Why did God create the world and man?

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
Eduk
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Eduk »

I have no doubt that you'll meet him
I like to think that one of the functions of free will is that I can change my mind (note there is a difference between my mind changing and me changing my mind). That I am an I, that I have agency and competency. But I have no proof that it is possible to change your mind. Indeed statements like the above rather refute the idea.
My suspicion is that I am not an absolute I but rather an imperfect I with limitations. I can to an extent change my mind but only within certain restrictions. I do not know what I should do with that belief though. As it rather dehumanises us all to an extent.
I should probably worry less about insanity and simply get on with my life but I don't find within myself the lack of love needed to do that easily.
Unknown means unknown.
Dark Matter
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Dark Matter »

Tadstormy wrote: September 3rd, 2013, 5:07 pm Why did God create the world and man? God, by definition, does not lack anything. If so, then why did God create the world and man? Does the world and man fill in some lack in God’s own being?

Did he feel bored? Did he feel lonely? Did he need someone to praise and glorify him? Did he have a need to dominate? Did he have a need to love and to be loved back? So, was he needy? These are all very much human traits and hardly traits we expect God to possess.

Is there any reason why God may have created the world and man other than to fill in some lack in his own being? After all, wasn’t everything already perfect before God decided to create the world and man? Then why create the world and man, especially with a tempation to spoil it and bring in imperfection?
Why must there be a why?
Eduk
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Eduk »

Why must there be a why?
I agree 'why' likely is meaningless when applied to 'things' not of this universe. Also 'not of this universe' is likely meaningless in that context. And 'things' are likely meaningless in that context.

However the claim in various holy texts is rarely that they can make no claims.
Unknown means unknown.
Namelesss
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Namelesss »

Tadstormy wrote: September 3rd, 2013, 5:07 pm Why did God create the world and man?
Your question presupposes a given; that God DID 'create' anything!
The failure of your 'given' = failure of question!
'Creation/causality' is impossible, scientifically and philosophically!
Thus there is no 'why' for an impossibility.
Tamminen
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Tamminen »

God wondered if He should create the world or not. He decided not to do it. But now Man got furious: ”What kind of a Creator are you, not doing what you are supposed to do? Create me at least.” So God had to create Man and the world for him to live in.
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3uGH7D4MLj
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by 3uGH7D4MLj »

I agree with Cruelsuit, Theory of God runs aground on this question.

In the Eden story God is like a suburbanite with a model train set in the basement. He looks in on it from time to time. We are God's hobby.

(The transformer overheated and burned the house down.)
fair to say
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Sy Borg
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Sy Borg »

Tadstormy wrote: September 3rd, 2013, 5:07 pmWhy did God create the world and man?
The reason appears to be reproduction. Aside from fortuitous asteroid strikes resulting in panspermia, the only way this biosphere is going to propagate is via human effort. Basically humans are collecting the information of the Earth and may be able to use that blueprint to kickstart life on other worlds. Life on Earth is doomed. If there is no "reproduction" before the Sun's expected extreme heating in less than a billion years then that's the end of the Earth's story, barring panspermia and the occasional stray spacecraft lost in the cosmos.

So humans will continue to act like "planetary sperm". Many would feel that human beings acting as the ball sacs of the Earth might explain a few things :)
Steve3007
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Steve3007 »

Greta wrote:...the occasional stray spacecraft lost in the cosmos.
Perhaps we've missed the bus on that one. We'll have to hope that interstellar buses are like Earth buses and come in threes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... id/548390/

They've apparently started scanning "Oumuamua" for signs that it's emitting any radio signals just as it's on its way back out of the solar system. It would be kind of funny if, just as it disappears from view, we detected a signal saying "Next stop Alpha Proxima. Tickets please."
chondriac
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by chondriac »

How can anyone answer this when the answer is suspect to be a projection of the ego? How can assume to know anything we don't know we don't know, anything outside our experiences? Why does God resemble a human? If chickens held awareness instead of humans, wouldn't God be a chicken? If God lacks temporality or with certain aspects of the such nature, or it's the universe that lacks temporality, or if both exist and are eternal, how could one create the other? Wouldn't it seem better to think the two are one and the same? No, God should hold intelligence, and the universe is mindless. But to say "the universe is" is already paradoxical. Being can't be a condition of the universe with the same aspects as my own being, it seems more likely that omni-qualities transcend that which refers to my own existence. And to speak of such a nature may as well be to speak of an integral. Eternal recurrence? Tetravalent graphs?

