The meaning of life

[hansard]

No, I’m not proposing the answer…

I can’t decide whether life is an accident or the result of divine will.

If it’s an accident, we had better ride the wave and try to ameliorate the condition of those for whom life is totally unhappy–not because of any religious sentiment, but from simple concern for others. It doesn’t take religion to create moral sense.
The alternative, of course, is to discard morality and to live a completely hedonistic lifestyle, knowing that it will end soon. Why would you necessarily care about the less fortunate? Why, indeed, would you have children, knowing that you will be dead soon? Who cares about the future of the human race after your 80-odd years are over?
Then, when you die, it’s over. You’ll never know anything about it. Your consciousness is cancelled; you are dead in every sense.

If life is the result of divine will, then I’d like to propose two ideas:

1. If there is a god, then he/she/it needs us. This is especially so if we are the only life in the universe (as traditional religions strongly suggest);
2. The other side of the coin: what would that god do without us?

I’m proposing the idea that humanity is necessary for god. Otherwise, why would an omnipresent, omni-this, omni-that, spiritual being bother with creating a physical universe? A spiritual, all-powerful god can do nothing without the physical universe in which to do it.

I’m starting to think that humanity and god (whatever essence it has) are interdependent.
I don’t want to go too far down the path of solipsism, but a god needs to be at least contemplated by another conscious being; otherwise, it’s just a god with a whole lot of power, presence and knowledge, but nothing to actually do and nobody to know about it. There has to be something in the fact that a god–who existed from immeasurable eternity in complete, self-contained awareness, in need of nothing–suddenly decided to create a finite universe of which the focal point would be a tiny planet inhabited by us. God clearly needs us.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

I believe Life is by divine fiat. God has, in HIs wisdom to use the hackneyed phrase, created a universe that provides us with the necessary backdrop for our existence.

Spiritual creatures don’t need a universe since they are not dependent on physical things to exist, whereas we are.

Hence in our existence we need faith to believe in God, as we cannot perceive Him.

But no such faith is required of purely spiritual beings, since they are directly aware of God’s existence. By the same token, the fall of the angels to the demonic realm is irrevocable, since they knew full well what they were doing.

Here’s a few arguments about the necessary fine tuning that is necesary for life to even exist. It’s also funny that we just happen to have huge oil and coal reserves just lying around for an industrial and technical revolution at the very time a burgeoning population requires such technology to have a chance of survival. Another one of these peculiar coincidences which all seem to have to come together for intelligent life to begin and thrive.

[(name removed by moderator)lainsite.org/html/anthropic_principles.html](http://www.(name removed by moderator)lainsite.org/html/anthropic_principles.html)

 

[123Strontium]

No, I’m not proposing the answer…

I can’t decide whether life is an accident or the result of divine will.

If it’s an accident, we had better ride the wave and try to ameliorate the condition of those for whom life is totally unhappy–not because of any religious sentiment, but from simple concern for others. It doesn’t take religion to create moral sense.
The alternative, of course, is to discard morality and to live a completely hedonistic lifestyle, knowing that it will end soon. Why would you necessarily care about the less fortunate? Why, indeed, would you have children, knowing that you will be dead soon? Who cares about the future of the human race after your 80-odd years are over?
Then, when you die, it’s over. You’ll never know anything about it. Your consciousness is cancelled; you are dead in every sense.

If life is the result of divine will, then I’d like to propose two ideas:

1. If there is a god, then he/she/it needs us. This is especially so if we are the only life in the universe (as traditional religions strongly suggest);
2. The other side of the coin: what would that god do without us?

I’m proposing the idea that humanity is necessary for god. Otherwise, why would an omnipresent, omni-this, omni-that, spiritual being bother with creating a physical universe? A spiritual, all-powerful god can do nothing without the physical universe in which to do it.

I’m starting to think that humanity and god (whatever essence it has) are interdependent.
I don’t want to go too far down the path of solipsism, but a god needs to be at least contemplated by another conscious being; otherwise, it’s just a god with a whole lot of power, presence and knowledge, but nothing to actually do and nobody to know about it. There has to be something in the fact that a god–who existed from immeasurable eternity in complete, self-contained awareness, in need of nothing–suddenly decided to create a finite universe of which the focal point would be a tiny planet inhabited by us. God clearly needs us.

You either have faith in God or you don’t. I don’t think a rational philosophical answer will lead you to revelation. Hence the term ‘elect’ in scripture.

