Translation question/issue

[dauer]

Originally Posted by didymus

I think good as well would cease to exist without us here to perceive it. If the universe was barren of human life what would be good or evil. It would just be

I agree with you, didymus. But from a human perspective, if God creates everything, does this not mean that God creates good and evil? At the very least with this assumption we can say that God created within us our ability to see the world as good and evil and the nature that we have to act in ways that we would deem as evil (because God gave us the capacity to view the world this way) and so I'm not sure how it can be said, from this perspective, that God did not create both good and evil. Am I misunderstanding what you were saying?

[didymus]

I think I'm having a "pondering my navel" moment here. I'm thinking that if we weren't here to contemplate God what would God be? Sure he would still be God but there wouldn't be a perception of Him. He would be. As humans we can contemplate God and identify aspects of His divinity and label them as good and evil.

[dauer]

Originally Posted by didymus

I think I'm having a "pondering my navel" moment here. I'm thinking that if we weren't here to contemplate God what would God be? Sure he would still be God but there wouldn't be a perception of Him. He would be. As humans we can contemplate God and identify aspects of His divinity and label them as good and evil.

There are some who have suggested that God created the world in order to experience Himself, but as I read it is said such that evolution is God(pantheist)'s attempt to create beings of a greater and greater capacity of recognizing His oneness up until us, humans, who are at the greatest level so far and through practice are capable of coming to know His oneness. But in this model it is a striving within God to know Himself, as He cannot be known without individual knowers. Within that model the answer would be that we are here because God wanted to be percieved by Himself.

But I do get what you mean. It's like the chicken and the egg or the tree in the forest.

[didymus]

It's like a labyrinth of thought that ultimatley leads back to the same conclusion, we don't really know.