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Originally posted by UB2120
reply to post by IamBoon
I think you would agree that you exist, right? How did you get here? I don't mean just you physical body, but your mind. It just happened? To me it is much more plausible to have one uncaused cause than billions or trillions. Where God came from is the one unanswerable question. I think it would be much more difficult to answer the question, where did everything come from if you don't have a creator? The Big Bang theory is a joke. Everything in existance reeks of intelligent design.
Physics and chemistry alone cannot explain how a human being evolved out of the primeval protoplasm of the early seas. The ability to learn, memory and differential response to environment, is the endowment of mind. The laws of physics are not responsive to training; they are immutable and unchanging. The reactions of chemistry are not modified by education; they are uniform and dependable. Electrical and chemical reactions are predictable. But mind can profit from experience, can learn from reactive habits of behavior in response to repetition of stimuli.
Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance — liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.
Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.
The name we give God is unimportant. It matters not if you call him Ra, God, Allah or whatever. It's all the same God. The only thing that changes is the persons concept. Early religions believed God was superhuman in a way and had emotions like us. The more advanced religions realize that we were made in God's image and I don't mean our phyical bodies I mean our spirit.
In a generic way, yes God is everything in that he caused all of creation. He created the mechinisms and established the laws that enable reality. That doesn't mean God is your computer screen or chair. He just made it possible. Cultures have always used a word that embraces their highest concept of the creator. For us that work is God.
The attributes of God: Omnipresence, Omnipotent, Omnificence and Creatorship.
Something else to consider:
The uncertainties of life and the hardships of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God. All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain inevitabilities. Consider the following:
Is courage — strength of character — desirable? Then must man be reared in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.
Is altruism — service of one’s fellows — desirable? Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.
Is hope — the grandeur of trust — desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.
Is faith — the supreme assertion of human thought — desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.
Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.
Is idealism — the approaching concept of the divine — desirable? Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.
Is loyalty — devotion to highest duty — desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion. The valor of devotion to duty consists in the implied danger of default.
Is unselfishness — the spirit of self-forgetfulness — desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.
Is pleasure — the satisfaction of happiness — desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.
Originally posted by VreemdeVlieendeVoorwep
reply to post by amazing
God is there for you to discover. Asking these questions, will not get you any closer to the answer, it will most likely just confuse you even more.
God is different for everyone. It is each persons POV that determines what God is for him or her.
But in the end, only YOU can discover God for yourself. I wish you godspeed on this search, and hope you find what you are looking for. Look inside yourself, for that is where the truth lies, that is where enlightenment lies, and indeed, it is where your quest must begin, and end.
VvV