In Christianity, there comes a point where you can’t question God’s motivation, hence in the bible : ‘Do not put your God to the test’. It’s a mystery and it lies beyond a gate that we should not trespass on, because it is not for us to know.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

If life is the result of divine will, then I’d like to propose two ideas:

1. If there is a god, then he/she/it needs us. This is especially so if we are the only life in the universe (as traditional religions strongly suggest);
2. The other side of the coin: what would that god do without us?

I’m starting to think that humanity and god (whatever essence it has) are interdependent.
I don’t want to go too far down the path of solipsism, but a god needs to be at least contemplated by another conscious being; otherwise, it’s just a god with a whole lot of power, presence and knowledge, but nothing to actually do and nobody to know about it. There has to be something in the fact that a god–who existed from immeasurable eternity in complete, self-contained awareness, in need of nothing–suddenly decided to create a finite universe of which the focal point would be a tiny planet inhabited by us. God clearly needs us.

[BIBLEDRB]Exodus 3:14[/BIBLEDRB]

This is not a simple statement; It is a definitive declaration of existence. God Is. He is a perpetual act of existence which is fully self-sustainable. He requires nothing outside of himself to function. He chose to make us because he desired entities to share his love with; but desire is distinctly different from need. He does not need us to exist, as he is existence itself.

You are making the common mistake of applying human attributes to God. God doesn’t need to do anything, nor does he need anyone to know about him; his is completely self-fulfilling (to arrive at this conclusion take a very long series of philosophical discussion which I’m simply too tired to enter into ), and therefore needs nothing; he chooses to reveal himself to us because he hopes that we will recognize his love and chose him; but he will be no worse off if we do or don’t.

You talk about God making a decision to create us, this is a flawed notion. A decision also implies the human faculty of change, which God does not have. He is changeless, as necessitated by his eternal existence (again, long philosophical discussion, maybe someone else will elaborate for me.) We cannot understand why he made us because we are bound by the chains of cause and affect. God it outside of this boundary; he needs no cause to make an affect; and does not require a decision to act. I know this may seem confusing; but you cannot place human limits on God, as he does not have any of them.

God doesn’t need us, and I suggest you ask your priest about it, I’m sure he (or others on the site) could recommend a few good books on the subject.

 

[hansard]

…but he will be no worse off if we do or don’t.

Then why bother? There seems no reason for a self-fulfilling god to create anything.

You talk about God making a decision to create us, this is a flawed notion. A decision also implies the human faculty of change, which God does not have… you cannot place human limits on God, as he does not have any of them.

Yes, I know that a limitless god has no limits. So, god did NOT decide to create us, and this is a flawed notion. Very good. Why does a decision imply the faculty of change? Can a godly decision be made without the possibility of change: once made, unable to be changed? You are not arguing logically, but religiously.

I’m positing that, if there is a god (of any kind, that’s why I use the lower case), that god is either: willing to live in eternity in complete self-contentment, or; in need, or at least desirous, of some kind of worship, or at least awareness, from the beings he creates.

Look at the Commandments: I am the Lord. You shall have no other gods…Having created humans and watched them carry on in a most unsavoury manner, God becomes emphatic about his position. He, alone, wants to be worshipped. He demands it.

He demands prayer and worship. This is not the characteristic of a self-fulfilling, eternally-complete god.

Obviously, if God had not created us (or if the universe had not evolved us), we would not be here to even debate the existence of God. Then, we risk going down the path of solipsism to the point where we say, “God only exists because I think about him,” which could be applied just as well to the cat.

I maintain that god cannot exist in a void of self-contentment; rather; that he/she/it must have some kind of awareness from another created being. Without us, he is a god existing in a timeless void, in complete awareness and stillness.
Therefore, god needs us.

 

[tonyrey]

… unsure about anything…

Are you sure you’re unsure about anything?

Our only certainty is the intangible fact that we are conscious. The prime reality is mind not matter…

I can’t decide whether life is an accident or the result of divine will.

If it’s an accident, we had better ride the wave and try to ameliorate the condition of those for whom life is totally unhappy–not because of any religious sentiment, but from simple concern for others. It doesn’t take religion to create moral sense.

Without spiritual reality morality is a fantasy. If only matter exists nothing matters…

The alternative, of course, is to discard morality and to live a completely hedonistic lifestyle, knowing that it will end soon. Why would you necessarily care about the less fortunate? Why, indeed, would you have children, knowing that you will be dead soon? Who cares about the future of the human race after your 80-odd years are over?
Then, when you die, it’s over. You’ll never know anything about it. Your consciousness is cancelled; you are dead in every sense.

