In every nation and culture across the globe, there has been, are, and will always be questions that challenge the belief systems of every religion. The main queries tend to be in the nature of: Who is God? Who am I? How do we know that religion is real? Where did the world come from? Is man superior over nature? Although I, or any other human being for that matter, cannot answer these deep questions, I can form an opinion and compare each religion’s views. I’ve decided to focus on one issue of ponder, where did the universe come from, and when was the ‘beginning’ of time? There is no factual answer or proof of the creation of the world, but each religion is entitled to their own beliefs and each has a creation story in which they believe to be correct; we will never truly know, obviously being that we weren’t there, where or how the world came into existence, but it is in each of our souls to have that answer within.
The Aborigines of Australia are said to have come to Australian soil about 40,000 years ago, bringing with them their own traditions, languages, and beliefs, including their story on how the world was created. They believe that “the earth was featureless, flat, and grey. There were no mountain ranges, no rivers, no billabongs, no birds or animals – in fact not one living thing. (Resture).” Then, Baiame, ‘maker of things’, decided to introduce the Dreamtime. Dreamtime was a point, a time frame, in the Aborigine history where giant ‘Beings’ were released to roam the unshaped world. The Beings had human needs and quenches, therefore they spent their time on earth digging for water and searching for food. Their journey through the world is an etymology for how the earth is the way it appears, mountains, valleys, etc. ...
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...er really be answered by facts, the answer is within each person and it’s up to them to decide what they believe, and to them they are indeed correct.
Works Cited
1. Resture, Jane. “AUSTRALIA: Aboriginal Dreamtime.” Jane’s Oceania. July 20, 2011. Topica. October 1, 2011 .
2. Bornade, Gaynor. “Creation Stories for Different Religions.” Buzzle.com. October 1, 2011 .
3. “Baiame.” Angelfire. June 6, 2007. October 1, 2011. .
4. Editors of Consumer Guide. “Meaning of Taoism.” How Stuff Works. Consumer Guide. October 1, 2011 < http://people.howstuffworks.com/meaning-of-taoism1.htm>.
5. Bible Gateway. Biblica. October 1, 2011. .
The Australian Aborigines society is relatively well known in Western society. They have been portrayed accurately and inaccurately in media and film. Dr. Langton has attempted to disprove common myths about the infamous Australian society, as has her predecessors, the Berndt’s, and National Geographic author, Michael Finkel; I will attempt to do the same.
Indigenous People. In evaluating the Legal System’s response to Indigenous People and it’s achieving of justice, an outline of the history of Indigenous Australians - before and during settlement - as well as their status in Australian society today must be made. The dispossession of their land and culture has deprived Indigenous People of economic revenue that the land would have provided if not colonised, as well as their ... ... middle of paper ... ...
Dreamings or Dream Time creates access to the ancestral world. Based on research, the Aboriginal lifestyle can be divided into the human or what I think of as the real world, from the sacred world and the physical world. The human world, in which I will just call their “reality,” is the world that consists of the people, their culture in the generic form, and basically their daily lives. The sacred world is where Dreamings take place. It is the ancestral world where the world was created, where ancestors are roaming and creating. This world in not situated only in the past but also in the present (more will be said of this later). Finally, there is the Physical world which connects the previous two realms. The physical world is the landscape, it is nature, it is land formations it is the tangible materializations of the world. During their Dreamings or Dream Time, aboriginals witness and learn the creation stories that formed the physical world. The Myths of these stories goes often something like this: The sky gods where sleeping but then they arose and created the landscape by transforming into different characters along the way. Once the Sky Gods were done with formations they took the shape of different features of the land like rocks or mountains (Eliade 1973:45). The Dream Time then is a time to transcend from their reality to another worldly realm. This is in order to discover the stories of their ancestors and their totems. Here is where they learn the stories of their realities. What is interesting to analyze at this point, which has been done by Alan Rumsey (Rumsey 1994), is acknowledging that “Dreamtime is a sense of dreaming in that it is not taken place in the everyday life of reality. It is in the sense a different ...
"Where did man come from? Where did time begin? Who, or what, created all things?" These are questions that mankind has sought to answer from the beginning of existence as it is known today. Many stories and fables have been told and passed down from generation to generation, yet two have survived the test of time and criticism.
As European domination began, the way in which the European’s chose to deal with the Aborigines was through the policy of segregation. This policy included the establishment of a reserve system. The government reserves were set up to take aboriginals out of their known habitat and culture, while in turn, encouraging them to adapt the European way of life. The Aboriginal Protection Act of 1909 established strict controls for aborigines living on the reserves . In exchange for food, shelter and a little education, aborigines were subjected to the discipline of police and reserve managers. They had to follow the rules of the reserve and tolerate searchers of their homes and themselves. Their children could be taken away at any time and ‘apprenticed” out as cheap labour for Europeans. “The old ways of the Aborigines were attacked by regimented efforts to make them European” . Their identities were threatened by giving them European names and clothes, and by removing them from their tra...
