I believe that there is a God, however i still have questions about him.
I’ve been told that “God has always been”. Oooooooooookay.
I accept that the realm of current human knowledge can’t comprehend this.
But if God has alwys been, and humans were created…what, 6 thousands years ago…what was he doing before he made us, or the Earth for that matter. Is it possible that we are only 1 of many creations.
Masturbating, probably, due to the lack of sex partners.
(I’m going to hell with this post)
I think Thomas Aquinas was suppposed to have answered, though probably an apocryphal story, “Thinking up ways to punish people who ask questions like that.”
Tom was clearly a real fun guy…
But if God made everything, wouldn’t doing it with his/her/its sex partners be a form of incest?
(I’m with SPOOFE on the Highway to Hell!)
Sorry, I understand pkbites has serious questions about God, and the whole Christian belief about the universe being 6000 years old. But I don’t think you’ll find answers to support your faith on these boards. Try your minister (or whatever he’s called).
Most people on these boards (and the world, as a WAG) openly scoff at the notion that something went <poof> 6,000 years ago and whipped up everything. Try doing a search in GD about creation, evolution, etc…
MonkeyMensch, I though that one was St. Augustine, not Thomas Aquinas? (Or maybe Thomas Aquinas quoting St. Augustine?)
And might I remind people, with the greatest of all possible respect, that most Christians are not also Biblical literalists and Young-Earth Creationists?
Tackling the question, in my capacity as an armchair theologian… the concept of time is inherent to God’s creation, not to God Himself. That is, there was no universe “before” the current one, since there was no time for there to be a “before” in. (Some cosmogonists will give you roughly the same answer if you ask what happened before the Big Bang. The viewpoints aren’t basically incompatible - to a believer such as myself, the Big Bang was the moment when God created the universe; to a non-believer, it was the moment when the universe came into being, reason unknown and maybe irrelevant).
It is certainly possible that the current universe is only one of many creations. It is not only possible but likely that human beings are not the only rationally-souled creatures in this creation. However, we can only speculate about other universes or other creations.
When it comes to the creation that we currently inhabit, though, we have tools we can use towards understanding it. And the better we understand it, the closer we can come to understanding its Creator. (If you believe in a Creator - but even if you don’t, there are sound pragmatic reasons for wanting to understand the world around you.)
The best tool we have for understanding the world is our reason, and the best way we have of using that tool is the scientific method. So, for me at least, scientific thought is not incompatible with religious belief, but an essential part of it.
In the same spirit as SPOOFE and Barbarian, but less risque…
Q: What was God doing all that time?
A: The same thing He’s always been doing – being nonexistent.
The way some folks have it, that’s what he’s been doing since the Creation, as well.
(I refer to the notion that God created humanity solely to worship him and sing his praises. Talk about ego-stroking!)
“I may be going to hell in a bucket,
but at least I’m enjoyin’ the ride.”
(Is it okay to quote the GD in GD?)
Barbarian wrote:
… which would mean that He violated the laws of several States when he got Mary pregnant.