[baudrunner]

Thank you, Zeroca, for your welcome and your insight. It is apparent that much preparation has gone into your reply and I appreciate that.

I would like to clear up one thing. The quoted extract taken from within one of the sentences from one of my posts implies that I believe that God made the Universe. I would appreciate it if you didn't take information out of context when you pull a quote from my posts. I forgive you this time, but next time use the entire sentence.

As for God having made the Universe, we derive that information from the bible and if you believe that, then you must believe that we are made in His image. Then of course if you believe that then I must ask you how is it that God evolved arms and legs as necessary adaptations to an environment that he had yet to create?

Of course God did not create the Universe. He is no more representative of the consciouness that predisposes the premonition that did create the Universe than we are. However, I am steadfast in my belief that He does exist, as does that spiritual realm wherein He finds himself supreme. I believe that he tampered with this world to prepare it for the evolution of life upon it and when suitable candidate life forms appeared he tampered with their DNA in order to bring them closer to the potential for achieving spiritual growth over the evolutionary timeframe. He was once like you and I, in keeping with our being made in His image. And he encouraged the development of this world, so it can be said that God made the world and God made man. Some of us are taught that our bodies are a temple. If that is so it is because we have a little bit of Him in us.

Project this human race a billion years into the future. Where would we find ourselves, given what we know today and given what we are capable of doing now, if we continue to progress and develop higher technologies and acquire more advanced knowledge?

As I've said, at one time, God was like you and I. He and His people developed the ideal society on a world which they made perfect save for one thing. The rules to which the anthropocentric nature of this Universe subscribes precludes the attainment of immortality of beings on the physical plane. God and His people devised the technology to identify the corporeal and finite energies that nature provided to produce life and separate them from those energies that define consciousness and the manifestation of that consciousness in the individual identity of the spiritual self. They succeeded.

My reason for believing in the existence of God is that there is just too much direct experience in the way of visitations and miraculous healings documented by the medical profession and attributed by patients to "divine" intervention. There is just too much evidence to support the existence of God. It is through the application of knowledge of Him that has given us all the great institutions of all of our great civilisations.

And yes, before you ask, I do indeed believe that Jesus was conceived without human intervention. The same kind of technology was used to do this as provides for those miraculous healings.