Reactions to Genesis and Why Do We Believe?

While reading an excerpt from Genesis, I realized how poetic it sounded. For example, Genesis does not bluntly state that God created the Earth. Rather, it uses sentences such as "let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear" (1:6). This allows readers to form a majestic, sacred image of creation and the creator. The sentence structure also gives insight into how powerful and kind God is; he is powerful in that he creates the whole world all by himself yet he is also graceful in how he goes about creation. Overall, how Genesis describes God's creation of the Earth is meant to show two things: (1) how much God loves his creation and (2) even though God grants humans control over their Earth, God has ultimate control of the universe and thus over the human race.

What I found in the NY Times article, Why Do We Believe? are many definitions that people give religion, such as calling religion "superstition" (Henig, 38) and a "belief in hope that is beyond reason" (Henig, 38). What's interesting is that Atran is an archaeologist which gives readers a sense of what sort of method he will use in his study of religion. From this standpoint, readers can expect that Atran will be using real objects such as artifacts, ruins, buildings, etc. to find a semblance of religion in them. The article also states that Atran uses Darwinian ideas in his approach. So now readers can also expect that he will try and find evolutionary meaning behind religion. A methodologist's approach is imperative to state in the beginning so readers are not going into an article blindly. Instead, they know what and what not to expect in how a specific article will deal with religion.