokemon there are? How did they test the DNA of Pokemon like Articuno which many believe to not even exist?

 

[Shiny Kamui]

looking through all these commensts..i'm just going to chose to ignore this "problem" because people can seem to debate over this for hours..and the way i see it, both these pokemon are just as important. i think it's nicer to think that there isn't one all mighty creator, that where Arceus created the universe , but other certain legendaries help'd in the making of the pokemon world we have today.
i haven't studied so much in this subject as others have..and actually when i heard of this Arceus and how it could contradict mew, i didn't think too much of it, it didn't bother me as much as it bother'd other fans i guess.

 

[Xenidal]

How can Mew be considered the ancestor of all Pokemon when scientists don't even know for sure how many Pokemon there are? How did they test the DNA of Pokemon like Articuno which many believe to not even exist?

The same way that real-world scientists come up with all sorts of theories which are eventually disproven when new observations are made. Chances are that even in the Pokémon cannon, the Mew thing is just a theory and most likely not entirely accurate. Scientists probably just observed that Mew can learn every move (every move that was known at the time that they came up with the theory) and since moves are linked to genetics then they came up with a theory that every Pokémon might be related to him.

That being said, I don't see how the Arceus thing is any more believable. Even in the cannon, it's just a myth (and most likely a regional myth at that, which are extremely common in Pokémon...) Probably what actually hapened is that long ago, people saw that Arceus was extremely rare and powerful and then they made up all sorts of stories about him.

 

[Tomreal]

In case both of this theories (Mew being "the ultimate ancestor" and Arceus being "the god") are correct, I have only one real solution to this: the universe Arceus created is only one dimension in a larger multiverse – other dimensions include Unown and Deoxys' rispective dimensions, Distortion world and so on. Arceus was thus born in a dimension outside "our universe" (the "Pokémon universe") and the egg it was born from was laid by Mew or another Pokémon who descended from Mew itself. So, in short, it's all about the definition of "the universe" you guys are talking about.

 

[Owain]

Thing is, we'll never get a ''final thought'' on that matter, until something is actually declared in canon... Oh wait, we need to debate even those, because we have pesky things called oppinions, I for one, never thought of Mew as a God, because it was said in canon that Mew was an ancestor, so, are Dinosaurs bird-Gods? I never questioned how they knew Mew's DNA was lnked to all mons, cause that wouldn't make much sense, and since they tell us Arceus is the Poké-God, I just went, ''sure, why not?''.

Think about it, if in our real world, christianity was given some evidence, woulld the other religions just stop believing on their own... beliefs? Nope, so, what I'm trying to say is, you believe in what you want, Canon or Fanon, one doesn't need to matter more than the other.