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.
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Tadstormy
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Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Tadstormy »

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?
Fanman
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Fanman »

Tadstormy,

Who knows, maybe you should ask him yourself!? Ultimately, I think that you should save those questions for God himself. I have no doubt that you'll meet him (we all will). Anyway dude, I believe that man was created to tend to the earth, of which we haven't done an exactly sterling job! I hope that my brief answer was helpful to you, in some way...
Theists believe, agnostics ponder and atheists analyse. A little bit of each should get us the right answer.
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Tadstormy
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Tadstormy »

Fanman wrote: Who knows, maybe you should ask him yourself!?
What's his email address?
Fanman
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Fanman »

Good answer. I meant when you meet him in the after-life. I should of really been more clear sorry.
Theists believe, agnostics ponder and atheists analyse. A little bit of each should get us the right answer.
Cruelsuit1
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Cruelsuit1 »

Tadstormy wrote: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?
You asked the right question and you put it very well. If God is infinitely perfect and infinitely good then why would He feel any needs or desires? Why would He introduce evil and imperfection into a good and perfect reality?

These are the types of questions that finally end the "God" hypothesis.

The creator "God" posited by believers must be perfect and infinite and good. He must have these qualities if He is to exist. These qualities are His description. The real world proves that He does not have these qualities, therefore He doesn't exist.

This fact forces believers into the position where they must give God these qualities (such as evil and want), and He is increasingly described as if He is identified with the "random" and impersonal natural world. In addition, all His moral responsibilities devolve upon humankind. The more God is forced to comport with the real world the more He disappears.
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Tadstormy
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Tadstormy »

As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

-- Updated September 6th, 2013, 7:33 am to add the following --
Here is a typical reason I got off the Internet why God created the man and the world :

“God created the world for His pleasure and our good. God made everything—the earth, the planets, the sun, the moon, and the stars—for Himself to enjoy.”----www.gqkidz.org/God-create-world.html.
God created the world for our own good? Before God created the world there were no people to create a world for their own good.

For his pleasure? For Himself to enjoy? Did God feel a need to be entertained like a person going out to the movies?

All human action is driven by lack; it is that sense of lack that has driven the whole of history of the world. Lack is the engine of the world. Now, if God acts, the same applies: Any action taken by God will always be out of a sense of lack. A perfect God would never act. For, why? Isn't all perfect, as it is?

As Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: "The man of action is a limited man".
Cruelsuit1
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Cruelsuit1 »

Tadstormy wrote:All human action is driven by lack; it is that sense of lack that has driven the whole of history of the world. Lack is the engine of the world. Now, if God acts, the same applies: Any action taken by God will always be out of a sense of lack. A perfect God would never act. For, why? Isn't all perfect, as it is?
Einstein stated the same thing in different words. Not bad company. He said that everything man does is because of a felt need. (This statement may be true for every organism.)

:?: Why would a perfect entity act? Why would a perfect entity have a felt need? This single contradiction is the closest I have seen to disproving the existence of an all-encompassing creator that possesses a will.

You are the first person I have ever seen who asked the same question. Maybe you have started a trend.

Now, prepare to witness the malleability of the word "perfect."
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MidiChlorian
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by MidiChlorian »

Tadstormy wrote: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?
In order to explain the unexplainable? Ah,??? Maybe the question should be, why did that which is everything, wish to create something? In essence, everything is also nothing, like the comparison of the number one to zero. So, if everything is to exist, or to continue, like in the phrase, "Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.", then everything would have started to divide itself, which would have been a first act that can be identified as, to share one'self. The act of sharing, comes not from emotion, but does produce the first essence of emotion, which can be defined as love, where if equally divided, like a mirror image, can only result in a constant battle between who is positive and negative? This first act, in itself, would produce an endless circle of friction, but would ultimately bring an end to everything, whereby creates a first thought of reason, which could be defined as wisdom or logic, that discovers that there must always be a small imbalance, to create the first emotion of envy, one to and of the other or itself. Therefore, it may be assumed that the reason that God created, is to share; but what, life or existence, something that would be difficult for pure energy, to define to pure energy, thereby realizing that perfection can only be related to imperfection or less perfect energy that has been changed, but striving to imagine its original form, which cannot be defined by looking at the mirror image of one'self, from the act of reflective division.
The Reality of knowing what Wisdom is, is in the Experiencing of the Philosophy of using Knowledge.
Cruelsuit1
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Cruelsuit1 »

MidiChlorian wrote:["Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.", then everything would have started to divide itself, which would have been a first act that can be identified as, to share one'self. The act of sharing, comes not from emotion, but does produce the first essence of emotion, which can be defined as love, where if equally divided, like a mirror image, can only result in a constant battle between who is positive and negative?
This sounds almost as if you are suggesting that god is subject to entropy. Self awareness came from God falling to pieces???
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MidiChlorian
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by MidiChlorian »

Cruelsuit1 wrote: (Nested quote removed.)

