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

[niceatheist]

But they’re not proofs, not in any epistemological sense of the word. They may be internally consistent positions, and hence rational, providing you accept certain precepts. And no, intellect alone did not determine these things, intellect came up with tools to make the measurement. Intellect didn’t produce the answer, it produced the means to answer the question. it’s a subtle difference. The problem with existence of God, and as importantly the nature of God, is that you end up in a bit of circular reasoning. I have to accept certain claims on faith to be able to follow your logical train of thought. Like the atheist, the theist is on slippery ground, at the bottom is a naked claim. I don’t claim my position is superior, I claim it’s equivalent.

Look at this way. Aquinas was basically restating Aristotlean notions of form and motion. Not surprising, really, as by the First Century, Judaism had synthesized its own theology with the dominant philosophy of the classical world. But I have to accept that some region of space/time prior to our Universe (if that makes any sense at all in and of itself) is bound by the same fundamental rules as the Universe is. The Universe functions on fundamental principles of causation, but if I move to some period prior to the Universe (again, assuming that even is a sensible notion), why should I have to invoke some entity to fulfill that requirement, and if I do, then I can equally claim that entity needed a mover, or equally can invoke parsimony, remove the entity I can’t really find evidence for and moved the attribute “uncaused” on to the Universe itself.

Either way, I’m not going to pretend a logical proof (if indeed either is logical) is the same as an actual physical proof.

Simply put, I have to be convinced that a god, whatever such a being’s particular attributes, is actually necessary.

 

[HeDa]

Type in “How to interpret the Bible” in the search box on www.catholic.com and start reading.

There are poetic, historic, teaching etc parts in the Bible. A poetic reading is not possible to interpret as a scientific text without coming to some errors. Think of a young man saying in a computer voice “There are chemical reactions in my brain when my eyes see you.” when proposing to the young woman he is in love with. The woman is likely expecting something like “I will give my life for you and our future children.” spoken in a loving voice.

 

[wiggbuggie1]

a lot of ppl mention how environment effects outward appearance to adapt to the environment, so if a group of white Europeans move to Africa or vice versa group of black Africans to Europe and stay with in there own will there appearance mutate over time? I cant imagine that happening.

 

[phil19034]

I agree “race” is not a clear scientific boundary, but surely you agree an Australian aboriginal and a Scandinavian are vastly different; and there must be some account as to how these vast differences arose from a Catholic perspective.

It’s really pretty simple… God created our bodies with the ability to adapt to the environment.

 

[Gab123]

Again, yes they are intellectual proofs. Much like if you found an object on the beach you could intellectually determine if the object was man-made by simply looking at its functionality, purpose and design. No need to search for a Made in China label to determine if an intelligent mind was the inventor. The proof for God is everywhere.

Again, the mere fact that the universe is comprehensible through the logical language of mathematics is proof in itself. A simple experiment: look around your room; from the chair you’re sitting on to the floor you stand on, the door to your room, the things in your home, the things in your pocket, the clothes you wear, the airplane you see out your window, etc. All of these things have an origin that are directly traced back to a non-material idea that originated in the mind of their inventors. Ideas that were wrapped in plastic, metal, glass, wood, etc. an brought into a physical reality through the use of reason.

To equate atheism with theism is foolhardy. That’s like saying there’s an equal chance that a tornado could sweep through a junkyard and leave a perfectly functioning 747 jet in its wake, complete purposeful instruments designed to interact with future situations without the need of 747 airplane inventors.

Atheism is an emotional state of mind.

 

[Ridgerunner]

But we do need to believe Noah was a real person though, right?

I don’t know that we do. But neither am I required to disbelieve it.

I realize some think they know the “origin” of the Noah story, but do they? I remember my grandmother telling me how her entire family was from Ireland, but that the family was “originally” French, not so very long before. Eventually, I learned that our family name (and hers) were actually Scandinavian in origin, but underwent some of its changes among the Danes in Normandy. And, as “pure Irish” as that part of the family is, DNA testing shows that I have very little Celtic DNA, but a whole lot of Scandinavian DNA. So, not very “French”, but “French” all the same.

So she was right. She was just off by 1,000 years.

I’m not obliged to buy into Bishop Usher’s calculation of time. Noah might have been 200,000 years ago, and the story was told and retold and retold ever since.

 

[niceatheist]

a lot of ppl mention how environment effects outward appearance to adapt to the environment, so if a group of white Europeans move to Africa or vice versa group of black Africans to Europe and stay with in there own will there appearance mutate over time? I cant imagine that happening.

