Life, Already Planned? - Page 3

The hardest part about these discussions is that we all have preconceptions and misconceptions. I know little but think much myself. Suess has paraphrased the Bible saying that we are created in God's likeness or image. He like a lot of others assumes that a perfect god would create a perfect world or some such it seems. I think that could mean the GotB (God of the Bible) created us to have self awareness, freedom of choice, somesuch aspect but not necessarily to be perfect. I don't think likeness is necessarily equivalent to exactness and so what characteristics are we lacking/similiar?

Also, perfect is such a vague meaningless word without help. Perfect in who's view, by what standards, to what end???

This leads me to the Life, Already planned comment. If there is a perfect God then what is perfect to him? If he has planned our lives will and why should they have to be perfect in our view?

OH and I am still far from convinced that evolution is fact. I am a Biology major and after much study still find more ifs involved than reading the bible. Not that I am totally dismissing it...never...just scientifically analysing the data don't see a solid case, yet. If anyone knows of a book or site that may be helpful one way or the other please let me know for goodness sake. This is one of my greater interest.

hello hermit, i believe you mistook what i was saying. what i was saying was that the bible says that we were created in his image and likeness. that is directly from the bible. yet the quote that was used was that we are imperfect to him on a road seeking perfection. well would you ever create something imperfect expecting it to make its self perfect. that doesnt make much sense. also i believe thier is a god, again not the god you believe in but a higher power none the less. something had to have created everything. and if you look around i think you will find that the entire universe works and is in order PERFECTLY. one more thing. you said that biology's claim on evolution has to many holes which you are right, but their is not one piece of concrete evidence of a god... you can argue until your blue in the face, there just isnt. so how does this all work i believe it must be both.

okcitykid has a good point of outcomes being affected by desicons, a good natured, on the 'right' path' will be more likely to refuse taking drugs etc. However, I don't believe that our choices have a pre-determined outcome. One decision may open up a number of different possible ourtcomes, and we may change the affects of our choice at any time, if conditions allow.

I too agree with OK's comments, esp. in regard to the limits of possible consequences which we could confront. As pointed out by crowed, we have many preceptions which may well be erroneous. In the biblical sense, GOD is said to be omi-present as well as omi-potent. Which lacking any examples my preception is that time is like a number line (math) or perhaps a vector of physics. So to GOD our lives could be similar to a vector, GOD in His Being is beyond the limits of time. A hard concept to comprehend but God before the beginning of our existence is aware of the end of our existence (physical life). But the concept of being given free-will would seem to imply that we may change which consequence we choose otherwise why have free-will if we don't have the ability to make any other choice?
That GOD being spiritual in nature (beyond the physical?) gave man a soul which is closely related to the spiritual aspect of GOD therefore we were made in His Image, ie having a soul relating to our physical/spiritual aspect of being.
As the bible states GOD as being unchanging may be indictive of the spiritual nature thus GOD created this realm for the express purpose of evolving (changing) our spiritual nature by (giving) creating the physical being man to encase our spiritual essence?

does this mean that when we create robots (in our own image) we are now playing god? maybe this is a bit off topic, but im curious now...

When they clone a being are they creating life?
Actually artificial intelligence may come come close to playing God but then man has a long history of trying to be GOD. In the OT, Eve & then Adam chose the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge rather than the Tree of Life. They sought to steal HIS Powers which they thought resulted from HIS knowledge, not realizing that HIS Power is manifest by HIS BEING.

i have a question, do u think that by cloning you create a soul, or is a soul created by life itself. i am haveing a hard time putting this into words. but what i mean is, is a soul created by man or god.

Tough question? Hmm . . . Jeudo-Christian belief is that although animals have a spirit, they do not have a soul (?). http://www.captaincynic.com/thread.php3/frmid=12-u-thrdid=19358-u-page=0
#19369

Sorry about the delayed responce but after reading various threads. I would question certain considerations of human DNA's role in the life process, in a religious context GOD created all things, which means he is the giver of life.
As life exist as cells, bacteria, fungus, etc. then the spark of life is the creative act comes from GOD. So I can see that a human clone may have a soul.