This sounds almost as if you are suggesting that god is subject to entropy. Self awareness came from God falling to pieces???
Yes and No. Since the keys to my narration is at the end, and the assimilation, to scientific entropy, was presented to show that thought came before the Word, and then action, from the Word. In essence the energy quote is associated to the phrase "without beginning or end", but does not refer to the "Alpha and the Omega", because it implies a beginning and an end. Also, you would be correct in the "Self awareness" part in that this would constitute a first realization (Alpha), but does not support the "without beginning" only the "Alpha" portion within the "without beginning or end". But, reference to "God falling" would not be God, but the Gnostic Codex, implication to the "Demiurge" and the byproduct of the fall. Yet my mid reference to the first emotion of "Love" can be likened to the scientific entropy definition as follows:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/entropy
Entropy
A measure of the amount of energy in a physical system not available to do work. As a physical system becomes more disordered, and its energy becomes more evenly distributed, that energy becomes less able to do work. For example, a car rolling along a road has kinetic energy that could do work (by carrying or colliding with something, for example); as friction slows it down and its energy is distributed to its surroundings as heat, it loses this ability. The amount of entropy is often thought of as the amount of disorder in a system. See also heat death.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/heat%20death
Heat death
The eventual dispersion of all of the energy within a physical system to a completely uniform distribution of heat energy, that is, to maximum entropy. Heat death for all macroscopic physical systems, including the universe, is predicted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. See more at entropy, thermodynamics.


Therefore, in my last statement, I indicate that, metaphorically, that creation is an inward reflection, projected outward to the material universe, similar to the comparison to a white-hole within a black-hole.

P.S.: Your reference to "pieces???" would most likely be translated to energy "fragmentation".
The Reality of knowing what Wisdom is, is in the Experiencing of the Philosophy of using Knowledge.
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Tadstormy
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Tadstormy »

God created the world and man to give himself a body. God cannot exist uninstantiated outside of a body. God wears many different masks and faces. God seeking God is the only cosmic purpose.
edelker
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by edelker »

Tadstormy

Theists simply do not know why god created. They will argue that such answers live only in the mind of god. Some might venture answers similar to what you cited above. But some of those theists that I call ‘normative theists’ will state that whatever the reason, god created this world because it’s the only way to get to the best of all possible worlds. God had to give us free will and allow people to choose in order for this best possible world to become realized. I think we can rightly reject this answer.

One, what of god’s existence prior to any creation? How is his infinite-all good existence not already the best of all possible worlds?

Two, we know this answer is flatly false. One way we can know this is by use of the very definition of god provided to us by such theists: god is all knowing, all powerful, and all loving.

Now, it is safe to say that whatever a finite and fallible being can imagine, certainly an all-powerful and all-knowing being can imagine. Moreover, if we who are fallible can understand that a good person would do what is best given the options and knowledge available to such a one, it is reasonable to suppose that an all-good and all-loving being would do so.

So, here’s the issue: did god have other possible options for creating a different world wherein free-will existed but such beings chose (freely) to always do what is morally right? The answer should be obvious: “yes.” Even two-thirds of heaven’s angels could choose (recall Lucifer’s rebellion) but chose not to fall with Satan. Therefore, even in Christian theology we have this possibility spelled out.


(1) god had all possible worlds to choose from.


(2) god is all-powerful, all-good, all knowing etc.


(3) Yet, god didn’t choose the best of all possible worlds. Now, how do we know this? Because we finite and imperfect beings can easily imagine such a world. In fact, we can read fictional stories of perfect worlds wherein all have free-will and are in absolute moral harmony with all other being. Thus, there’s nothing prohibiting god from also imagining this.

Therefore, it cannot be the case that god HAD to create this world in this way. Such a being began with imperfect conditions, foreknowing what would happen, and doing nothing to prohibit one of the worst of all possible worlds from emerging (Hell). This, then, shows the above argument to be questionable at best.

God had the power to create such a world. His intrinsic moral nature would seem to necessitate such a creation, if god decided to create. Yet, god chose an inferior option that brought about a form of justice that could have been avoided.

Even though we could say that we don’t know why such a being created, we know that he created a morally inferior universe that generated one of the worst possible worlds imaginable (Hell). We have every right to think that it is likely that this version of god doesn’t exist or exists in a way that such theists assert. Again, this isn’t to argue that this defeats all theism. Rather, it only addresses this particular, though popular, brand of it (normative theism).

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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by enegue »

Tadstormy wrote: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?
Where did you get the idea that God didn't or doesn't lack anything? Clearly: before he created light, he lacked light; before he created the material universe, he lacked the material universe; before he created Man, he lacked Man.

Why does an artist, paint or a scrulptor, sculpt? Why does a poet write poetry or a chef cook? BECAUSE THEY CAN!

Cheers
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edelker
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by edelker »

Eugene wrote,

“Where did you get the idea that God didn't or doesn't lack anything? Clearly: before he created light, he lacked light; before he created the material universe, he lacked the material universe; before he created Man, he lacked Man.”


Tadstormy can certainly answer for himself here-but I think you misunderstood the point: god was already, and in a manner of speaking, the perfect universe-lacking nothing meaningfully. In other words, he didn’t have to create anything at all.


Eugene wrote,


“Why does an artist, paint or a scrulptor, sculpt? Why does a poet write poetry or a chef cook? BECAUSE THEY CAN!”


No, one, such people paint and sculpt for lots of reasons, many reasons that are not at all compatible with one another. Two, I think you’re confusing the ability to create with the reason why a perfect creator would ‘want’ to create at all. Three, are you suggesting that god has always created simply because he always could? Four, why would god have created a physically and morally inferior universe when he clearly had other options available?


Eric D.
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Re: Why did God create the world and man?

Post by Joepwalker »

I think it is a mistake to say that God created the universe out of some kind of necessity as God isn't contingent upon anything else for his existence. God created the universe out of desire because God is a relational God. It is also important to remember that God didn't create an imperfect world thus this isn't a limitation of God.
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