This question i struggle with. If God is all knowing then why did he create ANYTHING ? I've heard various respones from different people, athesist, christain and muslims but none of them were satisfying. The Muslim said God created us to worship him....how vain. The christian said that God wanted to create people that would chose to love him. Why? If he's all knowing then he KNOWS what it's like to have people chose to love him, so why does he go through the trouble of creating all this for a feeling he's already fimilar with? The athesist gave me the best answer (it figures...) . He said perhaps God is not ALL- KNOWING and ALL POWERFUL but just a really kind and smart being. He wanted to try an experiment with religion that was this:" Can I [God] create a people that will love me, follow meaningless rules and a vague instruction booklet even if i NEVER reveal myself with undisputable evidence?" The last answer gave me an eerie feeling and i wondered ever since. Hopefully, some of my fellow sciforians can give me some insight to this question because i haven't had much success. Thanx. P.S. If your of any of the major religions then don't forget that God is all knowing and isn't curious or bored. Hope this stimulates conversation and debate!!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :
Looking at this question from a Christian stand point, the ultimate purpose in life is to try our best to glorify God in all we do. In the Bible in 1 Corinthians 6 19 and 20 Paul wrote ( Paul was the man who had his life radically changed by the grace of God... he killed Christians before he lived for the Lord ) You are not your own, for you were bought at a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Basically it's saying, this life and everything about it has been provided by the Lord, so who are we to call it our own. How can we possibly claim ownership on this life, we didn't make ourself come into existance, nor did anyone on the Earth, and we want to glorify God because God has done what none of us would. He came to the Earth in physical form and died on a cross so we can receive eternal life. Rarely will someone die for a good man, but for a righteous man someone might dare to die, but Jesus proves his love for us in that while we hate him and sin against him he still died for us after living a perfect life. And this is why we should live a life that glorifies God. God created us so that we can glorify him, and he gives us the choice, and the Lord does reveal himself. He shows himself through the Holy Spirit. Thank goodness he doesn't punish us for the way we live. God has radically changed my life. I can testify to his awesomeness. What more can we really want from the Lord, his son died on a cross for our evilness. I used to be consumed with worldliness, I wanted material things and I loved alcohol, but by the grace of God, I don't have those desires anymore, and they don't control me. It's not like Christianity is a bondage thing, I have never been happier in my life, I have a reason for living. He created us to worship him with our lives. It will be hard to see the Lord for who he is on this board, because people who don't know the Lord, and defy him try to explain everything about him. It's funny how anyone who has had their life radically changed by the Lord understands the reason in living and completely understands eternal things.
Welcome to sciforums... Well, Gomer as your post number implies your new here so let me welcome you, that said let me clariy my question. You didn't really answer my question. Your saying that your life is not yours because God created you and you should do his bidding. This makes since, just as you should respect your parents, but it does not answer the question, why did my parents have me? It only tells why we should listen to them. I just can't buy that God was sitting in darkness and decided one day that he need someone to glorify him, so he creates man.:bugeye: I put in the first post that only a vain god would create people to worship him. If your the world greastest boxer and i mean undisputed, never lost in you life, your only 110 lbs and won ever division from feather to heavyweight, then you don't need an entourage of people following your every step telling you your the greatest. You know this and people telling you it won't change that. The greatest doesn't need someone to "reassure" him that he's great so why would god need people to "glorify" his glory?
Here's a simple answer- God didnt create us.......we are a product of natural selection...everything around us is a product of evolution, even at the universal level.
That's just weak logic. There's no way natuaral selection can be applied on a univeral scale. For natural selection to work you have to have similar competeing animals in a demanding enviroment in which one survives because of there differences where as the other perishes becuase of it' inability to adapt. Nature by it's demanding and harsh environment, selects the stronger creature to live. Your suggesting that our universe competed in some ultra-huge mutli-dimesional universe, and some how was naturally "selected" by ? (nature)(god) and survived to create what we have today. Doesn't sound simple to me.
Well there are theories that there are an infinite(or atleast large) number of universes... and the ones with incorrect 'settings' die off. Others are not conductive to life, so we are obviously not in one of them. It's the same idea as the equation which calculates the number of inteligent societies in the universe, but we don't know which variables matter.
