Interesting Points About Religion
Okay! Now I am not going to be picking on anyone or anything.
None of that stuff.
I’m just mentioning a few things about religion that I find interesting.
People may comment and list a few more interesting points about it as well.
Keep in mind any comments offending anyone, (Not that I can talk) will be deleted.
Right!
The 1st thing that I find interesting about religion is to do with the storyline.
In the Christian storyline a Great Flood was sent by God to remove evil from the world, this brings in the story of Noah’s Ark. The man who built a giant ship and went round the entire Earth gathering 2 of every animal.
The interesting point here is that 2 of an animal would not bring back the species. There would be mutations and relatives would be mating with relatives and it would all go crazy and that beautiful deer over there would be standing there with 5 legs.
Whether the number of animals has been changed because of translation error, I wouldn’t know.
The other interesting point to do with the Great Flood is that the Chinese religious storyline also speaks of a Great Flood. Which leads to the conclusion that the Great Flood was historical event.
Whether to do with God or a natural disaster.
Now moving on.
Interesting point to do with Christmas and Easter.
We are always being told that on Christmas day, Jesus was born.
In fact he was born late November, far from the 25Th of December.
Easter is supposed to be the date of his death/rebirth. But the date of Easter changes every year.
The reason for this is due to the Romans.
During the time of the Romans there was a lot of forced beliefs and so forth, the Romans believed that Christian was the true religion. So off they went, converting countries and countries of people to Christian.
They came across a group of people they had a hard time converting. These people were Pagans.
In order to convert the Pagans the Romans had to adapt some of the Pagans traditions, Easter and Christmas. Easter is a celebration that changes according to the moon cycle.
Not the death or resurrection of Jesus.
In a way it’s made it all quite confusing.
But very interesting indeed.
If there is a God floating around,
What would he say about all this?
One comment
Hi Ben,
The global Flood is amazing. You can read the full account of this historical event in the Bible in the book of Genesis, chapters 6 to 9. Here's a link to read it online:
http://bit.ly/7iiFd4
Noah didn't go around the entire Earth rounding up two of every animal. God brought the animals to the Ark. We are told this in verse 20 of chapter 6, "…two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive."
Two closely-related animals mating will only be a problem if there are genetic defects. The further back you go in history, the fewer genetic defects there were. At the time of Adam and Eve, there were none. At the time of the Flood, there would be relatively few. Remember that the animals that went on the Ark were brought to Noah by God. That is, God selected the animals. God, who after all created the genetic system and therefore would be an expert on it, could easily have selected animal specimens with the fewest genetic defects (and ensured that the same defects did not exist in both parents), and with the greatest genetic diversity.
The animals that came off the Ark would not have been as specialised (genetically) as their descendants would later become. They would have been hardier than their descendants. Their descendants would have carried only a portion of that original gene pool of information. Such changes do not require a long time for animals under migratory pressure. The first small population that formed would tend to break up rapidly into daughter populations, going in different directions, each carrying only a portion of the gene pool of their ancestral pair that came off the Ark. The mountainous topography of the Ark's landing place would have been ideal for geographical isolation. This would allow much post-Flood diversification from comparatively few (approximately 8,000) kinds of land vertebrates, by splitting up the original high genetic variety.
You are quite right about the Flood being mentioned in other histories and cultures. You can find records of the Flood in the cultures of the Australian Aborigines, the American Indians, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Chinese, and many others. In fact, there are at least 500 legends of a worldwide flood!
Regarding the date of Christmas, the fact is that we don't know which day Jesus was born. Christianity doesn't depend on this in the slightest. As for celebrating Jesus' birth on 25 December, what happened is that the early Church thought that the best way to win pagans to Christ was to take over their festivals and replace pagan elements with Christian ones. It was so effective that the pagan elements are almost forgotten today! The important thing is not the date, but the event: the birth of Jesus. Regarding Easter, this is the celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection, as you point out. Again, the exact date is probably not important – it's the events that are important. I think the date changes every year because it's based on the lunar (not solar) calendar.
You can find this kind of discrepancy between dates and events elsewhere, too. Consider the Queen's birthday. In Australia, we celebrate her birthday every year in June, with a public holiday, but she was actually born in April. The date is not really that important. What is important is the real, historical event (her birth), and everything that came after that event (her life).