It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen. Evolution is essentially all about differential reproduction.

Think of it this way. Even in a Northern European population, there will be some individuals with more pigmentation and people with less. This is natural variation. Over multiple generations (and we’re talking dozens of generations), should a Northern European population head to more equatorial climes, those members of the population with darker pigmentation will have a slight reproductive advantage, in that they are less susceptible to melanomas than those with a lighter hue. Maybe it’s only a one or two percent advantage (or perhaps less), but over long stretches of time, that is in centuries or even thousands of years, in the absence of any other factors (i.e. medical interventions, high SPF sun screens, interbreeding with locally adapted populations which will introduce darker skinned genes much more quickly), the darker skinned genes, and hence darker skinned people, will come to dominate the population.

 

[Ridgerunner]

a lot of ppl mention how environment effects outward appearance to adapt to the environment, so if a group of white Europeans move to Africa or vice versa group of black Africans to Europe and stay with in there own will there appearance mutate over time? I cant imagine that happening.

I think it did happen.

Asian Indians are “white”. They’re Caucasians every bit as much as a Scot is. Sometime if you’re any good at photoshopping, take a photo of an Indian, lighten his skin and pink it up a bit. Lighten his hair to at least a medium brown. Change his eyes to blue. His features may seem a bit delicate, but otherwise you won’t know him from any European.

Some of them, of course, you don’t even have to lighten up.
https://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/east_indian.html?sti=ntg03qge58tv5h270o|

Something else we need to consider. Around here, the basic “origin” is Scots-Irish. But there is a lot of Native American “blood” among them. But they’re still mostly light hair colored and blue-eyed. After enough interbreeding, minority traits tend to disappear. So if a relatively dark population migrated to Scandinavia, there would be a “survival preference” for the lighter ones. Over millennia, the would tend to be fewer and fewer dark ones.

 

[niceatheist]

The 747 analogy always fails because it assumes absolutely no process. Nothing in evolution or cosmology ever suggests that nature works like that. In other words, it’s at best a bad metaphor, and at worst a complete misrepresentation.

And no, an internally logical “proof” is not the same as a measurement. That, for example, is the difference between Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. The former is an intellectual exercise with defined ways to demonstrate or falsify, the latter is an intellectual exercise that no one has a way (at least yet) to test.

 

[KevinK]

It just seems arbitrary because you do interpret “this is my body” literally.

 

[Ghosty1981]

a lot of ppl mention how environment effects outward appearance to adapt to the environment, so if a group of white Europeans move to Africa or vice versa group of black Africans to Europe and stay with in there own will there appearance mutate over time? I cant imagine that happening.

It almost certainly did happen, hard to believe though it may be. In the photos I posted above we have examples of individuals from two isolated populations (first and third photos) that share a root Y-chromosomal heritage, meaning their fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ ect. were from the same family group. Obviously there may have been some admixture over the centuries, but by and large these are descendants from the same original group.

It is hard to see on the surface, but the DNA is pretty clear.

Incidentally, there is evidence that the ancestors of the people of the British Isles were black skinned as of at most 10,000 years ago (genes for dark skin are present in the DNA of bones from that time).

 

[Gab123]

I’m not arguing against evolution; Genesis itself describes creation in stages; even man’s creation described as beginning with the slime/dust of the earth.

Use your mind. It is powerful. Look at the evolution of automobiles and telephones and airplanes, from their primitive origin to current state; the common thread is intellect behind the advancement. And it didn’t take much proof for y to assume that the origin behind these lines of text tha you are reading right now originated from a thinking mind. The fact that you can decipher the logical code we call the English Language, is proof enough that you are not talking to your computer screen, but to a somebody (me). Likewise, the fact that man can comprehend the universe via the logical language of mathematics is proof in itself of the origin of the universe.

Again, atheism is an emotional state, not a rational conclusion. Thus the reason why atheists will simply live in denial and argue against the obvious, rather than to simply think. Plenty of intellectual proofs of God’s existence, yet no evidence or proof is ever sufficient for a mind that does not want to believe for whatever reason they have formulated in their mind.

But realize that the purpose of the human mind is truth; and the purpose of the human will is goodness and love. Since God is Truth, Goodness and Love itself, the purpose of our existence is God. But the problem with the mind is that it can be darkened by sin; in the case of atheism, pride often gets in the way of truth, combined with negative emotional experiences, it can turn into anger at life itself. For others it is the result of intellectual laziness and the influence of militant atheists who bark against religion.

But even world famous hero of atheists Antony Flew finally conceded very late in life that atheism is simply irrational…

 

[buffalo]

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.

