That’s it.
Well, considering that the ol’ Adam and Eve creation story comes from the Tanakh (AKA the Hebrew Bible, AKA “The Old Testament”) I think it would be safe to assume so. Or are you assuming that the creation story relates to the creation of the earth only, thus leaving open the question of the creation of the universe as a whole?
It boggles my mind that this question is even being asked.
This sounds like a GQ, not a Great Debate.
Answer: some do believe that, others don’t. But then, many Jews also enjoy a side of pork and plenty of good homosexual sodomy on the weekends too. Some Jews are Christians. Some are atheists. Some are gay Christian ex-atheists that star on Broadway. It’s all very confusing.
Didn’t some Jewish gnostics believe that the “God” that created the earth was not the true ultimate god, but rather some loser god (hence a different creator for the plaet/universe and “all existence”)? Or was that only that one tiny Christian sect?
nitpick: Some Jewish people or people of Jewish ancestry are [insert a religion that isn’t Judaism here].
If your nitpick isn’t good enough for John Stewart, then it’s not good enough for me.
I’m not sure about Jewish gnostic belief in a Demiurge. One of the Gnostic “C’tian”
views is that the OT God was the Demiurge who created the material realm & enslaved human spirits in that realm, and that the True Ultimate God sent JC to rescue us from the OT Demiurge’s tyranny over the material prison.
If I understand correctly, some forms of Jewish mysticism/kabbalistic thought holds that in creating the Universe, God Who is All in All contracted Himself to make room for a Creation other than Him. This withdrawal resulted in ten spheres of reality/dimensions called “sephiroth” through which souls must progress to reunite with God. It may be that each sphere has a lesser manifestation of God which could be considered a Demiurge.
Arian C’tian thought, best exemplified today in the Jehovah’s Witness, is that Father God created the lesser “god” Jesus who then created the Universe with His Father.
First, there’s not much Jewish “dogma.” From an official position, it doesn’t matter much what a Jew believes, in much the same way that it doesn’t matter what an Irish person believes. And within Judaism, there is a wide, wide range of beliefs held by various individuals, various sects, and various branches (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform).
Having put that disclaimer in, I think it would be a pretty basic belief of most mainstream Jews that (a) God exists, and there is only One; and (b) God created the universe (in the sense of all of time-space cosmology, not just earth.)
Holy farking shiznit, you just made me think that Final Fantasy 7 was deeper than I realized.
Orthodox, Conservative, and most if not all Reform religious Jews – i.e., people who practice the faith of Judaism – do believe that God created the Universe.
Many people of Jewish ethnic background belong to other religions, are atheists, agnostics, etc.
The problem appears to lie in the fact that Judaism is the sole modern survivor of a religious faith that is closely tied to an ethnic group. There was a point 1,800 years ago or so when a question like “Do Germans believe that Wotan…?” would have been a similar sort of question – where “Germans” would mean both the ethnic group (not yet a political nation) and the people who believed in the indigenous Germanic faith. Or, going back another thousand years or so before that, “Do Moabites believe that Mesha created the Universe?” (I think I’ve got the god-name not the king-name here; if not, read it as having been properly swapped in.)
Well, that’s not entirely true. All adherents to the Jedi religion belong to the Nerdius Maximus ethnic group.
Okay, let’s go with that. How does this square with what Darwin’s Finch wrote in one of the other abio-threads?
A couple of questions:
- Do most mainstream Jews believe that God created living things all in one go, i.e. that creation was a once and for all event?
- Do most mainstream Jews believe in evolution?
- What do mainstream Jewish schools teach re abiogenesis and evolution?
It’s confusing terminology, but not all people who believe that God created the universe are big-C Creationists. Or, maybe they are, depending on how you define things.
Finch was talking about a very particular belief in Biblical literalism that makes up the core of the Creationist movement (primarily in the US), not any and all religious believers who think there is a Creator.
I think there are many fewer sects of Judiasm that believe that the Torah is actual literal description. Most Rabbis I’ve heard from seem to be much more cool with ideas like metaphor and poetic liscence than conservative fundamentalist Christians.
If by “creation,” you mean the universe then yes, if you mean special creation of all living species, then no.
Probably not, but it’s not really an issue of doctrine. You can believe whatever you want. There is no required belief in either YEC or evolution.
This one I’ll leave to someone more knowledgable but my WAG is that they teach evolution as fact. They might teach a more theistic view of biogenesis, though.
That’s why I’d like to know what Jews (religious descriptor) on this board believe. And also what their rabbis teach. And what they were taught in school.
As opposed to the Naughtius Maximus ethnic group.
Except for Zoroastrians/Parsis, Druze, Russian Old Believers, Yezidis, Shinto, and probably dozens of others that I’m not bringing to mind right now.
Answer #1: Yes, creation was a one-time event. God created the universe and all that is in it.
Answer #2: There is a wide divergence in what Orthodox Jews believe. There are some that believe in the tenets of YEC (i.e. God created the world in six 24-hour days 5765 years ago). There are others that maintain more of an OEC viewopint (the six days of creation weren’t 24-hour days. God could have created the universe with a Big Bang or any other manner.
If you believe in a YEC model, I suppose it would be impossible to accept evolution as currently understood to be fact.
If you posit an OEC model, then one may (many do not) accept evolution as possibly factual. However, even if one does accept that animals evolved over millions of years from lower life forms, there are some restrictions that just about all Orthodox Jews will attach. Among those restrictions are that human beings did not evolve but were created by God as we are today, that evolution is not random but guided by God and that only 5765 years have passed since the creation of Adam.
Answer #3: The answer to this question would depend on what, exactly, abiogenesis is. I haven’t read the other thread. Can you give me a layman’s capsule version of it?
Zev Steinhardt
Zev, just a question here: is there some numerological significance to the 5765 number? I ask because I know that tradition also uses numbers like 218 and 365 for other important lists.
3 is: self-reproducing chemical “things” spontaneously form in the conditions of the early earth and evolve into modern lifeforms. i.e. the existence of life can be explained by predictable chemical reactions, rather than requiring the intervention of an intelligent being.