Reynolds, H. (1990). With The White People: The crucial role of Aborigines in the exploration and development of Australia. Australia: Penguin Books
ANTAR. (2014). Justice, Rights and Respect for Australia's First Peoples. Retrieved 05/12, 2014, Retrieved from http://antar.org.au/resources/cr-campaigner-kit?sid=3726
Ancient Aboriginals were the first people to set foot on the Australian continent, over 40,000 years or more before Colonization (Eckermann, 2010). They survived by hunting and gathering their food, worshipping the land to protect its resources, and ensuring their survival. The aboriginal community had adapted to the environment, building a strong framework of social, cultural, and spiritual beliefs (Eckermann, 2010).
Aboriginal spirituality originally derives from the stories of the dreaming. The dreaming is the knowledge and a sense of belonging that the Aboriginals had of the beginning of life and the relationship to the land and sea (Australian Museum, 2011). The dreaming stories are passed on from one generation to the next orally. These stories teach the following generations how to behave towards the land and other people. The dreaming stories give them a sense of duty to protect the land and appreciate it because the dreamtime stories indicate that the spirits have not died but are still alive in different forms as animals or humans, therefore the ancestor’s power is still felt through the landforms (Clark, 1963), (Australian Governement, 2008)
Australian indigenous culture is the world’s oldest surviving culture, dating back sixty-thousand years. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders have been represented in a myriad of ways through various channels such as poetry, articles, and images, in both fiction and non-fiction. Over the years, they have been portrayed as inferior, oppressed, isolated, principled and admirable. Three such texts that portray them in these ways are poems Circles and Squares and Grade One Primary by Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Packer slams booing; joins three cheers for footballer and the accompanying visual text and Heywire article Family is the most important thing to an islander by Richard Barba. Even though the texts are different as ….. is/are …., while
Myths – as they are known to most of the world – give insight into the pasts of various countries and religions as the people saw them. They have been used to explain phenomenons in nature or describe the tales of courageous and important men and women throughout history. Creation myths in particular define how the Earth itself was created, along with the universe, heavens, hell, people, and creatures that exist today. Genesis of Christian mythology, for instance, tells the story of how the single deity God spoke and formed everything from day and night to man and woman. Various African creation myths, such as with the Yoruba, explain the creation of the Earth through at least a couple gods working together and all life sprouting from a seed. But all share a common themes, such as a form of chaos or nothingness before life is created. Joseph Campbell notes that “... the idea of an absolute ontological distinction between God and man – or between gods and men, divinity and nature - first became an important social and psychological force in the near East, specifically Akkad, in the period of the first Semetic Kings, c. 2500 B.C.,” showing another similar trait – a god or set of gods exists to create in each story (626). Joseph Campbell makes a comparison of how both Genesis and the Book of the Dead of Egypt share the same idea of their bodies belonging to their god in some way, or being reabsorbed into them at death (630-631). Others, like the Japanese and Iroquois creation myths, claim the Earth was once covered entirely of water before land was formed. Adam and Eve of Genesis and Izanagi and sister Izanami of Shintoism provide examples of myths that share both a passive and active pair of people who eventually create the Earth's population. In any case, certain popular creation myths, some closely tied to prominent religions, share more common characteristics than others. An entire sub-study, called comparative mythology, gives insight into this subject.
Where did life and ultimately the universe come from? Is there a beginning to the universe? If the universe has a beginning, who or what event created it? Scholars, scientists, and philosophers throughout history ask these questions. Many of the theories involving the origin of the universe involve assumption. For naturalistic evolution, one assumes that God does not exist. A natural evolutionist believes the universe came about by natural causes without a need for a creator. On the other side, a deist assumes that there is a creator who through his divine power created the universe, whether that be through direct creation or the evolutionary process. Why should a Christian be concerned with the origin of the universe? Most origin theories
The Book of Genesis which appears in the Old Testament of the Bible displays two stories of Gods ultimate creation of the world, its inhabitants and most notably human beings. However, these stories differ in literary description as well as terms of events that brought about the unyielding and mystifying question of; how did we get here? These stories are both key elements in the lives of billions of people around the world, they are the foundation of faith and what ultimately keeps people believing in the everyday purpose of their lives.
This is an incredible paragraph extracted from Bora Ring. This poem depicts perfectly of the European invasion of Australia. It shows how the traditions and stories are gone, how the hunting and rituals are gone and ‘lost in an alien tale’, the Europeans being the aliens. This poem also describes that it seemed as if the tradition of Aborigines was ‘breathed sleeping and forgot’. These are powerful words Judith Wright used to show how they Aborigines were quickly invaded and ‘forgotten’. This poem is an excellent example of why Australian students should study her poetry.
How did the earth and its people come to be? The world may never know the actual answer to this question, but that hasn't stopped people from digging into all the evidence the world has to offer. Several different opinions have developed regarding how the earth came to be. According to a survey taken in 2012, approximately 32% of the population believes that humans evolved over millions of years by God's guiding hand, 15% believe that humans evolved over millions of years completely without God, 46% believe God created humans in present form within the last 10,000 years or so, and 7% don't have an opinion. My opinion on creation is that humans have evolved over millions of years by God’s guiding hand. Nothing that happened in the history of the Earth happened without God’s intention: "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3).