the creation of Adam

At our meeting on the 11th November we looked a three paintings of the Creation of Adam.

Before looking at the pictures we read the two passages that describe the creation of Adam.

 Genesis 1.26-27. Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind^* in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,^* and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’
So God created humankind^* in his image,
   in the image of God he created them;^*
   male and female he created them. ²⁷

Genesis 2.7. Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,^* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

The first was by Michelangelo and was part of the painting on the Sistine Chapel.

The second was by William Blake and was used to illustrate a poem. Elohim Creating Adam.

The third was by Benedict Cambell which was painted in 2003 and was a digital painting which was a reinterpretation of Michelangelo's painting.

We thought about why the artists had chossen to show Adam and God in the ways they had. We looked in particular at the differences in the pictures and what this might say about the artists' ideas about God.

Half of Britons do not believe in evolution, Darwin anniversary survey finds | Science | guardian.co.uk

Apparently people still not convinced by evolution :-)

Half of Britons do not believe in evolution, Darwin anniversary survey finds | Science | guardian.co.uk

more on creation myths

At our last meeting on 19/11/08 we continued to think about creation myths - looking at creation myths from other faiths and cultures.

An interesting evening both to see how the Jewish/Christian creation myth shares ideas with other myths, but also how it is different.

what do we think of heaven?

so far in this series we have looked at paradise/eden and then the fall from that paradise. next time we we look at what tom wright has to say about heaven (and how he thinks the Church has got it wrong), but this week we talked about what we think heaven is/is not and what images of heaven we see in popular culture. in particular we looked at how from very early on christians were influenced by greek philosophy and that this may well have contributed to an other worldly non physical idea of heaven and a tendency to equate the physical world with sin and see the soul as something independent of a body.

The Fall

Last house group we continued to look at the creation stories in Genesis. The second story starts from 2.4b (or there abouts) this is generally considered to be a second creation story. This is one the one that deals with the fall - we were thinking about heaven and this story could be seen as a picture of a perfect world, before the fall. We also wondered if this story might be an attempt by the tellers to explain why the world was as it was for them, eg. hard and harsh. We also thought about the nature of Eve and Adam's sin and what it means to be "like God".

creation

at the meeting (23/4) we begin to look at the creation story as told in genesis 1 to 2.4a (to be precise!). we talked a bit about how many cultures have creation myths and why cultures have these stories, for example they might be about trying to explain why things are the way they are. the first creation story in genesis seems to give a picture of a world that is good, very good even where there everyone and even the animals live together. see in particular the implication that animals/humans don't eat meat.

somehow we had a very long discussion about what a soul might be and what might continue of a "person" after death. funnily enough we didn't actually come to any definite conclusions.