Whether consciousness can be cancelled depends on its origin and nature - which is an insurmountable problem for materialists…

If life is the result of divine will, then I’d like to propose two ideas:

1. If there is a god, then he/she/it needs us. This is especially so if we are the only life in the universe (as traditional religions strongly suggest);
2. The other side of the coin: what would that god do without us?

I’m proposing the idea that humanity is necessary for god. Otherwise, why would an omnipresent, omni-this, omni-that, spiritual being bother with creating a physical universe? A spiritual, all-powerful god can do nothing without the physical universe in which to do it.

I’m starting to think that humanity and god (whatever essence it has) are interdependent.
I don’t want to go too far down the path of solipsism, but a god needs to be at least contemplated by another conscious being; otherwise, it’s just a god with a whole lot of power, presence and knowledge, but nothing to actually do and nobody to know about it. There has to be something in the fact that a god–who existed from immeasurable eternity in complete, self-contained awareness, in need of nothing–suddenly decided to create a finite universe of which the focal point would be a tiny planet inhabited by us. God clearly needs us.

The Creator is obviously creative but it doesn’t follow that He needs us or anyone else. The truth of Christianity is demonstrated by its correspondence to reality. One Person existing forever in splendid isolation would be the apotheosis of egoism - which ignores the Supreme Reality: Love…

 

[ProdglArchitect]

…but he will be no worse off if we do or don’t.

Then why bother? There seems no reason for a self-fulfilling god to create anything.

We have absolutely no way of knowing why he bothered, and we won’t find out till we’re dead. Why worry about it? The fact of the matter is, he created us, we exist, and we hope to be with him in eternity.

You talk about God making a decision to create us, this is a flawed notion. A decision also implies the human faculty of change, which God does not have… you cannot place human limits on God, as he does not have any of them.

Yes, I know that a limitless god has no limits. So, god did NOT decide to create us, and this is a flawed notion. Very good. Why does a decision imply the faculty of change? Can a godly decision be made without the possibility of change: once made, unable to be changed? You are not arguing logically, but religiously.

No, I’m arguing logically. By recognizing that God is outside of the flow of time (which is, ultimately, a constant series of changes from one moment to another) we can then conclude, logically, that he is outside of the capacity for change. A decision requires a change of state, to go from being unsure to being sure; therefore I conclude that God does not make decisions as we understand them, he simply does. That is not to say he couldn’t have a higher form of decision making that we are unaware of; it just wouldn’t be a decision like you are implying.

I’m positing that, if there is a god (of any kind, that’s why I use the lower case), that god is either: willing to live in eternity in complete self-contentment, or; in need, or at least desirous, of some kind of worship, or at least awareness, from the beings he creates.

Need and desire are distinctly different entities, and are not comparable. A need is something you cannot function without. A desire is something you want, but would be perfectly fine without one way or the other. You are saying that God needs us, I am saying he doesn’t. I’ll agree with you that he desires our love in the same way a parents desires for their child to love them. The parent is not, however, dependent on the child’s love, just as God is not dependent on our love.

Look at the Commandments: I am the Lord. You shall have no other gods…Having created humans and watched them carry on in a most unsavoury manner, God becomes emphatic about his position. He, alone, wants to be worshipped. He demands it.

You are making the assumption that the commandments exist for God’s good, rather than our own; this is, again, a mistaken assumption. We are called to love God because, as I said before he Is; he is all that sustains our life and our spirit, and he is all that is good. The place another before him is to place another before Good, which would ultimately be bad for us. That commandment exists for us, not for him.

He demands prayer and worship. This is not the characteristic of a self-fulfilling, eternally-complete god.

Same thing, you are placing the emphasis at the wrong end. He does not demand our prayers for Him, he demands them for us. By praying to Him, we open our hearts to him. It is how we come to know him, and how our faith in him grows. Since it is our faith which sustains us through this life, the requirement that we pray (and grow in our faith) is, once again, for our own benefit.

Obviously, if God had not created us (or if the universe had not evolved us), we would not be here to even debate the existence of God. Then, we risk going down the path of solipsism to the point where we say, “God only exists because I think about him,” which could be applied just as well to the cat.

