It means why do we exist? What is the reason you are here? Why is there something rather than nothing?
In order: don't know, don't know, and don't know. Without knowing these answers, it's amazing I find my way to work every day! Okay, so what are your answers?
I'm asking the question again, because you repeatedly say that you make sense of the questions above. Please demonstrate making sense of them.
We are here because a self-existent Being chose to create us for His pleasure and purposes. Those purposes were to know and enjoy Him forever but He gave us, His creatures, a will to choose.
When you start with God you find answers that make sense. Sense comes from an ultimate rational Being. We are not such beings. We are limited in our knowledge and scope. We know what is good because an all-knowing Being has revealed what is good and His nature reflects what is good. We have the best to reference good and evil against. What we witness in creation reflects His being and goodness. We understand being coming from necessary being and all we ever witness is beings come from other beings. We have a foundation for knowledge, wisdom, and love, not an empty void of nothingness. We witness life coming from the living and we, as Christians, understand that our lives originate from a necessary living Being. We, as Christians, understand that the created order, the universe, owes its existence to a transcendent Being. Thus, time is in our realm, the physical realm, for it had a beginning. Science pointed in so many ways to a beginning.
My starting point - God - makes sense of morality. God would have an objective mindset, knowing all things. Relative human beings do not.
This is not 'making sense' of morality. This is assigning credit for morality to god. That doesn't make sense of it at all.
Yes, it does. From an ultimate necessary Being, we as limited relative, changing creatures have what is needed to make sense of morality. Morality is a mindful process yet neither your mind nor my mind is necessary or sufficient to establish what is good. In an amoral, mindless universe why do such things matter? They don't, yet you as a mindful being seek meaning and want to make things matter, for what ultimate reason? They are none without God. Meaning and justice are related. In a universe devoid of God what does what Hitler did matter? In the long term, nothing matters and what Hitler did is not answered for by justice. So why do you care what someone else does if he/she can get away with it? What does it matter if he/she can get away with it? And why do you continually seek meaning in a meaningless universe? Is that not insane? You are making up something that you have no ultimate standard for - good - and if my "good" oppose your "good" then who is right? There is no such thing as rightness, there is only a preference, so how can you say what Hilter did was wrong? It was just his preference. Some people love their enemies and some people like to kill them. What is your preference?
Morality is relative and subjective, this is clearly how the world works.
How does that clearly work and how is it logical? For instance, Nation A believes abortion is wrong, except when not having one will result in the death of both the woman and unborn. Nation B believes abortion is right and permits abortion for any reason. Clearly both these positions cannot both be true since they are the antithesis of the other. Now the question becomes, in a relative subjective world of morality why is your position and BETTER than mine. You are probably pro-choice and I am pro-life. So, how can you determine which position is indeed "right?" You do not have the means. Your worldview is bankrupt of determining right. All you can do, without a necessary being who has revealed the right, is voice your preference. And to enact your preference you must use might makes right instead of right makes might.
Your entire system of thinking does not have what is necessary to make sense of morality as anything other than preference enforced by might. There is nothing right or good about that UNLESS it conforms to a fixed standard of righteousness that your worldview lacks the ability to manufacture.
It's not the same today as it was however many hundreds of years ago this book was published. You saying "You don't rape anyone because unbeknonst to you, God wrote on your heart! You know it's wrong!" doesn't explain the massive number of self professed Christians who DO rape people. Did god forget to scribble it down for them too? This is going to get more difficult, I'm afraid:
Any "professing" Christian who rapes a woman shows they do not know God's good decrees. Many professing Christians show they do not have the love of God in their hearts by their actions. Jesus said to His disciples that they would recognize them by their fruit. A good tree does not bear bad fruit and visa versa.
No, he was not. Show me how that was God's purpose. He went against God's purpose. He chose to do things his way. He placed himself above God's good counsel
Well...then was God completely surprised by these two and their behavior?
How could an all-knowing being be surprised? That does not make sense.
It is a rhetorical question. Of course, God is not surprised.
Didn't he know they'd do this when he made them?
Again, transcending time means He sees the past present and future before Him. They have a will in which they choose evil. Evil is living and acting outside God's counsel and will.
I'm confused. In these back to back posts, you're responding to my pointing out that god made Epstien and Weinstein to do exactly what they did, act like monsters.
This is where you are confused. God did not make them do exactly what they did. They chose to do what they did. Their sinful preference was to do exactly the opposite of what God said to do. You are inventing, twisting, and convoluting the context.
You took offense to this, saying they were going against god's purpose, not with it. But in the bolded, you make clear, god cannot be surprised and sees the past, present and future. This means they don't really have free will, because that would make god surprised by their behavior.
I'm finding your logic here abysmal. How can an omniscient being be surprised by anything? He knows all things? Does He make you do His will? He gives you your own will to choose and lets you know that eventually you will be held accountable for the things you do that are wrong. If God did not give you some leniency you would be a robot, but clearly that is not what the Bible teaches.
You keep smuggling in this element of God being surprised. You also bring in this element that if God knows all things then we are not free to do our own thing, make our own choices. But God's permissive and God's sovereign will are different. God may allow things that are wrong for a season or time (permits it for a time). He allows it for His purposes. That is why we witness evil. We witness it and see it in ourselves because God is allowing it for a purpose, so that good may come from it. When I look at the evil in myself and the world and try to live what I understand as "good" apart from God I witness more evil. Thus, evil will either bring me closer to God or drive me away from God. It brings me closer when I realize that I am accountable to God and His justice. I must answer for the evil I have committed and do not have the means to be held guiltless in and of my own merit or ability. Thus, I look to Him and find that ability in what Someone else has done. That is the "Goodnews" that God is conveying to us. It says that we can find peace with God through the merit of Another - Jesus Christ. By believing (choice) in Him - Jesus - I am reconciled to God and find the peace that transcends understanding.
