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Post by doctork on Nov 1, 2011 20:20:30 GMT -5
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Post by doctork on Nov 1, 2011 20:22:01 GMT -5
So I'll be first:
When you were born, you were the: 2,563,832,441st person alive on Earth
75,753,573,557th person to have lived since history began
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Post by joew on Nov 1, 2011 22:06:01 GMT -5
2,357,275,815th alive
75,019,041,872nd since history began (I suppose they really mean since the species began. History, in the strict sense, is much more recent.)
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Post by gailkate on Nov 3, 2011 18:41:20 GMT -5
2,427,777,483rd
person alive on Earth
75,286,888,174th
person to have lived since history began
(There's a note about how they calcuated that, although it wasn't particularly enlightening to me.)
What I want to know from you traditional Christians is how you figure all 75+ billion souls fit into God's plan. Was God actively watching, loving and guiding every one of those lives? I'm not being argumentative; these are real questions. My mind has never been able to get around the hugeness of it all, especially given that we are just one planet in a limitless universe.
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Post by doctork on Nov 3, 2011 19:44:16 GMT -5
I have no idea how God does all this. I may be "smart," but I have a small human mind with significant limitations. Yet we have a whole lot more to contemplate, and understand many magnitudes more than people did 100 years ago. The changes in my nearly 40 years in health care boggle my mind; just think - 75 years ago we had just discovered penicillin, and prior to that, most people died from pneumonia.
I'd imagine this could be very small potatoes to God, probably not even registering more than a teeny blip. Humankind also has been given free will, so it is not up to God to direct our every move.
Many mysteries in life, no matter what one's theological view.
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Post by joew on Nov 3, 2011 23:15:06 GMT -5
God is pretty awesome.
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Post by gailkate on Nov 4, 2011 0:06:11 GMT -5
Not much help, guys.  |
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Post by joew on Nov 4, 2011 0:16:55 GMT -5
To answer more directly, gk, I'd say yes, God was/is actively watching, loving, and trying to guide each of those lives.
It's awfully hard for us to grasp infinity (actually, it's impossible, beyond the definition — we can't know what it's like to be infinite), but God is, by definition, infinite. So it's no problem for him to keep track of everything. If he created everything and holds it in being because he loves it and us, he can keep track of it and us.
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Post by gailkate on Nov 4, 2011 9:01:52 GMT -5
All right, thank you. I can remember clearly being worried about infinity when I was 3 or 4 (remembering the room I slept - or lay awake - in) and it hasn't gotten any easier. Doubting Thomas got clear proof, but that doesn't happen these days.
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Post by joew on Nov 4, 2011 23:46:54 GMT -5
What scared me as I lay awake was eternity. Once I couldn't stand it and went downstairs and told my mother about my feelings. She told me something a priest had told her father when he expressed similar thoughts: "Wouldn't it be stranger if suddenly everything stopped?"
Interesting — her father had this fear; she must have had it too, for him to have had the occasion to tell her what the priest said; and the same with me in the third generation. I thought it was hereditary, but apparently it's more widespread than just my family.
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Dopey Member