Persol Excellent quote Persol, very interesting stuff. But the point i was making was that when you examine the "scientific" theories on very complicated subjects, the info starts to sound pretty strange. Answers like god created it doesn't sound so unrealistic any more.
What I hate most is that people argue against things they only have a vague conception of. The most important lesson of The Life of the Cosmos is that evolution might apply to the Universe Smolin's third assumption is that the baby universes inherit the same laws of physics from their parent universe but for small random changes in the physical constants or parameters, such as those that are found to obtain in this universe. A kind of multiversal memory landscape, or 'mind of God', as Stephen Hawking would put it, is implicit in this assumption that a baby universe remembers, with high probability of accuracy, the physical laws of its parent. Smolin uses the same sort of mathematical landscape for cosmological natural selection, as is used for memory's selection from environmental experience ( mentioned in the above section on memory ). The current best theory of our universe, on which most physicists are agreed, is called the standard model. This cannot explain every thing from first principles. There are about twenty parameters or arbitrary constants, which cannot be deduced, but are measured by experiment, and plugged into the theory, to fill in the gaps in its reasoning. The cosmological theory of natural selection would only conflict with a totally unified theory of physics, that had no parameters. Einstein attempted a unified theory and he assumed quantum theory was incomplete because of its statistical nature. Natural selection is a statistical theory, which Smolin has adapted to cosmology, on the assumption that the multiverse is not absolutely determined, but contains one or more free parameters. After the fashion of Darwinian theory, which takes many generations to much alter species, many generations of universe would be needed to make big changes to their initial conditions. Highly restricted is the range of parameters, or conditions, for which atomic nuclei, and therefore stars exist, and the black holes that form from some of them. But such universes with many black holes are likely to have many progeny. Given that this is a black hole-rich universe, its existence is explained as having the conditions of a typical universe. Lee Smollin's theory makes an analogy of physics parameters to biological genes. The space of parameters ( which would be of a very high dimension ) is compared to the collection of all possible sequences of DNA. The average number of universes produced by a universe with a particular set of parameters is compared to the average number of offspring from creatures with a particular set of genes. This 'fitness' of creatures depends on their situation on a 'fitness landscape' in an abstract space of genes. The rate of reproduction is measured for how strongly it varies with variations in possible gene combinations. Smollin qualifies his analogy as only approximating to the simplest or crudest of biological scenarios, a single species evolving in a fixed environment. Its not me your arguing with its some of the top minds, so next time you are so willing to impose your "brillance" think about it next time, or if your not willing to do that, then expect a bashing
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by MooseKnuckle Here's a simple answer- God didnt create us.......we are a product of natural selection...everything around us is a product of evolution, even at the universal level. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, with that in mind, how did natural selection come about, or for that matter anything, when did anything come from anywhere and how?
I have read other hypotheses (they can hardly be called a theories) which are variants of this one as well. They are about as convincing as the hypotheses I have read regarding the existence of God (maybe slightly less plausible). Not one of the authors even suggested ways of finding evidence of this, let alone attempting to prove it themselves. Maybe I haven't read the RIGHT ones yet. But from what I have read, it is about as improbable to be true and impossible to prove as the Christian God. What evidence supports these outrageous claims? I am not being beligerant (honestly, I'm not. tonelessness on the net sucks) I really would like to see some supporting evidence.
The subject was going perfect till it was diverted to something else. I think those who dont beleive in GOD should discuss his existence in another post. This post should serve its title.. I might comeback if the subject flows like a riverlinePlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I posted this because I'm trying to prove that God created us to glorify him. I don't know why he decided to create us, I don't know how, he's God for cryin out loud, I'm just glad I'm here and I'm gonna look forward to a life spent with our God in eternity. This is what I believe, you don't have to accept it, but I know for myself that this is truth, and I don't struggle with this topic.
Complete contradiction. If you knew it was truth it wouldn't be something you 'believe'. Just for a bit of quick harmless fun..... I will now tell you the absolute truth is there is no God... One of us is obviously wrong... the question is who? The quickest and most convenient way to settle this would be for God to come down and prove he's there in front of us all. If he doesn't it doesn't mean you're wrong, it doesn't mean im right. That's why it's 'belief'. Neither of us know the truth. You believe you know the truth, as can anyone else but it's really pointless coming in here claiming that you do know it's the truth, when simply put- you do not. You proved to yourself that it's not guaranteed truth by using the term 'belief'. If it's not guaranteed truth how can you be so premature in dismissing everything else?
