Dear NNS,

Our connection to God is life itself.

Spirituality is the answer
to global hatred. It is an inner fire, a mystical
sustenance that feed our souls. As I stated earlier
I'm not out to convert the beliefs of others. For
me religion is personal and I have found that life
without a conscious awareness of God is difficult.
I follow a religion because that is, theologically,
where I find Him.

cont'd ...

The fact the life exists means that God came
before man.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

Your argument unfortunately mostly takes the form of a 'God of the Gaps'. Because you feel you don't heave an alternative feasible argument the God must have done it?

As the gaps have lessened so has your God. Perhaps keeping him/her in the spiritual realm rather than the physical or scientific one would serve you better.

You see there is no evidence, except for an unfounded belief in our own exceptionaism so to speak, that life originated on Earth as opposed to anywhere else in the universe. The surface of the moon is a good example of the various chunks of material flying around our universe all capable of carrying life forms.

Even if life did spontaneously burst forth on this planet there is absolutely not reason why it can't have happened on any of the many billions of planets that are out there.

As to a designer at work ask him/her why it the pouch of the Koala facing backwards? Science says this is because they are evolved from Wombats who have the same configuration. That is because they are burrowing animals. Pretty awkward for a tree dwelling cousin though.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

The second word of the bible, the verb 'bara' that is usually translated as "created", is only ever attributed to God, never to a human or an animal.

In English, though, it is valid to say: "the dog created such a mess".

Language is designed to speak about finite things that are subject to the physical laws. It is helpless in attempting to describe the infinite. According to Newton, when you DO something, an equal force is applied to the doer in the opposite direction. So when a hammer hits a nail, the hammer is also pushed backwards, but because the hammer is significantly heavier, the impact on it is small. But what if the hammer was of infinite weight, thus also had an infinite momentum when hitting the nail? Newton's laws are then broken, they are not meant for such scenarios.

Had God created anything in the ordinary meaning of the word, then there would be a reverse impact affecting God, but can the immutable be affected? If you create a piece of music, then you turn from a wannabe-composer into a composer, but has God during Genesis turned from a wannabe-creator into a creator? Is God subject to time? Both Hinduism and the Jewish Kabbalah speak about God constantly creating and destroying an infinite number of worlds: that number being infinite, God could not even be changed from "the creator of 256 worlds" into "the creator of 257 worlds"!

So when you say "God created mankind" (or when Foxy says "God came before man"), I agree with reservations about the language. However, when you say "God created/made us", I disagree, not because someone/something else created/made us, but rather because we (like God and unlike our human body) were never created to begin with.

On the topic, I believe that those who choose to deny God can always find clever alternate explanations to the durability of life. Refute one and they will find another. I could do the same, but I choose not to.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

Regarding your quote of the beautiful verse, Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations":

The original verb is 'etsorcha', which is mostly translated as "formed you", assuming the verb-root Y-TS-R. It could also be construed of the root TS-R-R, to bundle or to pack, thus "before I packed you up in a belly/womb". It could also be construed of the root H-TS-R, to narrow, to limit, even to besiege, so "before I narrowed you down into a womb".

In any case, the word is not "created". Even with the conservative reading of "formed you", this just means that beforehand you had no form and afterwards you had one. This is always the case: before birth we are formless, in the middle we have a form and after death we are formless again. http://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/2/verse/28

To SteelERedux.

I don't know why some people fight so hard against the possibility of God existing. Instead of at least acknowledging that God might exist, (due to what's said earlier in the topic), the position you put yourself in is that you don't know the answer, but refuse to accept that God is the answer.

I don't know about life on other planets. No one does. It hasn't been found. That's my point about the emptiness of life in space. It is so rare that nothing has been found yet. The point is about the rarity of life outside of earth, not whether it exists or not outside of earth.

Once again if there is a better explanation for the world we live in I hope to hear it.