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Eternal Life?
- Thread starter Windwalker
- Start date
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I believe that all humans have a soul that continues to exist forever (is eternal) but that is not to be confused with eternal life, which is a state of the soul that is near to God, meaning that they know and love God. One way to know and love God is by recognizing Jesus so that is why believing in Jesus conferred eternal life.
Jesus referred to eternal life, but He was not referring to physical life of the body. He was referring a quality of life, loving God and being close to God, and we can have eternal life both in this world and in the next world (afterlife). It is a state of the soul that is near to God.
John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
1 John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
John 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
I believe that the soul (spirit) of man is immortal, so no matter what people believe or disbelieve no soul ever actually perishes, so perish in John 3:16 means being far from God.
“The immortality of the spirit is mentioned in the Holy Books; it is the fundamental basis of the divine religions. Now punishments and rewards are said to be of two kinds: first, the rewards and punishments of this life; second, those of the other world. But the paradise and hell of existence are found in all the worlds of God, whether in this world or in the spiritual heavenly worlds. Gaining these rewards is the gaining of eternal life. That is why Christ said, “Act in such a way that you may find eternal life, and that you may be born of water and the spirit, so that you may enter into the Kingdom.” 2” Some Answered Questions, p. 223
Those people who are veiled from God, although their soul continues to exist in the spiritual world after their physical body dies.
“In the same way, the souls who are veiled from God, although they exist in this world and in the world after death, are, in comparison with the holy existence of the children of the Kingdom of God, nonexisting and separated from God.”
Some Answered Questions, p. 243
I don't believe that Christians were ever promised "eternal" life.
If we take Romans 6:23 e.g.....
The Greek word is "aiōnios" which is translated in the NASB as...
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
But "aiōnios" means....
- without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be
- without beginning
- without end, never to cease, everlasting."
It should be more correctly rendered as "everlasting life"..."life without end".
In the literal meaning of the word, only one personage can be "eternal" and that is God himself.
Since it is only God who is timeless (eternal), logically then, all life on earth is not timeless because it has a beginning. Only human life was originally meant to be "everlasting"...i.e. God put into place the means for human life to be without end. The "tree of life" in the garden of Eden was the means, but access to that tree was conditional.....humans could only live forever if they were obedient to God's command. There was only one, and it wasn't even a difficult command.....but the humans did not obey God and lost access to the only means to keep them alive perpetually. (Genesis 3:22-24)
Death now came in the same way to humans as it did to animals. Solomon lamented this fact. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)
So, yes, since no one is promised tomorrow, all we have is right now. We can learn from the past and look forward to (or even dread) things that may happen in the future......but we all have an expectation to go on living....the main reason for that is I believe, that we have no 'program' for this life to end. Death was not meant to happen, because life was supposed to be "everlasting" from day one.
The only way for death to be overcome now, according to scripture, is for God to eventually restore life, (John 5:28-29) and for humans to regain access to the trees of life. (Revelation 22:1-2) God created the earth for us and us for the earth....it was never his intention to take us anywhere else. We were placed on this earth with God's attributes so that we could represent him here as caretakers of his precious creation.
That is how I understand the Bible's scenario in Genesis.
The Anointed
Well-Known Member
All life can trace its beginning to God; "who has no beginning." But not all who originated in God, will remain in the memory of God.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
What about these verses?
It is obvious from the verses below that everlasting life means the same thing as eternal life.
John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
1 John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
John 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life,and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
John 4:13-14 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
But that Life, that is considered "eternal Life", has no beginning. It originates in God. 2 Cor 4:18 "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." If God gives the gift of himself, that is the eternal life of God given to the human. God's Spirit, in other words. It is speaking about God's being in our lives. Which being, is without beginning or end, or timeless, or eternal. It never changes, and is Life itself.
It may help you to refer to life on earth, as life-forms. Or forms that Life takes. Lifeforms, have beginnings. Life itself, is eternally from God, and is God's being itself. Spirit. That which animates all forms of life.
