In the Image of God

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In the Image of God

Post by overmind »

This was actually a response in facebook to a Christian I don't really know. He was into the idea that all creatures are designed by God Himself, which I don't agree with. The last sentence was actually altered a little by me, but I am posting the direct UB quote so that people on the board know where it comes from.


It is important to understand that being created in the image of God has to do with personality bestowal, our permanence in the presence of change, and has nothing to do with physical appearance or mental capacity. Evolution is how material life adapts to a specific planet. God has more to do with the spark of life than its temporal manifestations. The creatures of time and space are incapable of surviving death (through the building of immortal souls) until the brain has evolved enough to facilitate the mind mechanisms necessary for free will and progressive moral behavior. The human body was not immediately created perfect, it naturally evolved to become just suitable enough for God-knowing mortals to exist.

If the designs of the animal groups are so perfected by the “God of the living”, why is there such a struggle for survival? I am not suggesting that there is no oversight of the evolutionary worlds, but these bodies we inhabit, while miraculous in their own right, are not perfect vehicles. They are only suitable for the beginning experience of the ascending mortals of the realm. God is in all essence the source of permanence, and the mortal life is one of the greatest experiences of change. This change encompasses all three aspects of the human being: physical, mental and spiritual. My point is that God is not in the business of creating that which cannot keep existing. From the eyes of eternity, that which is only ever finite is already dead (in existence, but not of record). What is actually a direct gift from God? That which remains the same, despite an increase in growth, experience, meaning or value. This is the personality, a constant source of individual perspective and awareness, no matter how much the perspective and awareness evolve.

(1225.12) 112:0.12 10. Personality is unique, absolutely unique: It is unique in time and space; it is unique in eternity and on Paradise; it is unique when bestowed — there are no duplicates; it is unique during every moment of existence; it is unique in relation to God — he is no respecter of persons, but neither does he add them together, for they are nonaddable — they are associable but nontotalable.
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Re: In the Image of God

Post by Welles »

Hi Arthur,

I think you gave a good description of the readily misunderstood concept, made in the image of God™ :)

It is very difficult to communicate the complexity and grandeur of Creation to those who have an emotional attachment to a simpler viewpoint that may be based on physical characteristics. The Urantia Book is the only text I've found that reveals the structure of the Universe in great enough detail to start growing beyond such notions.

Anyway, when I thought about the idea of creature design I remembered a couple of tidbits from the Adam and Eve story as well as an interesting tidbit about the Life Carriers. They aren't a clear picture of how animal creation and evolution works but give some tantalizing hints.

(828.3) 74:1.2 At the time Adam was chosen to come to Urantia, he was employed, with his mate, in the trial-and-testing physical laboratories of Jerusem. For more than fifteen thousand years they had been directors of the division of experimental energy as applied to the modification of living forms.

(831.5) 74:3.8 It greatly surprised those who accompanied Adam on this trip to observe how fully he understood the nature and function of the thousands upon thousands of animals shown him. The instant he glanced at an animal, he would indicate its nature and behavior. Adam could give names descriptive of the origin, nature, and function of all material creatures on sight. Those who conducted him on this tour of inspection did not know that the world’s new ruler was one of the most expert anatomists of all Satania; and Eve was equally proficient. Adam amazed his associates by describing hosts of living things too small to be seen by human eyes.

(669.3) 58:6.2 Although the evolution of vegetable life can be traced into animal life, and though there have been found graduated series of plants and animals which progressively lead up from the most simple to the most complex and advanced organisms, you will not be able to find such connecting links between the great divisions of the animal kingdom nor between the highest of the prehuman animal types and the dawn men of the human races. These so-called “missing links” will forever remain missing, for the simple reason that they never existed.
(669.4) 58:6.3 From era to era radically new species of animal life arise. They do not evolve as the result of the gradual accumulation of small variations; they appear as full-fledged and new orders of life, and they appear suddenly.
(669.5) 58:6.4 The sudden appearance of new species and diversified orders of living organisms is wholly biologic, strictly natural. There is nothing supernatural connected with these genetic mutations.

Just food for thought...

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Re: In the Image of God

Post by Sandy »

These are two such interesting posts. Thank you both!
:sunflower:
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“We measure and evaluate your Spiritual Progress on the Wall of Eternity." – Guardian of Destiny, Alverana.
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