God and Spirit / Soul

[chookyman]

Two questions:

1) If god created this universe and al within it, who then created god? If god is a higher form, then it means that there is a form greater then god.

2) a soul or spirit exisit in the life of al living organisms (plant, animal, cel, bacteria etc).. So if god put a soul / spirit into life when it is created biologically through natural menas, how then can a cloned species exisit the same as a species created by nature and also have a soul? This is impossabble, because the spirit comes from god, not by man who created the species.

:roll:

 

[Master Vigil]

Many would say that god is not a higher being but the highest. Therefore, god always was, and always will be. I believe this, but not with god, I don't believe a perfect being or essence can have human qualities, therefore I believe the Tao always was, and always will be.

I also believe cloning to be perfectly natural. For I believe that anything that can be done, is infact natural. For if it wasn't natural, it would be impossible. I also believe that the soul is not given by god, but is in fact energy that has always been theirs. Not given, not taken, but always theirs. Therefore, I believe any cloned being to possess that soul which was always theirs.

 

[zipo29]

http://www.doesgodexist.org/Phamplets/WhoCreatedGod/WhoCreatedGod.html

This link helps explain why God was not created I too asked this question and I did not understand but after that explanation it help me see it in a new light maybe it will help you. I will post it if you don't like to go to the link

Note: the Writing below is not my own it is from the link above i just don't have time to explain in my own words so i thought to give you were i found a resonible answer.

WHO CREATED GOD?

It is easy to make an argument for God’s existence from a cosmological standpoint. As the years have gone by, a growing amount of scientific data has accumulated which negates atheistic assumptions about how matter and the cosmos came into existence and how it has arrived at its present condition. As a science teacher and public lecturer on the compatibility of belief in God and science, I have, been impressed with an increasing awareness on the part of many scientists and theologians that science and religion are symbiotic disciplines.
One question which inevitably comes up in a discussion of this nature is what is the origin of God? If God created matter/energy, and designed the systems that have propelled matter into its present arrangement, who or what accomplished that for God? Why is it any more reasonable to believe that God has always “been” than it is to say that matter has always “been”? As Carl Sagan has said, “If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?” (Cosmos, p. 257).

From a purely scientific standpoint, it is easy to demonstrate that matter cannot be eternal in nature. The universe is expanding from what appears to be a beginning point in space/time, which appears to be a one time event. Hydrogen is the basic fuel of the cosmos, powering all stars and other energy sources in space. If the fuel of the universe has been used eternally, that fuel will eventually be depleted, but the evidence is that the cosmological gas gauge, while moving toward “empty,” is yet a long way from being there—a condition incompatible with an eternal universe. The second law of thermodynamics insists that the cosmos is moving toward a condition of disorder, sometimes referred to as “heat death.” Even in an oscillating universe, things ultimately run out of energy and “die.” All of these evidences, and several others we have not made reference to, show that matter cannot be eternal, as Dr. Sagan and his associates would like to believe. However, this does not mean that we automatically accept the hypothesis that God is the Creator. Why is it not equally invalid to suggest that God has always been?

The problem here is that many people have a mistaken concept of God. If we conceive of God as physical, anthropomorphic (like man) being, the question of God’s origin is valid. However, such a concept of God is alien to the Bible and to common sense. Consider the following descriptions of God from the Bible:


John 4: 24
God is a Spirit:...
Matthew 16:17
...for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father which is in heaven.

Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that He should...;


Obviously, the descriptions and concepts of God given in these passages are that God is a spiritual entity. He exists outside of the three-dimensional, physical world in which we live.
The Bible further supports this concept of God in the following passages:


Jeremiah 23:23-24
Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? ...Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.
2 Chronicles 2:6
But who is able to build a house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him?...

Acts 17:28
For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;...


Not only is God described as being outside space, but He is also described as being outside of time. Consider the following:

2 Peter 3:8
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Psalm 90:4
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

Psalm 102:27
But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.