Of course I do not read the Genesis creation myth literally. These portraits are not meant to be understood scientifically, but allegorically. That is a mistake of the modern mind, trying to make ancient stories, inform us about a correct scientific understanding.
Solomon does not refer to humans previously not dying like animals. He just laments that despite all our glories, we return to the dust just like all other lifeforms. It's not a statement of comparison of what we "used to be like" to what we are now. We've always died, but yet why should that be so, is the lamment.
I would also note, that in that same chapter he also says in verse 11, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Notice how that "eternal life" is in here too? It is saying exactly what I am, that "eternity in the human heart", that cannot be fathomed, because it is the nature of God, and who can fathom that? You see?
But death to the forms that Life takes, has always occurred. It's how the system of life on earth sustains and supports itself. It is always reborn as another lifeform, from the beginning of life taking form on earth. That fits the actual evidence that we have.
How we speak of ourselves and our origins poetically, has great value. But that value does not mean we have to take the symbols as literally, factually true, when clearly there is nothing "on the ground" that would transform our creative stories, as literal facts. To deny facts in favor of our stories, denies of the value of both. I find holding each ways of understanding of complimentary value, rather than a competition of truth.
All of this is a metaphor. Having eternal life, simply means you are Awake to God's timeless Presence. It doesn't mean this guy I am right now, will always continue without physical death. It does mean however that spiritually, I am alive in God. The body is just a housing for that Life. Where we as an individual see it or not, changes how that Life is lived in the body; either in Light, or in darkness of the mind.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
energy cannot be destroyed
so I've heard
now if that Energy happens to be cognitive..........
may the Force be with you
Its true that "life" originates with God...but what is this "life" that he gifts to his creatures? Does he give it at conception or with our first breath? Even science has difficulty defining "life"...after all, plants are living things too. What kind of life do plants have?
Is the life that animals experience anywhere near what God gave to us? We alone are made in his image...but why? What is our purpose here?
God gave life to all living things, but its not something he puts into every lifeform individually.
Reproduction is a process that is programmed into all those lifeforms....its in their DNA to survive and reproduce their "kind".....and requires nothing from God to perpetuate that life. It's all automatic....pre-programmed.
Even human life is not the product of God giving breath to individuals......its a process that he put in place from the beginning. We are not the highest lifeforms in existence, but we are the highest on this planet. We are not accident of evolution but created to reflect God's qualities because he placed us here as caretakers. We were to have "in subjection"...all other forms of life, to care for and to make sure that their habitats stayed pristine so that their lives could be a joy as well as a responsibility to us.
Yes, God's spirit animates all life......but we are the only lifeform offered everlasting life. For the rest of creation, life was to be a self-perpetuating cycle.....governed largely by instinct....not needing anything but a watchful eye......but not so, humans. We alone have free will.
I do not doubt that the Genesis account is literal.....just because of its brevity and lack of scientific explanation, doesn't mean that the greatest scientist in existence speaks merely in metaphors. The people to whom he gave the Genesis account were not scientifically minded, so going into detail would have been a waste of space in his instruction manual. Science had thousands of years to catch up.
"Correct scientific understanding" is actually an oxymoronic statement IMO. There is nothing absolutely "correct" about science unless there is proof. A good deal of theoretical science is unproven and based on assumptions, not real facts. So I won't swap the Bible for science because that would just be swapping one unproven theory for another even more unprovable theory. I believe that there is way more evidence for creation than there will ever be for evolution. Science is not my religion.
Solomon's lament seems to be focused on why humans have a finite existence when God's word says that they are superior to all other lifeforms. What was the point of death if we are made in God's image? God doesn't die, so why should we? Why give us a fear of death when no other creature has it?
Animals have no concept of death....they live "now" and when death comes they have no preparation for it, but nor do they spend time worrying about it, like we do. We are the only creatures who can contemplate our own death.....that seems cruel if death was meant to be part of the scheme of things....? Why is there grief and mourning?
