Part 2- Does the Noah's Ark story need to be 100% true for it to have meaning? Hardly, and the two (science and spirituality) can certain coexist and find common ground.
When one looks at creation stories from various cultures, one is amazed at the similarities one finds between cultural explanations. This is perhaps because there are certain common questions that people ask about the "big" questions in life, among which, creation is often predominant. It is in the nature of humans to wonder about the unknown and search for answers. At the foundation of nearly every culture is a creation myth that explains how divine inspiration created the world, nature, and humanity. Within each culture, creation mythology provides the very basis of fundamental structure -- who are we as a species? How and why were created? Is there a master plan?
One must then ask if a creation story must be factual to have meaning? Therein we come to a conundrum as well -- what is "fact" for one culture is magic for another. Arthur C. Clarke once commented that: "Any sufficiently advanced...
Religion -- Books of the Old and New Testaments The Bible contains many types of genres, themes, events and characters illustrating the seeds of Christianity in the Old Testament and the Old Testament's fulfillment by Jesus and the young Christian Church of the New Testament. Using the genres of epic and simple narratives, law, prophecy, wisdom, pastoral letters and apocalyptic expression, both Testaments show the struggle of ordinary people trying to
Religion and Society Religion is defined as an organized collection of belief systems, views about the universe, or cultural systems that humans use to relate spiritual and moral values to their lives. Many religions have symbols, traditions, and histories that explain the origin of life, the way the universe works, and the moral, ethical and legal ways to organize human life (De Vries, ed., 2008). While the exact origin of religion
A key celebration in the village invites a festive dance in which the performers fall into a stupor and try to stab themselves with knives (Heinrich, 2005 p. 78). Rituals in life are pertinent events for religious display and artistic expression. Events of puberty, marriage life and burial offer opportunities for Balinese to express their notions regarding statuses, society and the afterlife. The Balinese denomination organizes their faith in a
Religion Qualifications of the divine and the nature of supreme reality are core concepts of any religious tradition. Hinduism and Buddhism conceptualize the divine and the nature of reality in complementary yet distinct ways. Buddhism emerged from Hinduism, in a manner not wholly unlike the way Christianity emerged from Judaism. Therefore, there are several core similarities in the cosmologies and the conceptualizations of divine reality between these two faiths. Moreover, the
Religions of Rome Throughout history, religion has been having a major impact on the societies around the world. In the case of the Romans, they had numerous religions that were practiced throughout the reign of the empire. To fully understand these ideas requires looking at the chapter titled Sol the Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome. This will be accomplished by summarizing the various points and discussing a broad
Religion Vocabulary, Christianity: citing your sources: • Gospel -- pertains to one of the first four books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), or refers more generally to the life and teachings of Jesus (Babylon) • parable -- a "symbolic story" that teaches a moral or religious lesson (Babylon) • baptism -- initiation into Christianity via ritual submergence in water (Babylon) • trinity -- group of three; in Christianity, referring particularly to
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