Farrow,Keanu

Keanu Farrow December 2, 2010 World History 10th: Religion and Society Project:

Subject: Creation Myths for Abraham Religions-

· Proposal: o How are Creation Myths expressed? If they are expressed at all are they being expressed through violent matters?

Introductory Paragraph: · Religions, from when they were first created to today in the urban culture have all spread their myths about creation whether from if GOD created the universe to how humans were brought into the world. Their ways have been expressed through many ways from extremism to other methods, but one revolving question lingers around the minds of humans today. Has the term “Creation Myth” been expressed too thoroughly to the point where violence is brought into the mix of it all? Has religion been the cause of all violence between different groups of believers? This article will be the guide to study the question using Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as examples to prove whether conflict is expressed through “Creation Myths” or not.

Relation: · This relates to society today because if you look at it, violence/conflicts are mostly created between different religions. There are wars that have been fought continuously about religion practice. “Non-violent” wars are fought day to day about what people think about religions. For example, Christianity and all of the believers are fighting about whether or not GOD is real because nobody has proof about the existence of him.

Interpretation & Analysis:

With the many religions today there, almost of them popular ones have been had their kind of creation myths. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have creation myths. In Christianity, it is noted that the heavenly father known as GOD created the Earth and everything in seven days. Scholars dating back to when Christianity started document this. This now known as the Holy Bible. The creation myth is noted in the book of Genesis.

Christianity: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”

“Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.”

Judaism: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Some say that God also created the Torah at this time, and a mighty voice crying, "Return, you children of men". God said, "Let there be light". And there was light. And God saw that it was good, God divided the light from the darkness, naming them ' day' and 'night'. Evening and morning came - the first day. God said, "Let the waters be divided". And God made the arch of the sky to hold back the waters from the earth. He placed some above the arch and some below. Some tell of the waters arguing about this division, and thus disagreement entered the universe. Of this day God did not say, "It is good". Evening and morning came- the second day. God said, "Let the waters under heaven come together, and dry land appear". Thus the earth arose, and [plants and trees grew, and God saw that is was good. Evening came and morning came - the third day. God said, "Let the great light and the small light appear in heaven to govern day and night. God saw that it was good. Evening came and morning came - the fourth day. God said. "Let the waters fill with creatures and the sky with birds". God saw that it was good, and blessed them. Evening came and morning came - the fifth day.”

In Islam In the time before time, God was. And when God wants to create something, all he needs to say is "Be", and it becomes. So it was that God created the world and the heavens. He made all the creatures, which walk, swim. Crawl and fly on the face of the earth. He made the angels, and the sun, moon and the stars to dwell in the universe. And consider, as the Qur'an says, how God poured down the rain in torrents, and broke up the soil to bring forth the corm, the grapes and other vegetation; the olive and the palm, the fruit trees and the grass. Then it was that God ordered the angels to go to the earth, and to bring seven handfuls of soil, all of different colours, from which he could model man.

However, even though it is not technically a religion, Atheism is a major controversial thorn in religions sides. Atheism is made up of non-believers of GOD. Their creation myths are unfortunately backed on science, which has more proof than the other religions. They believe that the world was created from an explosion of particles in space which is called the “Big Bang Theory” This has sparked many fights between the religions. Another theory that has sparked major controversy was the uprising of humans. In some cases almost every atheist believes that we humans are the product of evolution. They believe that we have evolved from other living things. For example, since we humans are 2/3 full of water, scientists have come to the prediction that we have evolved from a water droplet to another specie of animal to finally human. There is also a theory that states that fossils are the link to the proof that we have evolved from the first animals to have a vertebrae.

In one person’s theory he documents the discovery of a virus. This virus serves as the missing link as how humans appeared on the Earth and thus he explains how this “virus” is the first sign of life.

Some think that Mimi might be the “missing link,” a sign of how life first evolved on our planet and in particular how cells with a nucleus might have originally evolved, leading eventually to human beings. It’s possible that in Earth’s early oceans, the virus was the dominant form of life and existed on its own, only later developing the ability to be parasitic on the cellular life which evolved afterwards. Most of the human genome is made up from viral DNA, and the same is true for most of the rest of animal and plant life.

Comparison Between all Topics:

· There are actually many similarities between all three mentioned religions. Within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, there all signs of symmetry that each religion has taken a similar path of creating said religion. Judaism was created for Jewish people. They all believe that there is a GOD and that he is the reason that he created the universe and all living things.

· With Christianity, their sacred book known as the Holy Bible states the same thesis. They believe that there is a GOD and this “GOD” created the world in 7 days and created humans as well.

· The difference between Christianity and Judaism is the fact whether or not of Jesus Christ’s importance. In Christianity, they believe that Jesus Christ is the son of GOD. His importance to believers is that he was the “messiah” or savior in this case. In Judaism, they don’t believe that Jesus was the savior and claim still to not be free from the world.

· In Islamic religion the people follow a scared text called the Quran. They too have the same belief that a GOD exists and that he created the world and all human nature.

· The difference between Islamic and Christianity is that Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the messiah while Muslims believe that a prophet named Muhammad was the savior. Even though they were two different people, they had the same idea from both religions. In this case they follow a pattern that all religions have some type of spiritual being. The only difference is between the disciple of the spiritual being.

Real World Conflicts:

Violence hasn’t been a big topic between religions filled with believers and non-believers. The only types of conflict that are noted are the constant debates throughout the years. Each debate covers the same facts proven in the previous debate. Soon new information is introduced and becomes even more controversial. One example is from the great debate of 2001. In this debate, Atheism and Christianity fought between each other to fight over the fact that a spiritual being does exist and that humans were magically created on this world to the point that the “Big Bang” created the world and created all life through evolution. During the debate it was noted that…

“We believe that the Christian side prevailed in this debate, both technically and by content. We are evangelical Christians and have spent 30 years in Christian apologetics, or giving reasons for faith. Despite our personal convictions, we have attempted to approach our analysis objectively. We believe there is enough evidence in the summary and our comments to support our conclusion. Because we are convinced Dr. Newdow lost the debate, it is reasonable that our comments on his portions of the debate are more numerous, critical, and lengthy than our comments on Pastor Knechtle's portions. Note: Because there is so much repetition during the debate, and because so many issues were dealt with adequately in the debate, we have not attempted to include our own thoughts on each point of each part of the debate. The representative sampling presented should encourage you to do your own homework to address issues we do not augment.”

This ties with the fact creation myths cause conflicts, because not only is it two factions fighting over the proof that a spiritual being actually exists, but how come we humans don’t have any proof of meeting him.

· In conclusion, the constant battles between the three abrahamic religions and Atheism all express their beliefs through conflict. Even though these religions don’t express these conflicts violently, they’re still a big issue when it comes to the debates about whether or not if there is a GOD, how humans came into the mix, and whether or not each religion is true or not. With many of these fights going on, there seems to be no end in sight, but honestly we need to not think different of others based on religions because pretty soon these non-violent debates between all religions will transform into a blazing fight filled with bloodshed because we can’t settle our differences.

Bibliography:

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_Book Of Genesis_. Paul Halsall, 1999 _Torah_. Rabbi Tuvia Bolton, 1999-2010
 * "The Holy Qu'ran." CRCC: Center for Muslim Engagement. CMJE, 2007. Web. 10 Dec 2010. . ||

Cline, Austin. "Austin's Atheism Blog." About. N.p., 08, 3, 2006. Web. 10 Dec 2010. .

Passantino, Bob, and Gretchen Passintino. "The 2002 Great Debate: Atheism v. Christianity ." Answers in Action. N.p., 2002. Web. 10 Dec 2010. .