Why we are here. Or better still: Why ARE we here? (myth, Islamic)

[TroutDude]

To learn, grow, and contribute.

[Mikelee81]

There is only one dynamic working in this world and it is the will of God! If you are not in accordance to the will of God by believing in him and his works in redemption through Jesus Christ than you are STILL accomplishing the will of God.

According to the Word, there are some vessels prepared with longsuffering to receive mercy and honor, and some vessels prepared with longsuffering to receive Justice and Shame.

All of it is to God's Glory.

If you do wish to stop your rebellion find mercy from and the Just retribution for doing so, the free gift of Salvation is available to YOU and ALL that come to God by Jesus Christ accepting HIS perfect sacrifice for you on your behalf.

Jesus inviting ALL mankind to come and accept what he's done for you on your behalf if you just accept it by coming to him.

John 7:37-38

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Matthew 12:31-32

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

There is only ONE sin that is unforgivable and that is rejecting what God has done dying for you on that cross. Even if you reject him, it still does not mean that your sins were not on that cross as it is clear ALL of the World's iniquity was laid upon Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 53:6
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

For those that reject Jesus Christ, the following fate awaits..

Isaiah 66:23-24

And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.

And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

This fate can be avoided right now if you just scrape off the hard shell of your calloused heart and HUMBLE yourself before the throne of your Maker accepting what Jesus Christ has done for you repenting toward God!

See God's Vengeance must be appeased, and if it is not taken care of on that cross in which HE suffered FOR you than YOU will have the Justice of the Law fall upon YOUR OWN HEAD.

This message is with compassion. Please turn and accept what God has done. What a beautiful world we would have if EVERYONE just turned to God right now and wrapped this whole thing up.

The Will of God IS the only dynamic running this universe.

As for those that think they have all the answers to life in their "science falsely called so"...

Job 5:13
He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.

If you think you have a mind greater than GOD than you have a big surprise coming!

Romans 1:21-23

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

In other words, they said GOD was a series of random accidents over speculated billions of years or some rock or even worse FALLEN MAN! What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it... The whole man ascending to godhood was EXACTLY what ADOLF HITLER was attempting to accomplish as he slaughtering thousands upon thousands in his ambition to be King of the Mountain!

In the beginning the god of chance and time created the Heavens and the Earth? I do not think so..

Man has been given the choice to believe lies, but REALITY will catch up with you as TIME in the space-time continuum is FINITE. According to the Scriptures, after physical death we enter ETERNITY; and THERE you DO NOT want to be without GOD! No prayers will be answered. There will be no mercy. There will be NO pity.

We've all been given a choice.

[Ironman2]

Originally Posted by mordant

That is my purpose and it has nothing to do with my beliefs or lack thereof. Such a goal does not in any way require theist belief in order to animate it.

The question in the OP however implies some externally given meaning, as in, "why are we MEANT to be here" or "why were we PLACED here". In reality, whatever purpose we have is self-determined and in general is informed by what makes us feel part of the human race in a positive way. Such "chosen" purpose is no less noble than some "bestowed" purpose would be. To the contrary, doing good works by choice rather than obligation is the more noble path.

I tend to be in agreement with you and Woodrow LI in Spirit once again, mordant. I am not as quick as you to write off any underlying generic meaning to existence, however.

[rifleman]

The OP's question is about our's or the universe's purpose, not some personal ideas about God's existence. Purpose per se is a human-originated concept, one which is quite likely solely the outcome of the religious high priests of the day as a necessity to counter the idea that we're nothing more than evolved organisms here, along with all the others. a chance-chaos result that has sadly rather overwhelmed the planet. For now.

(PS: at one point, down in our original tribal African homelands, we as a species were down to about 3000 - 5000 people tops, en-route to extinction, but we happened to have, due to the undeniable sorting effects of natural selection and adaptation, the relative "smarts" to migrate the heck out of there, to the north and east, as the African climate became intolerable, and the rest is demonstrable DNA based history! Huzzah for hominid foresight, huh?)

"Lies" are, to a Christian, anything that flies in the face of The Assumed Written Word. Too bad no-one in that camp can see their way clear to stop and examine it in a bit more critical detail, but... oh well, huh? <sigh>

I for one purposefully chose to walk (no, in fact, it was decidedly a full-on run...), by the time I was 28, from the absurd, unquestionable & absolutist, strictly mandated, obedience-trained, denialist and technically illiterate pap and pablum (suitably named since it was indeed only suitable for non-critically thinking baby-heads...) of Christianity.

Thank God I did that!

[Cosmicstargoat]

Originally Posted by Mikelee81

Man has been given the choice to believe lies, but REALITY will catch up with you as TIME in the space-time continuum is FINITE. According to the Scriptures, after physical death we enter ETERNITY; and THERE you DO NOT want to be without GOD! No prayers will be answered. There will be no mercy. There will be NO pity.

