Why are the names all English sorts of names like Mary, Matthew, John etc? Why is Jesus white in paintings etc?

The names have been Anglicised – turned into English sounding equivalents (Mary most probably Miriam, for instance). Likewise the appearance of Jesus has been made to be western European (but in other places he looks different, too).

Here’s a few non-Anglo Jesuses:

South American Liberation Theology – Jesus leads the revolution

Jesus in ‘Eastern’ or Orthodox Christian ‘iconography’ (this one from Hagia Sophia, Turkey)

How would a Christian explain evolution?

Evolution disproves Genesis creation stories – which most Christians don’t believe to be literally true anyway – but not the existence of God. Christians are happy to believe evolution and the Big Bang, and still think that there is room for a Creator God within these explanations offered by science more modern than the 2000 year old Bible.

http://missionpossibletoserve.weebly.com/one-what-is-mission.html

Inquiry Question: Jesus’ mission today: possible?

Today: Who are we and why are we here?

Welcome

Outside

Back Inside:
– Genesis Ch 1
– Genesis Ch 2
– Classical Rationalism (Eratosthenes, Geometric Cosmology, Middle Ages (especially diagram from Dante)
– 20th Century (Hawking: see Intro ‘Boshongo creation’, then:

Suppose the beginning of the universe was like the South Pole of the earth, with degrees of latitude playing the role of time. The universe would start as a point at the South Pole. As one moves north, the circles of constant latitude, representing the size of the universe, would expand. To ask what happened before the beginning of the universe would become a meaningless question, because there is nothing south of the South Pole.

Time, as measured in degrees of latitude, would have a beginning at the South Pole, but the South Pole is much like any other point, at least so I have been told. I have been to Antarctica, but not to the South Pole. The same laws of Nature hold at the South Pole as in other places. This would remove the age-old objection to the universe having a beginning; that it would be a place where the normal laws broke down. The beginning of the universe would be governed by the laws of science. The picture Jim Hartle and I developed of the spontaneous quantum creation of the universe would be a bit like the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water.

The idea is that the most probable histories of the universe would be like the surfaces of the bubbles. Many small bubbles would appear, and then disappear again. These would correspond to mini universes that would expand but would collapse again while still of microscopic size. They are possible alternative universes but they are not of much interest since they do not last long enough to develop galaxies and stars, let alone intelligent life. A few of the little bubbles, however, grow to a certain size at which they are safe from recollapse. They will continue to expand at an ever increasing rate, and will form the bubbles we see. They will correspond to universes that would start off expanding at an ever increasing rate. This is called inflation, like the way prices go up every year.

Homework: From these ongoing developments in science, has God been explained away?

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