seedling wrote:Hermitville, I agree with colors. God's purpose is ultimately to express his Love through his creating power. Through his creation.
It appears that some of our more fundamental beliefs are different, which may make this messy, but here goes. Again, I have to state that there are easier ways for God to express love that don't require His son or billions in Hell.
seedling wrote:
I guess I consider myself a Christian, but I don't have traditional "Christian" beliefs. I did for a very long time. Then I started to explore the beliefs that I would just rattle off to people and take for granted and never really, deeply know why I just "believed" certain facts without question. I was lazy. I was hypnotized, lulled into a false security. Holding on to other people's words and not the wordless Word in my heart. I decided I wanted "aha" moments, as Oprah would say. We need to question until we get the "aha" experience that no one can take away from us.
I certainly agree that we need to question everything and assume nothing until we have proved it to ourselves. However I would caution against emotion. It lies. It can deceive. It is dangerous and volatile, subject to random changes and reversals. I guess I would say that I put emphasis on logic and reason rather than emotion as it is ... more reliable I would say.
seedling wrote:
So this is why I think your question is a good one and I think it can be answered if you would just look at yourself and into your heart. He created you. He gave you yourself. He brought you into being. Doesn't that leave you in awe? Is this not Love? That is one way of showing his love. There are millions of others.
I'm not really left in awe, but I'm weird about things like that, so I think you just picked what happened to be a poor example. However I would agree that He is showing His love by our existence; He loves us and all that. But again, you are looking at the heart, (emotion) not mind, (logic), which leaves me skeptical.
seedling wrote:
You know, it's funny ... I read a couple books by a basically atheist biologist, I don't know if I can mention the name but ... these books he wrote deepened my faith. These books showed me the love of our Creator ... and sent me on a journey of discovery.
Cool, though I should point out I disagree with most all points of evolution.
seedling wrote:
He is the initial spark of all creation. I am beginning to believe in evolution, that is why this board attracted me … God & Science.
I was going to try to keep to the point but, I can't help but say quickly:
Evolution is not scientifically viable. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (physics major:)) states that entropy is always increasing. In other words things go from order to disorder, not the other way around. The universe can not randomly spawn more ordered systems or beings. Someone once said something along the lines of: The odds of evolution are about those of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a 747. Pretty low odds (somewhere around ZERO) if you ask me. Also the idea of one species mutating into another is not viable. Things do not randomly form new genetic material. They may have a deterioration or replication of something they have, but its not gaining order or complexity. (Second Law again. ) Not to mention the fact that the mutations are supposed to be very small which would mean that there would be millions, no, billions more species than exist. The steps required going from a monkey to a man are in the thousands at least, if not millions, so where are are the thousands of species between us two at. and of course this must happen between every two related species. So were a few magnitudes of ten from where we are supposed to be in that area. Also God initiated evolution (resolving the single greatest -in my mind- problem with the theory), right? Why? Why create something that has to evolve and change over time and become something (violating physics in the process) when He can just make it perfect to begin with.
People see the world as getting better over time, but I think it's getting worse. In the classic example: your room is going to get messier over time if you don't do anything, its just the way it works. I can never keep my room clean for long. It falls into disorder. More and more diseases are developing in the world. More and more problems are becoming problems. We're going down, not up.
seedling wrote:
And I think his purpose is Love. It started billions of years ago and is still going on, up to this very minute.
I think love is certainly part of God, but not the sole reason for His creating us. (note opening argument) (note last argument for "billions")
seedling wrote:
Hermitville ... what do you think his purpose is in creating you? What does your heart say?
I don't know what His purpose is exactly, hence the reason I asked the question.
<discounts "heart" on account of earlier argument>