We've all been given a choice.

That's not a choice, that is divine blackmail and unholy coercion. A genuine choice would be to reject your god WITHOUT adverse consequences. The god of your religion is the one who creates the problem in the first place. No THREAT of eternal torture, no need for a savior. It's really quite simple.

[SoCalAngel2009]

Here's the simplest possible answer to why ARE we here. God wanted a family and so He created us... every last one of us His children... like it or not. :-)

We are not mere mortals, but we all have a "soul," which is a part of His soul; however, we do not possess the substance, but I digress... read my other posts to find out what the substance is. I'll give you a hint, though, it's Divine Love.

Getting back to the answer: We are spiritual beings living in physical bodies until it's time for our exit from this planet to live in the spiritual world where our lives resume as spirits.

And finally the reason WHY we are here is so that we will obtain a spirit form (the image of our physical one) and a personality, so that we're not all drones. In case you didn't know, God is very sweet and loving and has a sense of humor.

[Geoff_in_Aus]

Originally Posted by rifleman

(The bottom line for me is this: if we are not of a singular Christian or Islamic or other spiritual purpose in this life or on this planet, then does Christianity [or any of the other mythologies...] exist per se? If so, why? But...perhaps we just "are"? I for one don't see why that option is so impossible. It may even be preferable!)

Enjoy the video and website!

It took me some time, but eventually I believe I figured out exactly what Jesus taught, and it is NOT FOUND in Christianity. Its been left out. But, once I found that, guess what? It's lots of other places too. Not quite everywhere, but Jesus has not been the sole exponent of this Divine wisdom.

To try and answer why are we here:

Yes we are part of God's Plan. He enjoys greatly experiencing all that we experience, and He does experience all that we do. He is not in time-space, and has created perhaps uncountable "levels" of beings in his multiple time-space universes. We are the lowest possible level of created being. Not all of us make the grade, simply because if you push the boundary, that's what happens. But there are VAST VAST numbers of us humans on vast numbers of inhabited planets, and we will all be gainfully employed through eternity, because there are new time-space universes being created all the time. By the way, when I say we were created, I am referring to the soul, not the human body which is an evolutionary animal shell which houses the soul, and which certainly does not survive death.

Having created us, God enjoys the result, and offers us a purpose as well - the potential to grow and grow and grow.

[Geoff_in_Aus]

Originally Posted by Mikelee81

According to the Scriptures, after physical death we enter ETERNITY; and THERE you DO NOT want to be without GOD! No prayers will be answered. There will be no mercy. There will be NO pity.

Any number of serious conceptual errors here. We have the potential to enter the eternal realms, and I believe a VERY SMALL NUMBER have, after death. These are folks who succeeded in being reborn of spirit. And its not limited to "Christians". But since you can't just go to a church service and be reborn, its a process which means living the true life of Christ for at least 30 years. Which is how long it took him. (And no I don't expect to be one of those)

But 99.999999% of us DO NOT ENTER the eternal realm after death. We have to go to school, not university. Not many go from pre-school to university. This is where the problem gets serious for folks like Mikelee. Awakening in the spirit spheres, not seeing Jesus, not having any notion where God is, and realizing they are amongst Jews, Muslims, Atheists, agnostics, JW's they feel totally betrayed. And instead of going back to reconsider the book they spent a lifetime defending as inerrant, they thow it away. And then they stand very little chance of ever exiting time-space.

Originally Posted by Mikelee81

We've all been given a choice.

True. But its not over when you die. But you will have to choose.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by rifleman

One of my more pesky, insistent and bothersome born-again Christian friends assured me the other day that our sole purpose here on earth was/is "To Gorify God, Praise Him!". And thus this is what we all should be doing, pretty much every moment of every day!

I kept my thoughts to myself.

Probably not a bad idea (about your thoughts, I mean).

My belief is stated pretty succinctly in the LDS scripture that says, "men are that they might have joy." In my faith, God's reasons for creating us were 100% unselfish. We are here to begin a journey of becoming more like Him and to learn what we need to know in order to ultimately reach our full potential.

[MysticPhD]

Succinctly . . . we are here to propagate God's consciousness. This is a difficult task because all the things that encompass our reality are carnal. The drives we possess are dominated by those that maintain and perpetuate our physical existence, avoidance of pain, and enjoyment of pleasure. But God's consciousness is agape love . . . unconditional love and acceptance for all life (which is God). Reconciling our animal drives and producing a consciousness that resonates with God's agape love is no small feat and we fail at it routinely. Fortunately, this is not the end all and be all of our efforts. We will have additional opportunities to get it right in the next stage after death when we are reborn as Spirits. After all . . . we are only embryo Spirits . . . hardly expected to be adult in our capabilities.