Acts 1:7
...It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His power.


If God is a being that is unlimited in time, and if He has access to every piece of time as if it were now, the question of who created God is an invalid question. The problem is like asking a student to draw a four-sided triangle. The terminology is self-contradictory.
When asked “Who or what created God?,” we are making the assumption that God was created. If God exists outside of time and space, and if He is the Creator of time and space, He obviously was not created! God began the beginning! This is why He says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”

God created time. The statement of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” is making reference to the creation of time. The reason that things like heat death, the expansion of the universe, and the depletion of hydrogen do not apply to God is because He is outside of time. God has always been. He not only began time; He will also end it. When time ends, all matter and all mankind will enter eternity—a timeless condition free of the negative things that time brings upon us now.


2 Peter 3:10-11
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,...
Revelation 21:4
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.


The agnostic position that there is nothing that can be said to support God’s existence that cannot be said against that existence cannot, in the opinion of the author, stand in the face of this evidence.

 

[Paraprakrti]

Two questions:

1) If god created this universe and al within it, who then created god? If god is a higher form, then it means that there is a form greater then god.

2) a soul or spirit exisit in the life of al living organisms (plant, animal, cel, bacteria etc).. So if god put a soul / spirit into life when it is created biologically through natural menas, how then can a cloned species exisit the same as a species created by nature and also have a soul? This is impossabble, because the spirit comes from god, not by man who created the species.

:roll:

1) God is the causeless cause.

*On a side note, regarding Carl Sagan's question, “If we say that God has always been, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always been?”

The complete whole consists of the Actor and the action, the Powerful and the power, the Energetic and the energy. The energy consisting of the universe always exists. But to deny an absolute intelligence is to divide the absolute from itself. Energy is nothing without the Energetic, and the Energetic is nothing without energy. Both exist simultaneously, and also, God and His energies, being absolute, are non-different from each other. We may speak of them separately, but there is no real difference. Still we cannot equate the fact to a blind action devoid of an actor. The Actor is always there.


2) And man does not create the soul when he clones. Where did you get the idea that man would be creating the soul? It is the same when man and woman have sexual intercourse and produce a child. They did not create the soul, they provided a body for the soul to indwell. Similarly, scientists manipulate genes in order to get a desired result of how a particular body will be constructed. This has nothing to do with creating a soul. If God sees the conditions are fit for the soul to dwell in that place, God will, through material nature, inject that soul into that body.

 

[Christ Michael]

PERSONALITY REALITIES



Personality is a level of deified reality and ranges from the mortal and midwayer level of the higher mind activation of worship and wisdom up through the morontial and spiritual to the attainment of finality of personality status. That is the evolutionary ascent of mortal- and kindred-creature personality, but there are numerous other orders of universe personalities.

Reality is subject to universal expansion, personality to infinite diversification, and both are capable of well-nigh unlimited Deity co-ordination and eternal stabilization. While the metamorphic range of nonpersonal reality is definitely limited, we know of no limitations to the progressive evolution of personality realities.

On attained experiential levels all personality orders or values are associable and even cocreational. Even God and man can coexist in a unified personality, as is so exquisitely demonstrated in the present status of Christ Michael--Son of Man and Son of God.

All subinfinite orders and phases of personality are associative attainables and are potentially cocreational. The prepersonal, the personal, and the superpersonal are all linked together by mutual potential of co-ordinate attainment, progressive achievement, and cocreational capacity. But never does the impersonal directly transmute to the personal. Personality is never spontaneous; it is the gift of the Paradise Father. Personality is superimposed upon energy, and it is associated only with living energy systems; identity can be associated with nonliving energy patterns.


The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of personality. The Eternal Son is the absolute personality, the secret of spiritual energy, morontia spirits, and perfected spirits. The Conjoint Actor (Infinite Spirit ) is the spirit-mind personality, the source of intelligence, reason, and the universal mind. But the Isle of Paradise is nonpersonal and extraspiritual, being the essence of the universal body, the source and center of physical matter, and the absolute master pattern of universal material reality.


