Something that causes doubt

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Polak

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I’m sure many of you have got doubts from time to time.

So I am what they call a cradle Catholic and have never in my life had any period of time where I have not considered myself to be a Catholic. That doesn’t mean I don’t have times when I am weaker and have some doubts, not even so much about Catholicism, but God in general.

Just recently, I had another ‘attack of doubt’ and this one related to the universe. I was thinking, here we have the Bible, and the way that Bible is written, while it might not strictly say it, makes it seems like we have the world where we are, down here, and God, up there. It doesn’t make it sound like there is much else outside that, and yet we know that are many other planets orbiting around a sun in our solar system and even other suns and planets orbiting around them in the universe in general. It really does seem like the earth is a tin spec of what exists, and yet this is the focal point God focuses on? I have tried to explain this to myself by saying, well, there God has created so much for us to discover, and perhaps most of his wonders we will only discover in the afterlife, but I mean, why would God create a planet that is 0.00001% (I don’t even know how much, but it’s very little) of what exists and then put people only there and focus on that? Why would God create thousands or millions of planets and then put his beloved people, made in his image, on just one of them? Or do some believe there might be people made in God’s image on other planets in other solar systems that God also focuses on, and they also have a Bible of some sort?
 
So my question to you is: Which does God value more, you or a mountain? You or a continent? You or the ocean? Size has no meaning compared to who God chooses to value. Nor are you valuable just because you are part of humanity. You are not just another member of a seething mass. He loves you for who you are. And if there are other people out there and God has his own relationship with them that doesn’t lower our value one iota in his eyes.
 
Haha, yes, that is usually the conclusion I reach, that some things we are not supposed to understand. I really want to though. Uh it’s so frustrating.
 
Polak said:
I have tried to explain this to myself by saying, well, there God has created so much for us to discover
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Yeah check out Battlestar Gallatica , a TV show where humans are living in distant galaxies and at war with Cylon clones they created and in desperate search for the planet Earth that their ancestors all told them bedtime stories about where human life originated but none of them have been to
 
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) We are a tiny spec - this is a picture of deep space looking at a area like looking through a cocktail straw at the sky - almost every light you see are galaxies with the exception of a few stars in the image.
 
BT3241 said:
We are a tiny spec - this is a picture of deep space looking at a area like looking through a cocktail straw at the sky - almost every light you see are galaxies with the exception of a few stars in the image.
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BT3241:
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
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I never understood how somebody could look at a picture like that and not at the very least think that something odd is going on. People think of God as something fantastical, as if there is a qualitative difference between the concept of a God and the concept of a living human being, as if one is normal and the other is absurd; but look at the picture. Orbs of light emanating from billions of galaxies, suspended in an incomprehensibly large void. It’s only because we give names to these things and can measure their activity that there is a sense normality to it. But in reality the idea of there being a God is no more fantastical an idea than the existence of the universe, the only difference being that we can see one and not the other. In the end, outside of God, there is no plausible reason to think that any of this should be happening.

If somebody asserts God’s existence it is only because that is the only concept big enough to make intelligible sense of it.
 
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It does seem like a waste of physical space. Are all these other planets, solar systems, and galaxies, as well as the newer concepts of dark matter and dark energy, and possibly even the multiverse, meant only for our amusement in discovering more and more about the extent and functioning of our ultra-global environment? Must everything center around just us? Room for doubt seems likely.
 
That would be really exciting and sobering as well. If so, probably only in the afterlife, which itself would be the ultimate human experience.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
That would be really exciting and sobering as well. If so, probably only in the afterlife, which itself would be the ultimate human experience.
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I 100 percent believe that life exists on other worlds.
 
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I take it you mean intelligent life? Statistically speaking, it sounds plausible.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
I take it you mean intelligent life? Statistically speaking, it sounds plausible.
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I think God created a natural order to express his creativity through that order. It is only that such an order should exist at all where i would say the miracle exists. Otherwise what would be the point?

I don’t believe that God does things for no reason.
 
IWantGod said:
That would be really exciting and sobering as well. If so, probably only in the afterlife, which itself would be the ultimate human experience.
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There is no proof whatsoever that there is, and there is no proof whatsoever that there is not.

We may be all alone in the universe.

Or there may be life that is little more than bacteria.

Or there may be life so advanced that it makes us look like highly functioning apes by comparison.

With the knowledge we have right now, there is no way to know. There may never be any way to know. God may reveal the truth to us in eternity. Or He may not. We will not know a thing that He does not want us to know. We will know everything that He does want us to know.
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That is quite a powerful position God is in. Anyone ever wonder what it’s like to be God. Anyone ever think about that question sometimes asked - where did God come from?
 
HomeschoolDad said:
There is no proof whatsoever that there is, and there is no proof whatsoever that there is not .
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Proof that there is some existential drama taking place somewhere else? No, i agree that there is no evidence. However i think that in principle God intended life to take root wherever there is or was a chance. Wherever the right conditions for life are met so too does life spring-forth, because i think that this is the functional behaviour of the universe. I don’t just think the universe exists, i think the universe is doing something; and it appears to be creating stars and planets, and life is one possible outcome intrinsic to the narrative.
 
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Polak said:
That is quite a powerful position God is in. Anyone ever wonder what it’s like to be God. Anyone ever think about that question sometimes asked - where did God come from?
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That is incomprehensible. I have tried. Every-time i end up with some kind of demi-God or lesser being, because it is impossible to imagine what it is like to be God.

God didn’t come from anywhere. God is the ontological context in which possibilities become actual.
 
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IWantGod said:
There is no proof whatsoever that there is, and there is no proof whatsoever that there is not .
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Even if the preconditions for life exist, it is very problematical to think that life “just arises” from those preconditions. The smallest cells exhibit features of intelligent design — think of the rotary engine of sorts on the tail of a bacterium — and science has never been able to create life from pre-existing matter. That may not even be possible.

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HomeschoolDad said:
The smallest cells exhibit features of intelligent design
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I think the smallest cells exhibit teleological behaviour, or in other-words i think there is very good reason to think that God’s “Telos” is in nature, and thus nature takes on the form of directionality, more specifically the activity of life.

But i don’t believe in intelligent design. I don’t believe that life was put on earth by God (a one time miracle), but rather life itself arose through the natural order that God created.
 
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It’s a lot smaller than your .00001%. And I happen to not believe in other intelligent life out their. Why?

I can think of several arguments, but the most likely is “why not?”. It seems to me, when we look around at our planet, the wonders we see are the most persuasive evidence of God’s existence. Why would that same concept not extend to the universe? Is there any better means God could have shown us just how powerful, eternal, etc.
meltzerboy2 said:
It does seem like a waste of physical space.
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No, it doesn’t seem like that to me at all. That much space is nothing but a spec of dust to God.
How did God waste anything?
Now, if the universe was the size of our solar system, or even the milky way, it might seem so. But as we learn just how incomprehensibly vast the universe is, that idea seems really obsolete to me.
 
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