I maintain that god cannot exist in a void of self-contentment; rather; that he/she/it must have some kind of awareness from another created being. Without us, he is a god existing in a timeless void, in complete awareness and stillness.
Therefore, god needs us.

You say those things as though they are negative attributes. What makes those things bad? They appear bad to us because we can’t fathom being happy in them; but, again, you are attempting to apply human traits to God; God is not “Happy,” nor is he “sad,” nor “angry,” nor “pleased,” nor “disheartened.” These are emotional modifiers which serve no purpose when we are discussion God. He simply Is. This is not something you can rationally understand, because it is something that is outside of our reality. We can contemplate it, and we can philosophically debate it, but we cannot understand it.

Anyways, you have not conclusively proven that:

#1: God cannot exist in a void of self-contentment. Why not? What’s wrong with that? You can have all the money in the world, and want for nothing, but still desire companionship. Companionship is not a necessity, it is a desire.

#2: God requires the awareness of another human being. Again, why? You are applying human emotions to God, who is beyond them.

or #3: There is something wrong with being in “a timeless void, in complete awareness and stillness.” Again, I ask you, why? If you Are existence, and you are self-fulfilling, what’s wrong with basically spending eternity being happy?

You need to stop viewing God as you view other humans, Applying human logic to God’s existence is an approach doomed to failure and misunderstanding.

 

[zro_x]

Then why bother? There seems no reason for a self-fulfilling god to create anything.

Because God loves us. it is difficult to understand that God has an absolutely, perfectly loving nature, because we have few if any examples of that in the real world, and even what you do see can be attributed to some sort of evolutioary imperative.

Real love can be difficult to contemplate. When God created us, he had absolutely* no angle* in that action. I differ slightly from prodigalarchitect, because even the mother has a angle for loving her baby. She gets warm, fuzzy feelings from it. I don’t believe God has such feelings from loving us. He acts in pure love, which means that he created us strictly for our own sake. because he knew that we would enjoy existence.

Don’t forget that God is actually three persons. He has all the companionship he needs and wants. He has no deficiency. Our decision to accept or reject him in no way alters his happiness and joy. He is perfectly content.

This is because Love, by definition, is the desire for another to experience happiness and joy. However, unlike human beings, God’s own happiness and joy are not affected by whether his desires are met.

As for why God commands us to worship him, this is because by worshiping and obeying God, who knows everything, we behave in ways that are sure to increase our own happiness, not God’s. Another reason why God wants us to worship him is that he is the source of all love; in fact, he is literally love itself personified. The greatest possible happiness and joy comes from freely loving and recieving love. It is my opinion that no greater happiness is logically possible. So, God commands us to worship him, because through him, we find love, and thus the greatest possible joy. Worship is also just a natural response to encountering a being so vastly greater than ourselves, so the extent to which we worhip God should be indicative of how close we are to him, which again, is good for our own sakes.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

A Catholic can’t be in doubt about whether life is the result of divine will if he have read Genesis, chapter 1.

 

[TimothyH]

The meaning of life is revealed to us by God.

To know God, to love God and to serve God. That is the meaning of life. It is clearly stated in the first paragraph of the prologue of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The same first paragraph also says that God is “infinitely blessed in himself.” He has no need of us but created us an an act of “sheer goodness.”

-Tim-

 

[shoe]

I’m proposing the idea that humanity is necessary for god. Otherwise, why would an omnipresent, omni-this, omni-that, spiritual being bother with creating a physical universe? A spiritual, all-powerful god can do nothing without the physical universe in which to do it.

I don’t think the reason God created human beings is that “humanity is necessary for God.” Rather, I believe that God created humanity for the simple reason that He desired to. Since the Godhead consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, God lacks nothing; therefore, God did not create the heavens, earth, and people because He suddenly felt obligated to. And human beings certainly have nothing to offer God that he already hasn’t provided them: “Neither is he served with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing; seeing it is he who giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25). God created human beings because He is love and love shares.

 

[Aloysium]

It is interesting that we are discussing God in the third person when He is the Truth itself.

I will take the liberty of asking on behalf of all of us: Help us grow in love; help us know You.

 

[hansard]

I’m not out to conclusively prove anything. Nobody can, when it comes to religious matters. Surely there’s no harm in discussing and wondering about things.