But to go back to "why". Why does anyone ask why? Is "why" a product of exclusively human thinking? Is thinking in the way that humans think exclusively human? Or is thinking in general equivalent in any state of consciousness? The development of AI might help to prove that. But let's say thinking as a function is objective. It follows that I can talk about "why" with better grounding. So why I ask why may be due to me not knowing things. In fact, I doubt I really know anything the more I take the relativity ride. What condition then separates knowing from unknowing, absolute to relativity? Does this dichotomy break signal my train of thought futile?

Personally I enjoy the depiction of God as Brahman. One can say anything and everything about Brahman, in every possible just way to prove a point. Brahman is, Brahman is not, Brahman is good, Brahman is evil, yadayadayada
https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/song/song_1.html
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Sy Borg
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Sy Borg »

Steve3007 wrote: December 15th, 2017, 6:32 am
Greta wrote:...the occasional stray spacecraft lost in the cosmos.
Perhaps we've missed the bus on that one. We'll have to hope that interstellar buses are like Earth buses and come in threes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... id/548390/

They've apparently started scanning "Oumuamua" for signs that it's emitting any radio signals just as it's on its way back out of the solar system. It would be kind of funny if, just as it disappears from view, we detected a signal saying "Next stop Alpha Proxima. Tickets please."
:lol: you've been reading too much Douglas Adams. Have you tried writing sci fi or sci fi comedy? You'd be good.

My understanding is that the object's orbit is as would be expected from an interstellar asteroid rather than a craft. Note that we have numerous dead objects hurtling through space - all those early launches that missed the Moon or other targets, not to mention the two Voyagers. Checking for radio signals won't tell us if it's a lost alien artefact. That would be perhaps the most ideal of first encounters - an exciting chase to capture and study a lost alien object - especially if it has a return address :)

Re: the thread. Of course the creationist notion is incoherent in terms of ontology, but the belief has provided many with greater calm and courage while being far from the only kind of belief to do so.
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pomarine
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by pomarine »

I find it interesting to wonder what god originally intended when he created Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Had Eve not eaten fruit from the tree of knowledge, would humankind and the world as we know it even have existed?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Sy Borg »

Australipithecines were the first species to bury their dead with ceremony, suggestive of belief in an afterlife. That is where the loss of innocence occurs - where an animal understands that we are all doomed, a burden carried by humans ever since. We gain almost everything with our capacity to understand the flow of time, but it doesn't stop us from eventually losing everything.

From embalming to ideas of everlasting life in another dimension to sanitation, medicine and pacifism, humans have been trying to find a way around the grim fact that that which is most frightening - suffering to the point of annihilation - is seemingly certain. Yes, our sentience kicked us out of Eden which, by the way, appears to be viewed to rose coloured glasses. If the wild was so wonderful then we wouldn't have worked so hard to separate ourselves from its dangers, privations and discomforts.

The truth is that there only heaven on Earth for the select lucky few, who managed the equivalent of throwing ten consecutive sixes in the game of life. I expect that certain other animals from time to time lead charmed lives, simply through probability, but most living things experience varying degrees of difficulty, and life for most is tenuous, stressful and/or dangerous.
Dark Matter
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Dark Matter »

pomarine wrote: December 26th, 2017, 8:30 pm I find it interesting to wonder what god originally intended when he created Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Had Eve not eaten fruit from the tree of knowledge, would humankind and the world as we know it even have existed?
It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve partook of; every other fruit they were free to partake of. Big difference.
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3uGH7D4MLj
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by 3uGH7D4MLj »

pomarine wrote: December 26th, 2017, 8:30 pm I find it interesting to wonder what god originally intended when he created Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Had Eve not eaten fruit from the tree of knowledge, would humankind and the world as we know it even have existed?
The Eden story is so wise. The writer is describing how we became humans, with this knowledge of good and evil, our mortality. In the day you eat of it you will die. I interpret this to mean in the day you eat of it you will know that you will die.
fair to say
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LuckyR
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by LuckyR »

The only person qualified to answer this question is the original human who invented the idea of gods. Alas they are long dead. But I suppose anyone and everyone else's opinion is as good as any other. Just with less authority.
"As usual... it depends."
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