>It is true that to stay mortal we will die. My question focuses more on
>are we "at this time" in our evolutionary development at a level which a
>God may deem us worthy for the position of a god (immortal life)....or
>is this a promise for some future generation only after we have climbed
>the evolutionary ladder. The carrot of the Bible is only to head us in
>the right direction in hopes that one day our off-spring will have
>developed to that level and be offered a position in that realm?
>Without it we may destroy ourselves before we get there. ...and if this
>is so, would not other books of philosophy that aid in the development
>from animal to human being provide an avenue?
I have not read such a fine example of evolution used specifically as
a religious belief since I began to read E.O. Wilson's book Consilience.
Western intellectuals in the past century have loved to draw heavily on
Buddhist and Hindu thought. They love to see man as an evolving god, with
the universe evolving towards a great unified immortal being. Evolution,
aside from its place as a scientific theory, makes a perfect religion for
the world. It is a religion that eliminates God in the present but creates
him in the future in our image, evolved from us. This religion disguised
as science permeates society today. It locks science onto an undeviating
track to confirm evolution in
order to justify the denial of God.
The essential fact that you have grasped is that we are imperfect and
fall far short of the glory of God and we have no hope of making ourselves
perfect in this life. Where you are mistaken, like the Hindus, is
believing that given enough chances, enough generations, then it is
possible. It is not. If there is such a god as you describe who would
subject us to a test to see if we could perfect ourselves before we
destroyed ourselves and who guaranteed the demise of each individual, that
god would be my enemy and I would hate it with every ounce of my pitiful
doomed soul. As it is, God is not so distant, not so unreachable in time,
we do not have to wait for ages or evolve through unified effort or search
the scriptures. He is perfectly, immediately available through Jesus Christ.
Fran Maloney