The ancient Jews had no belief in an afterlife in heaven; they believed in the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth after the appearance of their Messiah....so everlasting life as described in Genesis was a puzzle to him. (Genesis 3:22-24)
He knew Messiah was coming, but he had no details about what his coming would accomplish. Jewish expectations were not met in Jesus Christ, so they rejected him. But Jesus supplied more details about the Kingdom of God and what it would accomplish. It was an unfolding mystery. (Romans 16:25-27)
Putting 'eternity into the hearts' of mankind just reinforces the idea that we cannot accommodate the thought of not being here. We alone are designed for unending life......it is something we lost right at the beginning, so to dismiss Genesis as myth, loses all the reasons for why Jesus came, what his death meant, why there was a need for a Kingdom, and why we find death so repugnant.
That doesn't mean that it was meant to happen...the Bible explains why we die....and why no human has ever lived a thousand years. God told the humans that they would die in the "day" that they ate the forbidden fruit. (2 Peter 3:8) A thousand years is a "day" to God.
Are you suggesting reincarnation? There is no such teaching in the Bible. It teaches "resurrection" which is a restoration of life....a return to the life you had before, as the person you were before....only without the things that made you suffer. The first thing Jesus did on many occasions, before he taught people, was to cure them of their illnesses.....that made their concentration a whole lot better so that they could take in what he was teaching them....and they had a foregleam of what life could be without pain. (Revelation 21:3-4)
You think its just poetry? I find that rather sad....TBH.
I find just the opposite....I find the science to be godless, leading people to lack faith rather than having it built up. To most people today, science is their 'religion'.....It's a pathetic swap IMO....but it tells God who still has faith.
Again...who says? God does not lie. There are metaphors...but you have to be able to discern the difference. The Bible itself explains which is which. You can't make something into a metaphor just because you can't explain it.
Jesus resurrected some people when he walked the earth....a couple of his apostles did too.
But the one thing that was outstanding in the resurrections that Jesus performed, was that he gave those ones back to their families. We are not supposed to be separated from the people we love.
You can wave away anything you wish with "pie-in-the-sky" explanations, but no human imaginings can alter the truth.
We have a purpose here and God never intended for that purpose to be sidelined, even though it might have been sidetracked for while.....what God starts, he finishes. (Isaiah 55:11) And he has all the time in the world to do it.
Everything has that same Life. Every cell. Every molecule. Everything that vibrates with Life. The forms those take, collecting together as a human, or as a blade of grass, is the same Life.
Is the animal's experience of this Life that God gives, anywhere near the human's experience? That's really an impossible question to answer without being able experience what it is to be a bird, and what is also like to be human to compare. I would say this, I believe every lifeform has the capacity to experience God, in the fullness of what that lifeform is capable of experiencing. God to a bird, and God to a human, is still God.
I'm confused in your thinking. The programming we receive by nature, is for our survival. I'm not sure why that programming means that Life is not in each individual organism. Doesn't scripture say God knows each sparrow that falls?
I can't agree with this. Each individual is known of God, and God's breath is in each.
Each lifeform has its specialty that gives in an advantage in this world. If you were to rank the lifeforms which are best adapted to life on this planet, it would probably be something on the order of the dragonfly, not humans.
As far as us being stewards... that would be nice. Unfortunately our appetites for money, lead us elsewhere.
Yet, 99.98% of all humans are run in that self-perpetuating programming, just like the rest of nature. Very, very few are awake to that. So we can claim to have free will, but unless someone shows otherwise, they barely can escape the programming enough to show otherwise.
It's hard for a lot of people to understand what metaphors really are. They speak truth beyond facts. They speak to the human imagination. But I honestly don't know what you mean by the greatest scientist in existence? You mean God? That's like saying God is the greatest taxi cab driver in existence. Why would God be a scientist? Because we see religion in competition with science?
Genesis has nothing to do with modern science. You waste your energies distracted by such efforts to make it that.
