Can man do or achieve anything apart from God?

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Hello! It seems to me that if someone does anything, like any work for example, he can only do so because of the faculties God has given him. Even if man sins, it is only because he has faculties of will and intellect that God gave him. It troubles me to think whether there is any point to man’s existence if he cannot do anything apart from God. So my question is, can man do anything apart from God? If so, what is it. And if he can’t then, what is the point of existing.
 
:yup:, God has personally designed his creations, including the life-form known as the “human being”. Nothing we do, think, or say will surprise God.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm

The desire for God is written in the human heart,]because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.

We human beings were created to know, love, and serve God. To live a simple and profound existence with God’s infinite oceans of loving light.

God’s plan is simple, but we and the fallen angels complicate things.

:cool: You are right in saying that committing sin is a God-given right.

God gave us and the angels many privileges ,including the privilege to decide if we would wish to be friends with him.

Sin would be any thought, word, or deed that damages our relationship with God in any way, making him an enemy rather than a friend.

Yes, we can indeed achieve things apart from God, but remember: we should only attempt to achieve such things if they don’t damage our eternal relationship with him.

Earthly achievements are fine, but because of the Fallen World we live in, they can be deadly snares for eternal life, so be careful.

Building Skyscrapers is fine, just don’t make them like the Tower of Babel, where the goal is to surpass God in some way. Being a famous singer is fine, but don’t fall into the capital sins of Greed and gluttony.

Earthly achievements won’t last. “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” :bible1:

Don’t make them your primary focus in everyday life.

Recall the Nativity . Christ came down in the form of an infant, in a stable, in humble attire. By the time he ascended into Heaven, he took the right hand of the Father, and became Christ the King. :heaven:
 
We can’t do anything without God.

What’s our purpose? To love.
 
We still have free will–that makes us individuals who are capable of choosing God or rejecting Him. Thus there are more people to honestly love Him and more people for Him to love.
 
As a Deist I believe that we do all things independently, but for those who think otherwise, you must consider the negative acts of humans. Was your god involved in starting the wars of history, the murders, the injustice? If not, then mankind is capable of achieving without god and this would extend to all variety of acts by humans…positive and negative.
 
The viewpoint you are describing is formally known as “occasionalism.” The problem with occasionalism is that it views natural causes as really only being illusory and that only God is really doing anything at all. Interestingly, this notion destroys the very possibility of natural science, since there would be no natural causes, only divine ones, and God, being pure act, necessarily has an inscrutable will. So each and every action would really be its own miracle and there would be no reason to expect any causal regularity at all. The specific problem is that occasionalism assumes that the way God causes things and the way we causes things are the same, when God’s kind of causation is not really the same as natural causation at all.

Fortunately, Catholics are not committed to this viewpoint. Instead, we tend to hold to “concurrentism” which states that natural causes are real and have causal efficacy of their own even if ultimately these things depend on God’s eternal sustaining creative act. So if I go outside and kick a soccer ball, that is really me and my causal power that is doing the kicking. God’s role in it is more like that God “causes it to be” that I kick the ball. I am really kicking the ball but God is making this reality possible.

Here is a rather interesting, albeit long, discussion of the matter by Prof. Feser: Metaphysical Middle Man. I like the one analogy he uses with the red wall. A red wall is really red, but this redness does not manifest unless light is shining on it. I am really kicking a soccer ball, but my doing so is only made manifest in light of God’s creative action.
 
Rocks_91 said:
Hello! It seems to me that if someone does anything, like any work for example, he can only do so because of the faculties God has given him. Even if man sins, it is only because he has faculties of will and intellect that God gave him. It troubles me to think whether there is any point to man’s existence if he cannot do anything apart from God. So my question is, can man do anything apart from God? If so, what is it. And if he can’t then, what is the point of existing.
Click to expand...
We can do nothing apart from God, we are totally dependent upon Him, In that dependence He supplies the purpose of our existence by reason, and by faith, by the natural, and super-natural. We must avail ourselves of these means. With free will we can reject God, or accept Him, but in all cases He must give us that ability to do so. By acting the way He designed us we are truly free, just as a duck flaps his wings to fly, and not his feet.
 
A problem that philosophy suffers from more than occasionally is that a philosopher will take the simplest concept and turn it into a thesis. To imagine that the almighty is involved in our most mundane act is a good example of this, I believe. Why would a deity possibly care if we chose to have and cook eggs for breakfast?
That is how absurd it can become.
 
God cares that we can make a choice, the choice is ours to have cooked eggs for breakfast. Thank you Jesus!🙂
 
Rocks_91 said:
Hello! It seems to me that if someone does anything, like any work for example, he can only do so because of the faculties God has given him. Even if man sins, it is only because he has faculties of will and intellect that God gave him. It troubles me to think whether there is any point to man’s existence if he cannot do anything apart from God. So my question is, can man do anything apart from God? If so, what is it. And if he can’t then, what is the point of existing.
Click to expand...
Everything we do is done in God, He sustains us in existence and gives us the ability to think, speak and act, and to begin something and to complete it. If we are malicious and sin, we do this without His willing it, but He still gives us the ability to carry out sinful activity. Of course, there are some times when God does not permit us to carry something out, thwarting our plans, leaving us literally paralyzed, dumb, blocked in some way, etc…

God bless you.
 
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