A few things came up in the above posts which I find interesting:

1. God exists outside of time. How do we know this? Before jumping down my throat, at least consider the possibility that God and time coexist, or that time might be, in fact, eternal.
2. God does not have human attributes. Yet, in scripture, God speaks to people, he refers to himself in the first person, he hates certain behaviours (homosexuality, for example), he can be pleased and is variously described as being loving, vengeful, jealous… The part of god which is Jesus, in particular, is highly anthropomorphic, with an actual body (admittedly, a glorified body, but a body nonetheless). Therefore, there is a part of god which has a form, a shape, and who, in his earthly existence, had human attributes. So, when someone says, “God does not have human attributes”, I have to ask, “What about Jesus?” That’s the whole point of the word becoming flesh: that god, having been human, now has this unbreakable bond with humanity, with complete sympathy for our earthly, limited condition.

 

[hansard]

Further to my above post, I simply propose that a god is quite probably omni-everything, but that he clearly saw the need to create. He created purely spiritual beings and was obviously not content with that. So, he created us, the universe, and everything in it.
The fact that we clearly occupy his attention seems to indicate that he is a pro-active god who transcends the seemingly-insurmountable divide between the spiritual and the physical.

The meaning of life? If life is created by a god, then the created must, presumably, try to appease the god, provided the god makes his existence known. Otherwise, he could blink us away. (Imagine a cold, ruthless god just for a minute).
If the god is benevolent and kind (here I go again, ascribing human attributes), then we caught a break there. We still have to appease the god, but failings might be overlooked in the wider scheme of things. The god might even let us die, but might orchestrate the means by which we don’t stay dead, but live on in another form. (This is, essentially, the Christian view.)

If life is an accident of chemistry, then we still have to make the best of it, because it’s the only life we’ll have. It’s not a life of lesser quality, nor is it meaningless. It just is.

 

[tonyrey]

Further to my above post, I simply propose that a god is quite probably omni-everything, but that he clearly saw the need to create. He created purely spiritual beings and was obviously not content with that. So, he created us, the universe, and everything in it.
The fact that we clearly occupy his attention seems to indicate that he is a pro-active god who transcends the seemingly-insurmountable divide between the spiritual and the physical.

The meaning of life? If life is created by a god, then the created must, presumably, try to appease the god, provided the god makes his existence known. Otherwise, he could blink us away. (Imagine a cold, ruthless god just for a minute).
If the god is benevolent and kind (here I go again, ascribing human attributes), then we caught a break there. We still have to appease the god, but failings might be overlooked in the wider scheme of things. The god might even let us die, but might orchestrate the means by which we don’t stay dead, but live on in another form. (This is, essentially, the Christian view.)

If life is an accident of chemistry, then we still have to make the best of it, because it’s the only life we’ll have. It’s not a life of lesser quality, nor is it meaningless. It just is.

If life just is we have no choice in the matter! Whether we make the best of it or not is predetermined…

Not only that. If life is an accident of chemistry all our beliefs and thoughts are predetermined - including the belief that life is an accident of chemistry! In other words there is no reason to believe it is true that life is an accident of chemistry and abundant reasons to believe it is false. A self-refuting belief is worthless…

 

[hansard]

If life just is we have no choice in the matter! Whether we make the best of it or not is predetermined…

Not only that. If life is an accident of chemistry all our beliefs and thoughts **are predetermined **- including the belief that life is an accident of chemistry! In other words there is no reason to believe it is true that life is an accident of chemistry and abundant reasons to believe it is false. A self-refuting belief is worthless…

I’d say: not so much predetermined, but predictable. If you knew the motion of every single atom and every other tiny particle, you could predict the future with absolute certainty. Since there is no chance of us ever having that facility, everything is random to us.

If a god set all this in motion, then maybe everything is predetermined. This is especially true in the event of a remote, disinterested god.
If the god is active in human affairs, then nothing is predictable at all and everything is dependent on the whim of god, including his desire to keep everything in existence.

 

[tonyrey]

*If life just is we have no choice in the matter! Whether we make the best of it or not is predetermined…

Predictability is less significant than the lack of free will. There is no reason to believe accidents of chemistry are capable of making their own choices or decisions.

If a god set all this in motion, then maybe everything is predetermined. This is especially true in the event of a remote, disinterested god.

Indeed!

If the god is active in human affairs, then nothing is predictable at all and everything is dependent on the whim of god, including his desire to keep everything in existence.

Divine activity in human affairs does not exclude free will because it is limited rather than universal. There would be no point in asking us to love one another if we had no choice in the matter…