What size flood did God promise Noah He would never send again?

 

[buffalo]

It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen. Evolution is essentially all about differential reproduction.

Think of it this way. Even in a Northern European population, there will be some individuals with more pigmentation and people with less. This is natural variation. Over multiple generations (and we’re talking dozens of generations), should a Northern European population head to more equatorial climes, those members of the population with darker pigmentation will have a slight reproductive advantage, in that they are less susceptible to melanomas than those with a lighter hue. Maybe it’s only a one or two percent advantage (or perhaps less), but over long stretches of time, that is in centuries or even thousands of years, in the absence of any other factors (i.e. medical interventions, high SPF sun screens, interbreeding with locally adapted populations which will introduce darker skinned genes much more quickly), the darker skinned genes, and hence darker skinned people, will come to dominate the population.

We know this as adaptation.

 

[buffalo]

a lot of ppl mention how environment effects outward appearance to adapt to the environment, so if a group of white Europeans move to Africa or vice versa group of black Africans to Europe and stay with in there own will there appearance mutate over time?

Yes. …

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen. Evolution is essentially all about differential reproduction.

Think of it this way. Even in a Northern European population, there will be some individuals with more pigmentation and people with less. This is natural variation. Over multiple generations (and we’re talking dozens of generations), should a Northern European population head to more equatorial climes, those members of the population with darker pigmentation will have a slight reproductive advantage, in that they are less susceptible to melanomas than those with a lighter hue. Maybe it’s only a one or two percent advantage (or perhaps less), but over long stretches of time, that is in centuries or even thousands of years, in the absence of any other factors (i.e. medical interventions, high SPF sun screens, interbreeding with locally adapted populations which will introduce darker skinned genes much more quickly), the darker skinned genes, and hence darker skinned people, will come to dominate the population.

We know this as adaptation.

But there are also mutations. Replication is not perfect, and new alleles appear in all populations. Evolution is more than simply adaptation. New gene variants appear all the time for a number of reasons.

 

[Rabbi]

Let me answer that. You are referring to Bereshis (Genesis) 9:11-15? When we read that alongside Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 54:9, what’s the point G-d’s making? Did He really flood the whole earth? No. Did He even mention that in the brit? Nope. Of course, you’ll argue that such a brit means nothing, after all, there have been so many floods before that time and since, one questions why G-d even bothered?

But in order to understand the brit in Bereshis, we’ll have to examine it.

G-d said: “And I will establish My covenant with you, and never again will all flesh be cut off by the flood waters, and there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” [The Hebrew here again is kol eretz, which means ‘land’]

A few verses later…

“And I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and between you and between every living creature among all flesh, and the water will no longer become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

Note: “all flesh” again. G-d clearly says He’ll never destroy “all flesh”; it doesn’t mean this flood had to be global. Notice that the brit is made to the people of the earth, so the flood was indeed local, but global in judgement of humanity. Remember, even though Kayin (Cain) built a lot of cities, there’s no reason to believe this was a global act, in fact, humans didn’t even make it around the globe until a few chapters later, so a global flood would have been a waste of resources!

Now, remember kol eretz? So what’s up with verse 15 in Bereshis 9? The answer to that lies in two verses prior to this chapter. Do you have a clue what they are? Bereshis 6:11-12. And how does it read?

וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת הָאָ֖רֶץ לִפְנֵ֣י הָֽאֱלֹהִ֑ים וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ חָמָֽס

“Now the earth was corrupt before G-d, and the earth became full of robbery.”

The next verse answers:

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְהִנֵּ֣ה נִשְׁחָ֑תָה כִּֽי־הִשְׁחִ֧ית כָּל־בָּשָׂ֛ר אֶת־דַּרְכּ֖וֹ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ

“And G-d saw the earth, and behold it had become corrupted, for ALL FLESH had corrupted its way on the earth.”

Remember, we have to think in the minds of the ancient Jewish populace, so let’s not substitute kol eretz (“land”), for the modern Christian mistranslation “earth.”

And when you look at it like that, it becomes very clear that G-d did not make a pact with the earth, but with the people of earth, and His promise was to never destroy them again.

 

[Rabbi]

What do you mean muting the thread?

 

[Rabbi]

What do you mean muting the thread?

 

[Atreju]

I’ve heard decent arguments for atheism, I think your view is biased as it does not align with my own extensive interactions with atheistic or agnostic peers. And I have not seen these knock down logical proofs for the existence of God. I have seen a lot of such “proofs” that rely on non sequitur.