We actually don't know if other animals don't have the fear of death like we do. We assume they don't. Yet, each animal fights to stay alive. The anxieties we have, may be higher than other animals because of the size of our brains. But that seems both a curse and a blessing. A blessing, because we get to choose to face the idea of death before actual death, and that can lead to a more enlightened life, for those very, very few who choose to face that existential dilemma.
So far as you know. I personally doubt we are alone in this. I more than imagine other species being so taxed in their own ways.
Elephants are known to grieve and mourn their dead just as us. Other species as well, I'm sure. To me, this creates a larger narrative than just the human dilemma.
Oh hardly. It makes the Presence of God, immediate. To be experienced here and now, not in some imaged tomorrow, or in remembering the past. It's no longer a story we believe in, but the very air we breathe.
Of course we are designed for eternal life. It comes from God. We already have it. What we do with that, if we drink of it, if we see it, if we live that, is entirely up to where we choose to look. Genesis is a mythology, not that it is a lie or something false. Not whatsoever. But mythology is a story about something that transcends our common words. We use pictures and imagery to tell truths. That is what mythology actually is. It is Truth, in story form. Not dull science.
Howard Is
Lucky Mud
Amen to that brother
There’s internal, external, and eternal ... is another way of looking at it.
Again....define "life". There is a vast difference between life experienced as a human, and life as a blade of grass.....only here to provide fodder for other creatures.
You honestly believe that other creatures consciously acknowledge God?
When was the last time to saw birds or horses worshiping their creator.....or admiring something that the Creator designed to delight human senses? Like a sunset or a rainbow? Or a star filled sky? Seriously, they have no comprehension. They are driven by instinct and God created some "domestic" creatures to interact with humans, and some "wild" creatures who still delight us but don't live with us. This is all in Genesis.
Is that what I said?
I believe that life is passed on by other life, just as it was designed to do. God does not put breath into each creature individually....not even humans. Life is the gift that we give to others. It comes from God in the way he created us, but God has little to do with each conception.
Life is put here to perpetuate itself, but for humans, an act of rape can create a life....you think God was there doing that? He made laws against that, but they only apply to humans.
There is no such thing as rape in the animal kingdom....why is that? Why do only we have morals?
God is a reader of hearts...unless you search for him, and genuinely seek to find him, you are 'dead' to him.
Sin is a barrier between us and God and the only way to remove that barrier is to accept Christ as your savior and have your sins forgiven.....it requires repentance and a sincere desire never to repeat that sin again. I dare say that, under those circumstances, the majority of the world's human population is "dead" right now.....alive and breathing....but spiritually dead.
"Best adapted"....seriously? God is the Creator, not the adaptor. He designed his creatures for the habitat he provided for them. If for some reason these were forced from their natural habitat into a new one, with new kinds of food and changed conditions, then and only then will the adaptation develop to suit the new circumstances. That is brilliant programming. The result of clever design.
But why? If we are created in God's image, why do we not reflect it? Where did our aberrant appetites come from? Certainly not from God.
The drive to perpetuate our species is as strong as it is in any species, but we alone understand that sex drive is for reproduction. We alone are consciously aware of the consequences of sex. Animals copulate because they are programmed to reproduce. Not because they want 'children'. But there are rules about our reproduction that don't apply to any other creatures. Only we have a moral sense that should be governing our behavior.
No! Because science is the study of God's creation....he created what science studies. He understands science better than any human because he created the subject matter. How can you separate them?
Genesis has everything to do with science.....it takes us from the creation of the Universe to the preparation of the planet for habitation, and gives us the order in which sentient life appeared on this carefully prepared earth. Where is the distraction or waste of energy?
"Fight or flight" is an automatic response in most creatures. Until they are chased down and captured in the jaws of a predator, they have no idea what death is. They just experience it as it happens. That's the kindness of God demonstrated in the animal kingdom.....no fear of death.
We, on the other hand fear it for ourselves and our loved ones.....we dread it because God never intended for us to die. We are simply not programmed for death.
