How did it come to be there are different races of people

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There are so many theories when and how the New Testament was written.
 
niceatheist said:
It strikes me that there are Christians who seem to take the same point of view, insisting that where science appears to contradict scripture, science is inevitably wrong. Is that also a psychological condition?
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Yes. Science is the study of God’s creation, thus the Scriptures must be seen through the truths we discover in nature, while realizing that there is a reality above and outside on nature itself.

Here is St Augustine’s famous rebuke in the 4th century of those who interpret Scripture while ignoring scientific knowledge of the natural world on the meaning of Genesis:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”
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otjm said:
Another way of saying it is that we are not required to believe that the entire world of humans was wiped out in the Flood, with the exception of those in the ark.
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If one takes the local flood approach it makes God out to be a liar for we have local floods all the time and He promised not to send a flood. It must have been huge.
 
So the lesson here is twofold; first of all, science is not atheistic, but it is a-theistic (or perhaps agnostic), and second, because it takes no position on the existence of God, those on either side of the debate who insist that it does, whether so they believe that science gives them rational license to deny God’s existence, or on the other side, to deny science because of their particular Scriptural interpretation, misunderstand science.

In my own defense, I do not believe my lack of belief in God is scientific (in that methdological naturalism simply is not a tool that can test such a premise), but I do believe it is rational.
 
Again; all leading pop atheists mistakenly claim that science has debunked theism, while they cannot make one single rational argument against God, they focus on attacking the evil perpetrated by men in the name of religion.

In reality, God’s existence is grounded in reason, while atheism is grounded in psychological conditioning. The fact that the universe itself is comprehensible through the logical language of mathematics is a big clue that there’s reason behind the cosmos.

The problem with atheism is tha it darkens the human intellect; much like perfectly good eyes cannot see anything in a pitch dark room, even if the eyes are wide open. One needs light to see. To have light to see, you have to open your eyes where the light is. God is the light. So to see, you have to be open to God.

Sin is one of the leading causes of spiritual blindness, while atheism is the equivalent of locking one’s self in a darkened room and closing all the curtains and blinds to not let any sunshine in…
 
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This is little more than an an appeal to consequences. Truth is determined about what it does to the human soul. And I’ll stand by my opinion that atheism can be rational. You’re doing little more than what some atheists do to theists, proclaiming their view irrational and asserting some underlying psychological condition. You can disagree with me, but you cross a line when you assert that somehow my atheism means there’s something wrong with me.
 
Simply because they don’t believe his claims or that he even said that.
 
KevinK said:
On what basis do you decide which parts of the Bible to interpret literally and which not? Do you believe Jesus literally did and said everything recorded in the Gospels?
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There are lots of instances in Catholicism where we don’t take the Bible in its literal sense. We don’t cut off our hands even though Jesus said, 'if your right hand sins, cut it off." We aren’t required to believe that all of the Heavens and the Earth were created during a 6 day/144 hour period.
 
Kevin, just think of it like this…

Bereshis Rabbah 32:11 and Rashi agree with Torah (7:19), that all the mountains were covered, but perhaps only in Mesopotamia??? We have to recognize the fact that these people wrote things the way they understood it, so perhaps “under the heavens” could have meant as far as the eye could see? Both Josephus [1] and Zevachim 113a talk about eretz Yisrael NOT being touched by the flood, so how do you explain that? Was there an invisible wall?

Yes, I know all the common accusations. You’ll say: “But why did G-d need Noah to bring 2 of every animal into the ark?”

