markstake

One topic I've never seen discussed is God's purpose. Not the traditional human view of "What's my purpose in life?" but what was God's original purpose in creating the universe, the Earth, mankind, etc.? What goal is/was God trying to achieve?

And why didn't He just go ahead and achieve it without all the mess of humanity?

(Assuming the Abrahamic belief of God as omnipotent creator)

Just

It seems strange that somone who knows everything and is perfect would need anything.

diana

Hm. You're assuming the existence of God for the sake of argument. If you were assuming it to reduce the conclusion that God exists to absurdity, it would belong here. However, it doesn't appear that way to me.

I'm moving this thread to General Religious Discussions.

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Luiseach

I think the question, if re-arranged, would make better sense.

Humanity creates gods/supernatural beings/alien invasions/angels/ghosties etc. as part of its search for purpose.

The invention of the supernatural is one way to infuse existence with meaning. The better way to do this is through science, reason, love and respect for oneself and others as human beings.

VivaHedone

Good post. Theists think that somehow shifting the problem of our existence to a supernatural level somehow explains everything. In reality, it just poses even more questions. This issue was raised in another thread - spurly claimed that god created us to show his love for us.

Some claim that this life is a test - this ignores the fact that an omniscient god would already know the outcome of such a test, rendering it unnecessary.

markstake

diana -

You wrote:
Appearances can be deceiving. That was exactly my intention.

The fact that I didn't start with my own conclusion shouldn't throw you. I didn't want to just declare an answer, I wanted some discussion about the question and see where it would go. As far as I know this is the start of as good an argument against the existence of God as an omnipotent creator as any.

Gemma Therese

God didn't need anything, but he wanted to share His love with us.

Gemma Therese

copernicus

Marstake, I think that this is about as coherent a response as you can expect. Our gods are clearly personifications of nature. They represent idealized humans. So Gemma finds no problem with your question. You are talking about a person that has desires, and you are asking what that person needed. Gemma doesn't want to admit the validity of your point, so her first comment was that her god doesn't "need" anything. She seems to know that much about this "ineffable" being. She then contradicts herself by telling you what her god needed--to "share" his "love" with us. Human gods need to be in a loving relationship with others, just like normal humans do.

The ultimate explanation for our gods' humanity is that they created us in their "image". Atheists and theists agree that there is some kind of "image" here. They just disagree on whether it is humans or their gods that constitution the "reflection".

diana

As soon as it has reached this point, drop a PM to one of the mods here and ask them to move it back. Until then, until shown to be an EoG argument, it remains here.

Your thread being moved is not intended as an insult in any way, btw. It's merely "housekeeping." We try to keep threads pertaining to certain subjects in the forums intended to discuss those subjects, so that they get the best possible audience for the subject matter.

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oriecat

How could he love us when we didn't exist? And if he really did love us, then wouldn't it have been better NOT to create us, since the vast majority of us are going to hell? And he would have known that!