How is being able to contemplate your own death a blessing? And why didn't God "bless" other creatures with this knowledge?
Think of all the work that some people put into getting a University degree...years of hard slog, only to get totaled by a truck the day after gaining their degree.....death is described in the Bible as an "enemy"....surely you can see why.
Animals who are designed to live in family groups do appear to grieve the loss of a family member, just as mothers and others in monkey troupes appear to grieve the loss of an infant. How much of that is programming and how much is actual emotion, we don't really know, but most in the animal kingdom do not grieve the loss of a herd member. Death is taken in their stride, generally.
The everlasting life that we were meant to live was right here on earth, in paradise conditions that we were supposed to create, according to Genesis. God did not alter his plans just because a few rebels derailed his purpose temporarily. God always finishes what he starts. (Isaiah 55:11)
He used their rebellion to teach us valuable lessons.
I see no reason whatsoever why Genesis cannot be literal.....it just didn't take place in 7x24 hour days, is all. The story is told in simple terms, but that doesn't mean that the process was simple at all. The Bible is not mythology....it is a factual account of creation.....who said it wasn't?
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Time is spiral - linear (progressing) and cyclical (repetitive/periodical). Everlasting life is not timeless - it's still passing through time. Eternity is different. I think of it as no past and no present - just now. Nothing slips away and nothing is anticipated. All is present simultaneously.
Timelessness in time? As we are aware of a moment it's already gone in the past.
For us only here and now is directly experienced as real (present) but our mind usually wanders to memories and plans. Mindfulness is ability to stay and observe at this window/door where moments are coming and passing. To be fully (not just physically) present in present. You stand in a river but your view is firmly where you stand.
Life, is vital existence. There is only one Life, which animates all lifeforms as different expressions of that one same Life, which comes from God.
I have said that how humans experience God is in the human way. Cats experience God in a cat way. Grass in a grass way. As an example, how a spider sees the world through its eyes, is very much different than how a human sees through its eyes. But both are seeing the world, through the eyes of that organism that they are.
As far as plants "only here to provide fodder for other creatures," I think that is a really dim view of life as nothing much, or of little value. Plants exist for the sake of plants, which to me is for the sake of God. Jesus pointed out that a plant in the field, expresses more glory than king Solomon. I completely agree. I see all life as from God, including grass. As such, I honor it, especially when I consume it for my bodily existence. None of it is "only fodder". It's all a gift from God, and all lifeforms should be honored. "Give thanks always", for that bed of greens you picked and are about to eat.
I would say unconsciously. What we call "conscious" generally means we are actively thinking about it as an object of thought. What I believe is all life is "aware" of God, on whatever level that awareness occurs, as just "sense", without active thought, or mental objects. Let me put it a simple way. Are fish aware of the water that they swim in? No. Not consciously, as "this is water we are in". It just is reality to them, without conscious thought. Yet they are certainly aware of it, even if it is completely invisible to their minds, such as those might be.
Now compare that with this. "In him we live and move and have our being". We are aware of God at all times, even if we are not consciously, actively thinking about it. It's just Reality, we don't normally recognize or pay attention to. But the religious experience, the peak experience, the awakening experience, the born again experience, is when we wake up and recognize what we've been living in the whole time, but was unseen to our conscious minds. We now realize the Ocean that we live in, and it that which animates all lifeforms from itself, and gives them a watery, or spiritual home to live in.
Everytime I hear a bird sing, or see a horse standing in the field feeling the wind blowing through its mane. Their very existence is worship to God.
"The heavens declare the glory of God,
the firmament showeth his handiwork,
day unto day uttereth speech,
night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no place where the voice is not heard."
the firmament showeth his handiwork,
day unto day uttereth speech,
night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no place where the voice is not heard."
If you don't see that when you see God's creatures in the world, you might try seeing that. The whole thing is a chorus of worship to the Creator.
