tommarcus wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2018, 10:20 pm
If God created the universe and us, an important "if", then who else would know what our overall purpose is other than the one who created us. And why would God create us in such a way which is conflict with that purpose? This is contradicts the nature of a supreme being even though many religions preach this contradiction. Therefore, our searching should take us towards our creator, and what is consistent, like it or not. If one thinks that we were not created by God or that God does not exist and that we are an accident of nature, then he can have fun debating with some of the wide range of ideas as to our purpose in life. Or take the nihilist approach and claim there is no meaning. This to me is just as great a danger to true searching as brainwashing. It has openned the door to nonsense and even tyranny and destruction.
The idea that a god created the Universe then 13.8 billion years later decided to intentionally create humans with a specific purpose is a big claim which not only conflicts with Astro physics and evolution but also runs into some serious consequences in regards to the nature of the Universe itself.
These are my criticisms of this particular idea.
1) If this version of god intentionally creates things to serve a purpose, such as Universes and humans it follows that god is responsible for the creation of all things and that all things are designed to serve a purpose. Therefore it follows that the same god which created humans also created cancer, the same cancer that slowly and painfully causes agonising death to hundreds of millions of people including infants.
If god does not create baby killing cancer, how do you know?
If you believe he is responsible yet claim we can't understand his reasoning, that means god is ineffable. If god is ineffable, how do you know we were created with a purpose?
2)If humans were intentionally created, then the Universe must have been intentionally created to cater for us. This means god somehow influences causality so that Galaxies with stars form, then solar systems form with planets the right distance from the sun so that atmospheres form so the right conditions are met for life to emerge. God must then control environmental influences to navigate natural selection so that eventually humans will evolve. If god controls nature, then god is responsible for every natural disaster which has killed an maimed hundreds of millions of humans throughout history.
If god is not responsible how do you know?
If he is but the reasons are beyond our comprehension, again god is ineffable and you should have nothing more to say about the nature god.
An accident of nature simply means that the outcomes of natural causality were unplanned or not intentional. This particular narrative is common to the theistic tounge as an attempt to devalue the facts of a naturalistic approach to understand the origins of both life and the Universe itself. It tends to associate the idea of accident with mistake. This being said, the life of an unplanned child is no less meaningful or valuable than that of a planned one, so regardless of wether or not we are consequences of nature or gods, life itself is just as meaningful.
I struggle to see how an atheistic word view could really hinder ones ability to find meaning and purpose in their life? If anything the absence of belief in such ideologies promotes clarity. Clarity in the fact that they would accept that the search for meaning and purpose is grounded introspectively within the human experience.