DGS49
Diamond Member
The True Believers of the Church of J.C. of Latter Day Saints believe that if you lead a good life, you will be "exalted," which means that you will become a "god." In fact, they believe that the God of the Bible was once a man like us, who was exalted to godhood.
Imagine you are a god and you are bored. You lived a good life here and want to create world like this one, for your entertainment. There is one factor about this world that disturbs you a bit, but it cannot be helped, and it is this: Unless you want to micromanage every little thing on your Earth, life will be unfair. Seriously unfair. That is to say, some people will be born in abject poverty, some to great wealth. Some people will be born into a miserable society where disease darkens every day, and some will be born in "Canada." Some people will live their entire lives striving to do good things, but the frustrated by things over which they have no control, and others will blunder their way into great wealth and riches. It is really unavoidable.
But you, as god, can make one decision that rectifies all that. You can (a) choose to make the entirety of human existence the time between conception and natural death, or (b) you can create a means by with the unfairness of life will be rectified by an afterlife, an afterlife where a life of virtue is rewarded and a life of sloth or evil is either extinguished or punished. That is the one big choice that you can make.
I submit that although we are not gods, we can make that choice for ourselves. We can live our lives as though (b) were the actual facts of life.
Faith is not a gift from God. It is a choice that we make. Those who live according to (a) above (atheists, agnostics, etc.) are fools, and they add nothing to the world but their own production and consumption. It is sad.
Imagine you are a god and you are bored. You lived a good life here and want to create world like this one, for your entertainment. There is one factor about this world that disturbs you a bit, but it cannot be helped, and it is this: Unless you want to micromanage every little thing on your Earth, life will be unfair. Seriously unfair. That is to say, some people will be born in abject poverty, some to great wealth. Some people will be born into a miserable society where disease darkens every day, and some will be born in "Canada." Some people will live their entire lives striving to do good things, but the frustrated by things over which they have no control, and others will blunder their way into great wealth and riches. It is really unavoidable.
But you, as god, can make one decision that rectifies all that. You can (a) choose to make the entirety of human existence the time between conception and natural death, or (b) you can create a means by with the unfairness of life will be rectified by an afterlife, an afterlife where a life of virtue is rewarded and a life of sloth or evil is either extinguished or punished. That is the one big choice that you can make.
I submit that although we are not gods, we can make that choice for ourselves. We can live our lives as though (b) were the actual facts of life.
Faith is not a gift from God. It is a choice that we make. Those who live according to (a) above (atheists, agnostics, etc.) are fools, and they add nothing to the world but their own production and consumption. It is sad.