It's in your interpretation of Genesis, which seems to dim your view of Creation as just a bunch of stuff for us, and non inherently valuable in and of itself for its own sake, long before we came along on the seen. Even in a literal reading of Genesis as a book of science, it says after each day "It was good". That's God saying it is good. Without humans on the scene.
This is the problem you get when you read Genesis with a literal eye, and not a poetic eye. A literal eye might imagine God, as a type of person with a body of sorts, sitting on the ground and fashioning some clay into a figurine and setting it on top of a rock. He then performs some sort of supernatural magic and blows air from his mouth onto the figurine and it comes to life and starts moving around on its own.
The poetic eye reads that story and sees it as a way to say that all life comes from God. The actual mechanism of it, of course was a mystery to them, but for the purpose of connecting life as coming from God, the stories were created as a way to communicate that Reality beyond human comprehension. That is exactly how I personally read Genesis, with that eye.
So does God individually, personally visit each flesh-blob and breathe into its nostrils, just like that first clay figurine on the rock? In a deep metaphysical way, beyond what we can comprehend, just like in the imagined first instance of human life, yes. God animates all living things from himself. That "automatic programming", is simply Spirit doing what Spirit does every moment of every day.
A way to help understand that view which I am sharing, is to realize that God's creation, was not a one time event in the historic past. Rather, everything we see, everyday, is God creating, in the present tense, moment by moment, actively. This is what we can see though the natural sciences. Evolution, is creating lifeforms all the time, things that did not exist as they were before. That is God creating, right before our eyes, hiding in plain sight, unrecognized because we have it stuck in our minds God did all that 6000 years ago, or some imaginary number humans came up with in the past and stuck with to make things easier to think about for themselves.
I had the unfortunate experience the other day, while sitting meditating in my garden, to witness not 8 feet direct in front of my eyes on the trunk of a tree, a male squirrel seize and violently penetrate a female squirrel, and then ran off her when finished to climb the tree. She remained there, stunned, shocked, immobile, and recovering. That looked a lot like rape to me. Squirrel rape.
As an aside, a few days later, same situation, two bunnies decided they would get it on in front of me too. Their sex was much more mutually respectful, jumping around, flips of happiness, turning away when not ready, inviting when ready. Bunnies do not appear to be rapists like their fellow garden inhabitants, the neurotic squirrel.
Do we? I don't agree. Research clearly show other animals species demonstrate a sense of fairness, and they have social rules with each other about following those. I could provide links for you if you wish. Social orders exist for the benefit of the individuals in the groups, and when there are those that don't follow the rules, they are censured by the others. This happens in primate families. This happens in other species as well. That is the basis of human moral systems. We simply adopted what evolution brought the world before us, into our human social structures. Just a modification on a theme already in existence, before us.
One is never dead to God. God however may be dead to us. God is always 'knocking at the door', but if we are deaf, we don't listen. It's not that God is hiding from us, or that we are dead to God. Consider the lament of David, "Take not your Spirit from me". He externalized, projected onto God, as if God was removing himself from David, when it was actually just David turning his eyes away from God in shame. God literally does not go anywhere. It only seems like it because of ourselves and our responses to God's Presence.
I think God creating creatures to be able to adapt and evolve, is a highly ingenious creative strategy, don't you? Look at how it accounts for the the existence of every lifeform on this planet? Adaptability, is designed right into it, by God.
continued....
That does mean it's worthless. But as far as contributing to a scientific understanding of the world, it is worthless. It's also worthless to sports, and space flight. Genesis is a beautiful story, rich and full of truth and meaning. But when you try to make it scientific, that is a distraction from that beauty. It's an effort to pound a round peg into a square hole. You're suppose to put the round peg in the round hole.
But these same creatures, through the magic of adaptation, are able to survive in a wide range of habitats, not just some narrow niche environment. That's a good thing, considering how our habitats change. Nature is beautiful and mysterious, far beyond what we limit it to be in our stories about it.
Sure. Evolution is how God creates.
