Why man?

Corvus · Post by **Corvus** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 11:09 pm

The question is simple. Why did an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient being create man? Boredom?

Post by **otseng** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 8:23 am

Corvus wrote: I can't see why a perfect being needs to create more beings. For what purpose?

Perhaps it's precisely because of his perfect nature that he needed to created us. I asked questions at the beginning of this topic to point out that we as human beings have this drive to create, to share, to pass on something to someone else. I posit that God has this same drive. After all, we are created in the likeness of God. It is not out of boredom that we have children (at least not for the majority of people). We have this deep feeling that something is not fulfilled if we don't have children. We go through a lot of sacrifices, heartaches, challenges as parents. And even the children have to go through a lot of difficult times. Do parents have children so that their kids could have a miserable time? Of course not. And similarily, God didn't create us so that we can be miserable. When God first created everything, death was not even in the equation. It was man that brought it into the equation. God's original plan was to have an intimate fellowship with him. God's perfect love needed to have someone to share that love with and thus was one of the main reasons we were created.

Shild · Post by **Shild** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 11:58 am

The question is simple. Why did an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient being create man? Boredom?

No offense to you personally, Corvus, but this debate is entirely constrained by anthropomorphic perception.

The pervasive assumption is that God is limited by four-dimensional reality. Unfortunately, God has no such limitation, so the question, and any answer, is faulty.

The assumption is that God thinks, "I have this need/desire, so I will create humans to fulfill it."

Tense is the problem. Allow me to rewrite the above statement to make the inherint problem more apparent:

"I have this need/desire in the present, and it has not been fulfilled in the past, so I will create humans in the future to satisfy this need/desire."

You see the problem. Time does not apply to God. Any motivation a human can come up with assumes there is some difference between past, present, and future. With God, there is no difference.

This question, like so many others, assumes God is a powerful human, rather than a fundamentally different entity.

This is why no answer to the question, as it is posed, could be correct.

It is also why no human has the capability to correctly answer this question. Even if it is fully understood, no one can articulate it in a way which can be understood through human language.

Another problematic assumption is that God actually has to work hard to create anything. People on this thread seem to be asking, "Why would God go to all the trouble of creating humans?" when it wasn't necessarily any trouble at all. Making a card house is a difficult and tedious process for most humans, but creating humanity for God is as easy as thinking.

bry · Post by **bry** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 12:44 pm

Imagine this. You get a thousand deck of cards, and stack the cards one by one to make it look like, say..., the White House.

When you're done, what do you do with it? Glue them together? Of course you have some fun by demolishing it with a hairdryer!

what the heck? why would i personally want to do that?

i don't know about you, but if i built a card-stacked equivalent of the white house, i'd try to keep it up and standing for as long as i could, because let's face it, it looks pretty cool.

again, what makes you think he gets satisfaction out of killing people? just the fact that it happened several times in the bible? did it never occur to you that it was something that he had to do? maybe if you could point me to specific passages where God goes, "hey look, i just took away this person's life and damn that was fun!"...

billy jean · Post by **billy jean** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 4:17 pm

God created man because he was selfless and wanted to share his knowledge and love. He created angels to worship Him, but when He created man, he put us above angels and that's why some angels, like Lucifer got jealous and fell.

God gave us free will, so that unlike angels that could "see" Him, we were given the capasity for faith... a choice and able to grow and develop. In his infinate wisdom, God made us curious so we would never be stagnate and like a final piece of art work, we are a piece constantly in progress, with the oportunity to become even more beautiful and more like God.

Atleast that's my opinion.

Izumi Koushirou · Post by **Izumi Koushirou** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 10:22 pm

He created a non-perfect species.
Therefore, he is not perfect.

Simple as that

(Well, that's if he exists)

Izumi Koushirou · Post by **Izumi Koushirou** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 10:27 pm

bry wrote:
Izumi Koushirou wrote:If he was bored, or just trying to create a masterpiece, he loses the omispent because he proved he wasn't perfect.

Simple logic.
me no understand. could you elaborate a little more?

are you saying that by creating us, God's not omniscient because He could have just "forseen" the possibility of creating us instead of just going ahead to do it?

Nope, not at all.
We are imperfect.
Therefore, he didn't fulfill in being the perfect creator.
Also, if he did it because of a want or a need, then he isn't perfect. Perfection is balance, the addition and subtraction of something from perfection makes it imperfect.

RavEMasteR · Post by **RavEMasteR** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 11:14 pm

bry wrote:
Imagine this. You get a thousand deck of cards, and stack the cards one by one to make it look like, say..., the White House.

When you're done, what do you do with it? Glue them together? Of course you have some fun by demolishing it with a hairdryer!
what the heck? why would i personally want to do that?

i don't know about you, but if i built a card-stacked equivalent of the white house, i'd try to keep it up and standing for as long as i could, because let's face it, it looks pretty cool.

again, what makes you think he gets satisfaction out of killing people? just the fact that it happened several times in the bible? did it never occur to you that it was something that he had to do? maybe if you could point me to specific passages where God goes, "hey look, i just took away this person's life and damn that was fun!"...

Well, I guess you didn't see a show on someone who could build miniature buildings out of cards. He ALWAYS destroy it in the end, coz' that's the fun part, breaking free from chains and doing what you'll love.

RavEMasteR · Post by **RavEMasteR** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 11:16 pm

I forgot to mention, He does get satisfaction from killing, just as those serial psychotic murderers out there do. He made us in HIS image, after all...

Corvus · Post by **Corvus** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 11:26 pm

God created man because he was selfless and wanted to share his knowledge and love. He created angels to worship Him, but when He created man, he put us above angels and that's why some angels, like Lucifer got jealous and fell.

But he could easily share his knowledge and love with angels only. Why are we better than angels? We were flawed enough to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden, even though, God, in his infinite knowledge, would have expected that to happen anyway.

And I certainly can't think of any examples where God shared knowledge or even love with mankind.

God gave us free will, so that unlike angels that could "see" Him, we were given the capasity for faith... a choice and able to grow and develop.

But angels seem to have free will. Lucifer rebelled, after all. You seem to believe the choice of faith is the ultimate free will. But faith is only believing in something that, until death, one is entirely ignorant of.

Shild · Post by **Shild** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 2:46 pm

He created a non-perfect species.
Therefore, he is not perfect.

Kind of ambiguous. I will assume (and correct me if I am wrong) that by perfect, you mean incapable of making mistakes.

So, your contention is that a being which cannot make mistakes cannot make another being which itself can make mistakes.

Your assumption seems to be that, in making a creature which can make mistakes, God made a mistake, and therefore is not perfect.

The problem with this is your presumption of God's motives. If God had set out to create perfect dieties like himself and ended up with us humans, that would be a mistake, and He would not be perfect.

However, you have no idea what God's goal in making humanity is. There is certainly no reason to believe hHis goal is to make perfect dieties as opposed to flawed humans.

My point is, it does not matter if humans have flaws themselves, as long as God did exactly what He intended when He made humans, He is still perfect.