Talking about love, mercy, things like that. Do you think they were created? They exist, no doubt about that. They were not only created, they were shaped out, designed to suit the needs of the living creatures. Somebody must have created them in the first place.
Greetings,
Love and mercy are human concepts, invented by humans to denote certain emotional states. They have no external reality.
Just like god, in fact, from my point of view.
There's a pattern to it. Somebody must have designed that too. Things don't come up on their own,
You believe god did, though, don't you?
Peace
I find it interesting that so many speak of love merely as an emotion. When that is the case, love is really just a descriptor for what one feels, it is an adjective like blue or green, it describes what we perceive and then we put a name to it. So, it is a good point that they exist, but that they exist doesn't really prove anything, the question still remains about where did they come from. Do they have to be created, or can they be self existing?
I do think the observance of a pattern, or design, speaks to the idea that there is intent, even purpose behind the bringing of something into being. And that speaks of a creator. I'm not sure that it is enough to "prove", a creator, but it surely broadly hints at the idea.
As for the question that would then be just a appropriately put to me:
There's a pattern to it. Somebody must have designed that too. Things don't come up on their own,
You believe god did, though, don't you?
No. I don't believe that God "came up on his own", or created himself. Rather, I believe a much more difficult concept to accept, that God has always been. That there never was a time when God was not. So, he is has no beginning. (He also has no end, but that is not relevant to the present discussion.) He is eternal and as such has no creator at all, not even himself. God is simply that which is in a state of "being". All other things that are, whatever they may be, flow out of his being. The means of their creation is not as important as the realization that there is no being without it being found ultimately in his being. So love is real because God is love. Mercy exists because God is merciful. And we experience them, not as emotions, but as choices.
And what of things such as sin, evil, etc., did God then create these things as well. Do they have their source of being in him. Actually quite the opposite. Paradoxically, it is sin and evil that do not really exist. As all things have their being in the one who always IS. So if we perceive something as existing (such as evil) that is not a part of who or what God is, it is not actually something that exists, but merely the absence of the experience of God's presence. In the same way that heat is real and cold does not exist except as the absence of heat. So good is real, as it has its origins in God, and evil is merely the experience of the absence of good.
For reasons that I will probably never fully understand, God has given a degree of freedom to some parts of his creation that they might not just exist (as a rock or water exists), but that these special aspects of creation might actually exercise some degree of self-will, even apart from his own divine will). With the freedom to chose, God's creation can either submit their will to his and experience their freedom to choose within the very nature and character of God and those add even more joy to their lives, or they may exercise their self-will apart from God, though in doing so they experience the loss of joy (i.e. pain and sorrow) in their lives. Again, joy is real, and pain and sorrw are not, they are only the absence of joy and other good gifts from God that we deny ourselves.