a1 a2 a3 and part b religious coursework

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The Christian and Islamic cosmologies (A1)

Cosmology is the study of the universe and its contents. The Christian cosmology is located at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis Chapters 1 and 2. However, genesis 2 focuses more on the creation of man in god’s image these two accounts are slightly different as to how creation took place. The Islamic cosmology is found in the Qur’an. In Islam there is no single story of creation in a certain part of the book like there is in Christianity. There are many references to creation in the Qur’an which are all separated in different surahs. This has led to different cosmologies being formed amongst Muslims – one traditional and the other modern.

In Genesis Chapter 1 God created the universe in six days. On day one, God created heaven and earth but the earth was in darkness when God said: ‘Let there be light’. And the earth became lit. The light and darkness was split into day and night. On day two a firmament was created to separate the waters from the sky and make the firmament the heavens. On day three, God creates dry land and names it earth and called the water seas. Earth was then made to bring forth vegetation and fruit bearing tress, and so it was done. On day four, God created the night and day with two lights – the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night. On day five, the animals are created and are told to be fruitful and multiply over the earth, seas and sky. On the last day, God brought forth the land-based animals such as cattle and importantly, God created man in his own image to have dominion over all animals of the earth, sky and sea.

However, in Genesis Chapter 2 there is a greater emphasis on the creation of humankind. In this account, God created the mist that watered the whole face of the ground. Then he created man from dust from the earth and breathed life into it from his nostrils. This man was said to live in an Eden with the tree of life and knowledge. It says there are rivers watering the garden called ‘Pishon’, which runs through the gold rich lands of Havilah. The second river is Gihon. The third is Tigris and the fourth river is Euphrates. God placed man in the Eden and commanded him not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or he will die. The man then named every creature of the earth and God created woman from the man’s rib.

 The Islamic cosmology is different to that in genesis as it is not in a single place it is in several parts of the Qur’an. Also the Qur’an states what is created it doesn’t tell us the order in which it was created. In the Qur’an, Surah 7:54 says: “Your guardian Lord is God”, who created the earth in six days with statements of what God created like the sun and moon.

There are also many other references in the Qur’an that God created everything in six days. There is no clear creationist order in the traditional view of Islamic cosmology, but it states that God created the sun, moon, stars and planets. It also mentioned that he then separated night from day and brought forth the waters of the water, which created vegetation. Allah then made the birds; fish and animals of the earth, but most importantly, Allah (God) moulded the first man (Adam) out of clay and breathed life into him as it is said in Surah 23:10-12. “We first created man from an essence of clay: then placed him, a living germ, in a secure enclosure. From the germ we made a clot of blood and the clot a lump of flesh”. The traditional idea puts forward that God created everything in six days and we are all descendants from Adam and his wife (Eve), which Allah created.

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As well as the traditional view there is no clear cut story of creation. To support the modern Islamic cosmology, many Muslims argue that the Arabic word that translates as ‘days’ is more correctly translated as ‘ages’. They use evidence from the Qur’an to support this view. The word in the Qur’an translated into days is incorrect but is more accurately translated as ‘ages’ , which means that the Islamic view of cosmology in creation took six ages. Also the modern view says that there is no order of creation, but the first creation seems to be the heavens ...

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