how do Christians explain races?

Question

obviously they couldn't evolve like they have in 6000 years, so did God curse indians with red skin, blacks with black and asians with yella skin?

how could he "create" various races if he only created one man in the beginning? (unless adam was multicolored)

Answer 1

First: Not all Christians believe in the 6000 year old Earth.
Second: The Bible says God created all races of men. So what?

Answer 2

According to the Bible, all people today descended from the survivors of a great Flood - Noah's family, who in turn descended from Adam and Eve (Gen 1:11). There are many stories, from many parts of the world, of a great Flood that only several people survived to repopulate the earth.
But today we have many different groups, often called "races" with what seem to be greatly differing features. The most obvious of these is skin color. Some see this as a reason to doubt the Bible's record of history. They believe that the various groups could have arisen only by evolving separately over tens of thousands of years. However, this does not follow from the evidence.
The Bible tells us how the population that descended from Noah's family had one language and were living together and disobeying God's command to "fill the earth" (Gen 9:1, 11:4). God confused their language, causing a break-up of the population into smaller groups, which scattered over the earth (Gen. 11:8-9). Modern genetics shows how, following such a break-up of a population, variations in skin color, for example, can develop in only a few generations. And there is good evidence to show that the various groups of people we have today have NOT been separated for huge periods of time.
One could say there is really only one race - the human race. The Bible teaches us that God has "made from one blood all nations of men" (Acts 17:26. Scripture distinguishes people by tribal or national groupings, not by skin color or physical features. Clearly, though, there are groups of people, who have certain features (e.g. skin color) in common, which distinguish them from other groups. We prefer to call these "people groups" rather than "races," to avoid the evolutionary and racist connotations that have become associated with the word "race."
All peoples can intermarry and produce fertile offspring. This shows that the biological differences between the "races" are not great. In fact, the DNA differences are trivial. The DNA of any two people in the world would typically differ by just 0.2%. Of this, only 6% can be linked to racial categories; the rest is "within race" variation.
This genetic unity means, for instance, that white Americans, although ostensibly far removed from black Americans in phenotype, can sometimes be better tissue matches for them than other black Americans.
For more information on this check out this link
"http://www.answersingenesis.org"

Answer 3

I'm a non-Christian theist.

Not all theists (Christian or otherwise) believe in the literal 6000 year story. So when you ask how Christians explain races, you will get lots of different answers.

Fundies will answer strictly according to the Bible, and super Fundies really do believe that the Earth is only 6000 years young. Other Christians, in fact many, agree that Creationism and Evolution actually harmonize. Many believe that Evolution is the process of Creation, and recognize and accept scientific explanations for human history.

So please, don't assume that all Christians (and the rest of us theists) believe in the 6000 yr old fable. It's simply not true, and most of us are much more intelligent than that.

My religion teaches that science and religion must always harmonize, and that religion must actually conform to science. We believe that if religion doesn't conform to science, then it's a false religion. We believe that religion without science is mere superstition, and science without religion is mere materialism. We believe that the daughters of Truth are Science and Religion.

Answer 4

Biblically sound Christianity is not divorced from what we learn in science. It just interprets science through the lens of faith. Know that this is the perspective I'm coming from.

There are people groups recorded in scripture to be migratory when man was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. (Find the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on a map of the middle east. Somewhere in that region.)

Migration and climate change, biophysical needs, natural selection, and microevolution (Not large scale, but small scale) brought about the changes to appearance that we label as races. You know what God used to divide one people group from another? Worship. And he never despised people for being of one race or another. But he DID despise the worship practices of pagan religions that practiced human sacrifice and the raping of women and children, etc, to please/entertain/pacify some random make-believe god.

I know where you got the idea that different races are "cursed". That's not a Christian idea. It's a mormon teaching. (Early 1800's) Their original teachers and writers were proponents of slavery. They taught that God had two plans for redeeming mankind. Christ's idea of dying for man, and Satan's plan that he take over. God chose Christ's idea and marked all of his "children" with fair hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. Sound anti-semitic to you?

The children of Satan would have dark skin and dark hair. By this teaching, the mormons were able to move west across the US and subdue Indian settlements, own slaves, and exploit asian immigrants in CA, Nevada, and Utah. It suited their purposes. (You should hear what they have to say about women - even today!) It has also suited their purposes to come back years later and "change" their teaching - how convenient.

I say, God is no respector of persons. He does not distinguish between the races. His only desire is that people love Him and love each other, the way He demonstrated for us in Jesus.

Answer 5

In Genesis Chapter 10, (before the Tower of Babel), God lays out the division of nations. Nations doesn't refer to governmental geographic entities, but rather segments of people bearing a common genetic origin.

Basically, there were three major divisions, equivalent to Noah's three sons, Ham Shem and Japeth. Many ancient history books written prior to 1900 actually referred to the growth and expansion of the world's "nations" (or peoples, races, etc.) by relating which of these three sons of Noah they came from. Hamitic peoples, semitic peoples, etc.

The Tower of Bible describes the separation of languages, however, there is no evidence (that I've seen) which implies it refers to a division of the races.

If you are interested, do an indepth study of Genesis Chapter 10r and track where these peoples ended up after the Tower of Babel incident. You will find the origin of every major world nation (peoples).

Answer 6

The fact that God created man does not imply a contradiction in the multiplicity of aspects humans posess. That man has adapted to its enviroment trhoughout time does not by itself rule out that God created them. Since creation means that the Universe does not come out by mere chance but is rationally ordained and structrued, with laws that govern it rationally, it follows that the very process of evolution and adaptation of the species to their environment is in itself a manifestation of the universal logos, the reason that governs and is seen in all the processes of reality.

Easier said: Evolution is not at odds with creation. Scientists do agree that the universe did not exist forever, and that everything in it underwent succesive steps of evolution, from the primordial chaos just after the big bang, up untill today.

No race is damned, all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, this is: With an intellect= will, and spirit=creative capacity. and a yearning to know, to understan to trascend his own animal nature and climb the ladder towards the eternal, where all belongs.

Is interesting to note that many who deny the existence of a personal God can't denie that they see order in the Universe.

To believe that all the order that actually we observe came out of randomness is the same as believing that if i toss a box of scrabble unto the floor, the letters will fall down in a perfect arrangement forming "hamlet".
OK funny, but it illisutartes a point I want to make: that for us who believe in God, believing in Him does not mean that we ulteriorly reject all rationality and science, on the contrary: It is because we affirm the Universe to be possesed with order and rationality we recognize that it can be known, prbed, measured and utilized.
A believer in god who follows this belief to the ultimate conclusion, is not one who closes himself to the whole, but rather embraces it with all its capacity.

Answer 7

Read about the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

Answer 8

>>obviously they couldn't evolve like they have in 6000 years<<

Are you sure about that? Our most recent common ancestor lived only a few thousand years ago, and an evolutionary theorist believes that in 1,000 years, "racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-09/yu-rc092904.php
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/1,71298-0.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057734.stm

Answer 9

It had something to do with a temple built so high God became angry because it was supposedly going to reach or surpass him in heaven. God divided the people into different races in order to complicate the construction.

Answer 10

Quite frankly, they can't. The Towel of Babel story is supposed to explain the difference in languages, but common sense prevails, I hope.