And I agree with that, but my interpretation is a little bit different than yours. Yes, He wanted to repopulate the area, but think of the logic here: why did G-d tell Noach to build the ark when he could have easily moved? Well, why did they have to walk around Jericho for 7 days, or why did Moshe Rabbeinu set up a system where one could be healed via a snake bite by locking eyes with the bronze serpent (Bamidbar 21:8-9)? The point with Noach is that is was a test of faith. Hashem is always delaying action, look what He did with Sodom and Nineveh? Bereshis Rabbah has some great commentary on that one, it says that Noach planted and cut cedar trees for a hundred and twenty years (turtles live that long, why couldn’t humans at one point? I know it goes against what the Ralbag says, but, haha). So think of it like this: had Noach leave when the Mabul came, and never offered a word to anyone, not a warning, and without any visual representation via the ark, the people would have had no chance to do tusheva and THAT Would be unfair, I think. Now, why did the animals go into the ark, you ask? Good question! Noach and his family weren’t… ornithologists, they didn’t know a thing about the trajectory of birds, nor that perhaps many species of the localize area didn’t migrate out of their natural habitats. For example, the Hummingbird can only fly, say, about twenty minutes before dropping. Now you’re telling me that thing is going to have to do that through a storm, for 40 days and 40 nights? Moreover, had Noach intend to bring EVERY animal in existence into the ark due to a soon global flood, that would have taken…f…o…r…e…v…e…r…

And plus, he’d never be able to recreate the fauna which once existed… on a global scale! Hashem’s problem was not with the animals, it was with the people, but since these innocent beats were in harm’s way, something had to be done about it.

I hope that is suffice in explaining the Jewish position on the Mabul.

Footnote:
  1. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 6.
 
When asking “by who?”, are you talking about the New Testament or the flood? If the latter, I already answered that. It’s three-fold.
  1. G-d. kol eretz means land, it sometimes can mean the entire earth, but the Hebrew word for that is tebel, and that’s not found in Bereshis regarding the flood.
  2. Josephus, as already mentioned. Everyone accepts the fact that what he said is gold, that’s what the ancient Jews believed. Who are we to disagree?
  3. The rabbis, be it Midrash or aggadic. Again, see my posts covering those. Why would the rabbis say it was a local flood before the advent of modern science? Bereshis Rabbah 23 says:
“The deluge in the time of Noach was by no means the only flood with which this earth was visited. The first flood did its work of destruction as far as Jaffé, and the one of Noah’s days extended to Barbary.”
 
There are plenty of proofs for God’s existence, including Aquinas’ Five Proofs. the problem with atheism is that it has no rational arguments at all, other than stating that they don’t believe in God. Thus in debate should they never put forth any arguments for God’s non existence so they always shift to attacking religion and the evils that some religious men have done in the name of religion. Atheism is incompatible with reason, and the sooner the atheist realizes this the sooner he will be on the road to finding the purpose of existence itself…
 
Gab123 said:
A
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So true! How do they know what happens after death! And they’re the ones telling you “I don’t know about creation, I DON’T KNOW,” and they say it with such arrogance!

Anyway, I’d like to ask them where consciousness comes from. Your brain has four elements in it, not this goofy neuron business, that’s just modern myth-making:
  1. Water
  2. Protein
  3. Electricity
  4. Fat
how that somehow makes you an I? They don’t have an answer. I call it the soul.
 
These aren’t proofs in any emperical sense of the word. They are philosophical positions. I take a different tact, in that I do not reject the existence of God so much as I see no need for such an entity. And even if I did, I’d probably lean more towards the Deistic view; that a Prime Mover, if necessary, may not have any of the attributes that the Judeao-Christian religions assert such a being has. As I said, I feel my position is rational, but do not make the error of believing that science can answer the question.
 
I understand where you’re coming, but let me, for argument’s sake, apply a positive term.

So you think it silly that G-d has feelings? (I know, this is very anti-Rambam, haha!). Ok. Why? I mean, why should G-d not have feelings? If a Creator made us, are care for us, what more could you expect from Him?

Just some food for thought. You take the stance of Spinoza, who also failed to read Ibn Ezra correctly, and therefore started the biblical criticism movement.
 
Again, there are intellectual proofs of God’s existence. Realize the power of the human intellect. Nobody has actually measured the physical distance between the moon and the earth, or the earth and sun, yet through sheer intellectual prowess one can determine the distance without having to have a very long physical measuring tape. That is the power of the mind. Intellect alone determined the distance between the Sun and the earth to be 92.96 million miles Likewise, the fields of theology—teleology, ontology etc. have plenty of actual intellectual proof for the necessity of God’s existence. Atheism is not rational, it is emotional, thus it must be approached from a psychological perspective.
 
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