Is our life planned? Are we in control? Alot of ppl seem to be asking the same questions these days.
It could be that we are just looking for an excuse for our not so successful existance....or maybe we are starting to step Outside The Box.
Kariik, can you step outside the box? You have this theory that life is planned because of some intricaties you have encountered...but your theory is not complete unless you can answer how and why.

ok be warned i believe in god.

ok my believe is that we have a destiny but this destiny has many different tracks and decisions.
I believe that when we will be born is planned and I believe that our going is plan to but can be changed according to the decisions we make in life. I believe that we have a perfect life plan by god if we believe in him and accept it. I believe from the day we our born we our plague with choices. The choice to be gods follower is always there and if taken leads us on a great path with rewards and almost perfect life but the problem is that we can still fall off track because of ourselves and then when we do that we end up back on the wrong track and have to make the decision to get back on the right track gods track if we stay on gods track and do not let ourselves fall to ourselves weaknesses we will live our lives fully planned and destine until its our time to join god in heaven but if we fall to our own choices or do not chose gods track at all our lives jus keeps going from one decision to another where god is trying to get us to chose him but the devil is also working against us he is given us so much more decisions and wrong tracks than god god is given us one and the devil is giving us 10's to 100's of wrong choices in life all leading to trials and tribulations and leading us farer and farer away from gods one small decision that can saves us all but god never gives up he is always there to save us but he still gives us our complete freewill which is our downfall cus it is usually driven by our greatest weakness selfishness. And death if we chose gods path death will comes to us in its proper plan already time but if we fall to all the other tracks (paths) death can come at anytime in anyone of these tracks.

Well I cud write that better and longer but think yall get the idea if yall understand it.
Dwight e. fox
Bahamas

This was said before, and you touched the idea a little bit.Ofcourse, its simply a matter of common sense that if you do the right things, U will lead a riteous life etc, and then according to ur belief maybe will go on to heaven or whatever.U are faced with a number of choices, and chosing one of the choices leads to other choices and so on. It takes an affort not to drink alcohol or have pre-martial sex etc, and ofcourse you always want to choose the easier way.I'll not say anything else regarding the devil etc, as its a matter of beleif. However, for animals . there is no 'right' or 'wrong' path, as they only have the R-complex(the part of the brain which only has instincts etc) In primitive cave man times cavemen induldged in what we call 'immoral' acts,because their brains had not developed, you can say that they had only the 'devil' inside them and nothing else. But now our brains have evolved, and we can listen to parts of our barin other than the R-complex, which you can say presents us whith choices that lead us away from 'God's path.

question angel of death ur whole answer is based apon ya common sense line and evolution but ask ya self this question who or what created the common sense or in the evolution thoeory where did the first umm the very first stage or thing i dont no evolution so bare wit me come from who created the first speck hehe hey

the old joke question for that is which came first the chicken or the egg?, the mother or the child?, the sperm or genitals? ????????? it all had to come from somewhere so something had to create it unless i guess i dont have nough common sense to no that that its common sense right there the fact that it all had to come from somewhere created by sumthing or someone.

ok i think thats nough feel free to say wateva answer.

Dwight E. Fox
Bahamas

Well, scientists say that after the big bang, there was immense heat, which caused particles to speed up, and bump into each other, forming anti-matter. But as evrything cooled, the particles slowed down and strted to combine with each other to form different kinds of molecules etc. Anyway,these particles combined, to form organisims made up of 1 or two molecules, who died afterwards, however, some could develop reproductory systems, and were able to reproduce and so very, very slowly after billions of years more complicated organisims made up of 8 or 9 atoms began to develop and so on, leading eventually to us. But I am not denying that God created us, He had probably very little to do.Things just don't 'happen'. If God wanted He could have made the universe artibary,but He chose to let it evolve according to laws.
Anyway, I think this is goin a little off topic, you can have a disscussion on this in the thread 'the hardest question'

i believe life is planed out in many different ways. people as they grow up are given very important choices that they must decide on. we chose what we feel we want. but there are different outcomes for each thing we choose. we have choice to a certain extent, but after that it is all planned out, otherwise there would be no deja vu. how can we dream something that hasnt happened, unless we already know. but its the big decisions that really matter for living life differently.

ok ppl let me tell you a story....its a true story which I think about almost everyday.

Close to twenty years ago, a very good friend of mine told me of a book. A book that was written by her father when he was 18.
Apparently he had a memory that bothered him most of his junior life. When he was 18 he finally wrote about this memory in a diary. Here he recalls a time before he was born, when someone was showing him his whole life, to the day he would die.

As a child my friend and her siblings would read this book and wonder which of them was going to die. They would know about the divorce of their parents, they would know about the cancer in their father...and so on.

Up to the last time I talked to her everything in the book had come true.
I lost contact with her, but I heard that after her father died she joined some new age group, hoping to understand all of this.

so for me I am leaning more towards the idea that life is planned. It is an uncomfortable thought at first, but soon you start to treat life and everthing in it as an experience. Like reading a story you become a character, always wondering whats on the next page.