Hello Kendar,
And comparing it to what the Bible says in connection to how the physical Universe came to be. I find that there are subtle similarities. If this is so, and if I was talking to a believer of the Bible, how then would I convince him that it was not the same God we were talking about?
There are subtle similarities, but 47% of people in the USA are "creationists", that is to say they believe that Earth is around 6000 years old, and Adam and Eve were created by God as the first humans. They also believe that God is a stern deity that "sits" up there creating things and punishing people for their "sins". There is a big row going on in the UK because both the Christian and Islamic churches want "creationism" to be taught in schools as if it were a fact. They believe that dinosaurs were put on Earth after it was created 6000 years ago, but they died in Noah's flood. They also believe that palaeontology is a conspiracy against the church.
What the church - and this includes all of the Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - fails to note is that, for example, Adam and Eve were the first created Man and Woman, then their subsequent relationships with their children and between their children must have been incestuous - there is no other possible conclusion. The same applies to Noah and Mrs. Noah after the great flood.
We can prove evolution easily through the fossil record and through DNA which proves that all life began with a common distant ancestor. Humans for example share 60% of our genes with a banana, and 98% with apes and chimps. This could not possibly be true if we did not share common ancestors.
The creationists provide zero evidence except for "God's word" in the Bible itself, which of course is not evidential.
Adam and Eve are in fact a metaphor for the current evolution of human beings - who are about to evolve again to the next evolution.
Where the similarities exist is for example in the beginning when God created the Heavens and the Earth "He" said "Let there be Light". Well of course God is pure formless Energy and did not actually "say" anything, but nevertheless the Light originated with God, and gave rise to the Universe.
As for the 6 "days" of creation - "days" should actually read "ages", each age being millions of years, humans appearing towards the end of that process.
The difficulty is that both Old and New Testaments are heavily encoded, but religion, not seeing that - or intended to - simply takes each word literally.
So what can we say that we have in common?
Well we can say that in the beginning was God and God created the Universe. We can also say that we are the Children of God, but even that might not satisfy many religious fundamentalists.
What I am finding is happening now is that increasingly more people are questioning the basis of their beliefs, becoming dissatisfied and seeking elsewhere - a major reason this time was chosen for my own book which compares many religions.
When I get LDS or Jehovah's witnesses coming to my door, I always treat them with great respect. But I also ask them the same question:
"What is it about your religion that caused you to dedicate your life to it, even to the extent of travelling from door to door with your message?"
They can never answer the question unless I answer it for them, because the answer always is that they subscribe to that religion because they were born to parents that subscribe to it, and their parents before them and so on for generations. They have never taken the time to evaluate all the options and subscribe to a religion that most closely fits how they feel.
So my approach these days is to simply ask questions that causes people to think and ask questions of themselves.
In Love and Light,
Adrian.
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