They are dysfunctions. Anything that is good, can be made bad by overuse and abuse. Why we choose the negative over the positive in our lives? That's an incredibly deep question. Because we feel alone? Because we feel unloved and want to self-destruct? This is the whole heart of the religious question. I see it all as an existential crisis. Right now, the whole world is the throes of just that, a collective, global, existential crisis. Where is joy? Why is the bunny happy, and I am not?
The programming I am referring to is not biological reproduction, but programming our behaviors and thought patterns in such a way as we do not recognize that we are in fact not exercising free will at all, but are simply running the programs we were programmed with through culture and society. It's like what Socrates pointed to in saying, the unexamined life is not worth the living. 99.98% of people alive, never examine what drives and motivates them, but simply just let the programs run. They are asleep. The call of God is to Awaken.
No. Science is a human way of looking at nature, or the study of God's creation. That does not make God a human doing human science. God didn't create science. Humans created it, or used the various tools of the human mind and experimentation in order to look at God's creation. God created the world. How the world is understood, is a matter of perspective. God did not create the telescope, but humans use it to understand God's creation.
All creation myths have an order of events that create a story of how things began. That does not make them actually scientific. It does not explain the mechanisms of anything. It's poetic, not detailed and scientific. It can't be used to explain the natural world. It has nothing to contribute to the fields of science.
That does mean it's worthless. But as far as contributing to a scientific understanding of the world, it is worthless. It's also worthless to sports, and space flight. Genesis is a beautiful story, rich and full of truth and meaning. But when you try to make it scientific, that is a distraction from that beauty. It's an effort to pound a round peg into a square hole. You're suppose to put the round peg in the round hole.
These again are of course nothing more than assumptions. I think a safe assumption would be, it's possible that in some life forms which have the capacity for the level of intelligence we do, such as elephants or dolphins, it seems possible that they have existential questions as well. You don't know what it is to have the mind of an elephant, but to assume they are just dumb automatons, is safe to say an outdated, and wrong assumption, coming out of reductionistic thought.
We are programmed to experience emotions. And when we do they are real emotions. Same with animals experiencing emotion. We are not so distinctly different from other animals. We're just really smart monkeys with oversized brains. We were not created in the vacuum of space with not relationship with other animals, or they with us.
I want to swing back to this question, and a couple others I left unaddressed. The blessing for that, is because it allows us to question what we are programmed with as being really real. The prospect of dying puts life into perspective, which can lead to an awakening experience, where one finds Truth in the world.
I've heard it put this way, that what makes humans unique (as far as we assume this anyway), is that we face not just one death, but two deaths. We consider that our bodies will die, like all lifeforms do. But we also have that sense of "Me", or that individual self which we identify with that is going to face death. It's not just the body that dies, but that "self" or that "I" that will be no more. And that latter thought, is terrifying to most. "I will be no more". This creates a general underlying anxiety about our own existence.
To ponder that prospect is both a cursing and a blessing. It's a curse, in that if we don't ever confront it, we spend our whole lives trying to deny it to ourselves, running from that confrontation. It's a blessing that if we do manage to face that void, that abyss of our own non-existence, it can be absolutely liberating. It's at that point, one somewhat envies that bunny rabbit who never had to face that terror of non-meaning. But I think the joy of liberation is like all rabbits everywhere, jumping for Joy.
I think you misunderstand when I use the term mythology. The Bible certainly contains mythologies. These are types of stories. According to the dictionary:
noun
- a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.
- stories or matter of this kind:realm of myth.
Genesis is not about the science of creation, but the reason for the Jewish Sabbath.
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Clearly all there is, is now. And we should be here now.
The question is, I think, whether our conscious mind persists after bodily death and experiences this now forever? And if so, what is the nature of this existence?
Muffled
Jesus in me
I believe Jesus is speaking about eternal life in a physical body.
Muffled
Jesus in me
I believe that is a different kind of eternal life. It is the presence of goodness in the spirit. I already have that in part but when I receive an imperishable body I will have it fully.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Sorry, that is a big farce.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Its not. Judaism teaches a bodily resurrection in the world to come.