Yo SnakeLord, your making a fool of yourself. Your having a debate on words, and anyways your argueing against yourself. Look at what you quoted. I said "This is what I believe, you don't have to accept it, but I know for myself that this is truth. Your eatin' your words bro. If there isn't a Holy One, Creator, then how, when, and where did anything come from anything? There had to be nothing that turned into something at some time. Get past your pride and admit that your just in denial.
Your judgment of me bears no relevance here. I merely said its a contradiction to use the term belief and truth in the same sentence in the manner which you did. You can say.... 'i believe its true', but you cant say: 'i believe this and its true'. If you knew it was true you'd know, not believe. All you have is words, all i have is words. Maybe to change this we can use the tag in our next posts? Im sure i can find some good pictures on the net. In all seriousness though it does show something of relevance that you perhaps can't see. If you knew it was truth there would be no questions of belief. [quote]and anyways your argueing against yourself[/quote] I wasn't arguing with anyone. I merely said its a contradiction to use the term belief and truth in the same sentence in the manner you did. You seem like a rather bitter individual. [quote]Look at what you quoted. I said "This is what I believe, you don't have to accept it, but I know for myself that this is truth. Your eatin' your words bro.[/quote] "I believe purple monkeys exist. You dont have to accept it, but i know it's true" If i knew it was true i wouldn't say it was what i believed. Instead my sentence would look like this: "I know purple monkeys exist." Of course for anyone else to accept that they'd require proof of such. Once they had the proof they too would say: "i know purple monkeys exist". And actually i'm eating rum n' raisin ice cream with warm rhubarb crumble. [quote]If there isn't a Holy One, Creator, then how, when, and where did anything come from anything?[/quote] Nothing wrong with the questions.... Of course you wouldn't need to ask those questions if you knew the truth. I never said there wasn't a creator, i never said there was. We don't know the answer to that, we can all guess as to what/who/where/when/how etc but none of us can claim knowledge of the truth. Ok you might have the truth- but it might also just be voices in your head. As such what you have is a belief. The only way we can really know the truth is by having been there to have witnessed it first hand. Please look at the point i mention below about the creator... [quote]There had to be nothing that turned into something at some time.[/quote] There had to? Can we humans understand the realms of infinity? We are but infants in a world of questions. There is so little we understand who's to say what is or isn't possible? Why did there have to be nothing? Just because our minds can't fathom it doesn't make it an instant impossibility. A great example of our lack of understanding with such issues is this: If everything has to have been created then what created the creator? If the creator was 'just there', then whats to stop the possibility in anything else being 'just there'? Now you see how little we understand? God existed and then created everything..... or everything existed we created god because we dont know how everything just existed. Yet by some grasp at thin air we claim nothing can have just existed then state god did just exist. [quote]Get past your pride and admit that your just in denial. [/quote] Pride has no relevance here. As for denial... who's to say? What's to say it's not just you in denial but passing the blame on to everyone else? I could well be in denial, so could you. I try not to point the finger in such accusatory manner though. Either one of us could be in denial. We all put on 'faces' at times yet do we ever sit down and admit that to ourselves? Accusing others is pretty easy, finding it within yourself is the challenge.
MrHero, It was necessary that God create the universe so that he could come into existence himself. Imagine time didn’t exist. The universe appeared and time began. I’ll say how in a moment. Life began through some mechanism like abiogenesis. Intelligence evolved throughout many parts of the universe. Intelligences merged, traveled and merged again, until eventually there was only one intelligence in the universe. This intelligence consumed all matter and all energy until there was nothing left. This intelligence knew everything and could exist even when it stopped time. At this point it realized that it had to convert itself into the universe so it could come into existence. Imagine time didn’t exist. The universe appeared and time began. I’ll say how in a moment. Life began through some mechanism like abiogenesis……………..
How did all that come about. Put it this way, our human minds can't comprehend the Great One, so w put labels on him and call him God, Lord.
Why must there even be a 'Great One'? What is the point of labeling something which 'our human minds cant comprehend'?