These qualities of universal reality are manifest in Urantian human experience on the following levels:


1. Body. The material or physical organism of man. The living electrochemical mechanism of animal nature and origin.


2. Mind. The thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism. The total conscious and unconscious experience. The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level.


3. Spirit. The divine spirit that indwells the mind of man--the Thought Adjuster. This immortal spirit is prepersonal--not a personality, though destined to become a part of the personality of the surviving mortal creature.


4. Soul. The soul of man is an experiential acquirement. As a mortal creature chooses to "do the will of the Father in heaven," so the indwelling spirit becomes the father of a new reality in human experience. The mortal and material mind is the mother of this same emerging reality. The substance of this new reality is neither material nor spiritual--it is morontial.(semi-spirit) This is the emerging
and immortal soul which is destined to survive mortal death and begin the Paradise ascension.

Personality. The personality of mortal man is neither body, mind, nor spirit; neither is it the soul. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. The personality is the unique bestowal which the Universal Father makes upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and which survives with the survival of the morontial soul.


Morontia is a term designating a vast level intervening between the material and the spiritual.


[from The Urantia Book]



Cheers

 

[mahayana]

Chookyman, you have my sympathy if you don't follow much of what has been offered as explanation here. That's what you get when you ask about fundamental things, though I admire your willingness to question.

Logically, God doesn't "exist," as he preceded existence. (To a buddhist, god is everything and nothing, and me and you).

The most basic question about souls/spitits is whether they are real. There seems to be scant evidence, and most believers won't tell you why they know. (Buddha wouldn't answer questions about souls, offered a different kind of teaching; "seek not the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.")

I wonder about these things, too.

 

[chookyman]

Sorry guys I have not been with it lately. I'm a teacher and like all teachers towards the end of term, lots of grading to do. I have read many of the postings by people and yes everyone has made a lot of god points.

I always believe that science and religion are on in all. A world cannot be without religion and a world cannot be without science. In my heart I always believed God to be an energy, an energy which created all. The very soul or spirit within us is part of this energy, the enrgy of god.

I once read this verse in a book of god, "from god you came and unto god you will return". So much meaning in those words. Like my father always told me, and he was not a religious man. If there is a god, you should be born with that answer in your heart and mind, and over time listen to both and what do you hear. Pritty touching for a guy who does not believe in god.

When you think of the theory of multiple universes (if it to be true), then would that mean that the one god created all or for each universe there is one god. So if god is energy, outside of time itself, in the void of nothing, then god created all regardless of universes there are.

My question is now, if we believe god created us, could it not be in fact that it was us in the depths of our mind, the void within, that in fact we created god. I once read an article, "man was once covered in a light of purity which man reflexed and assorbed from man's surroundings, but lost that purity when man sined". Was not that light once discribed the energy of god? Many budist monks, christ, many islamic shieks are and where known to have this light, energy, aura if it be?

 

[Ronald]

Chookyman, was my head spinning when I finished reading you post!!!
Really sound like a Teacher I had for science many years ago.
It does seem that you believe in the Creator, but trying to get a hold on the concept and put it in its proper place.
The verse from a book of God, you stated,"from god you came and unto god you will return." In Ge.2:7 God formed man from the dust of the ground. Ec 12:7 The dust returns to the earth as it was. And your father's words were profound in as much as this is just how God created it.
I do hope you visit in the WORD of GOD often and listen to both heart and mind and do what you hear.

Shalom

 

[Ceridwen018]

chookyman,

I personally hold your last point as true, that man created god.

As for souls, I do not believe in them on account of because there is no evidence whatsoever of them. When most people talk about souls, they use it as a synonymous term with 'personality' or 'moral standards'. These are much more accurate names I think.