That was a very interesting post, Kent! I'm glad to hear from someone who is willing to calmly think about something and express those thoughts, rather than to just hurl his favorite "attitude" in other people's faces and rant at them. It's refreshing.

Yes, if there was a Creator God who decided to create a Universe, just like a human author creates a story, then he or she could do it as just as you say.

I don't know if there is such a Creator God. But it's an interesting idea you set forth there.

That's just the sort of thing that programmers do when they design a computer game with an interactive world like "Oblivion", for example. They design a game with a large and detailed world, a world that already has its own historic "past" when the game begins, and that leads off into an unforseeable future for that world, since the future depends on the actions of:

1. the person playing the game
2. the character the person is managing in the game
3. and a lot of other characters who also act independently of the will of the person who is playing the game

We can create a digital version of a small Universe now, using software, people it with all kinds of characters who act independently within their various capabilities and tendencies, and who also react to one another's actions. If you play Oblivion, for example, problems may arise because a minor character you need later in the game just happens to run into trouble somewhere and falls off a bridge or gets killed by a bear or a bandit. It happens...though rarely...and I once had to look up a code from the game designer to spontaneously recreate such a character in the game so I could complete a particular mission. Your own conduct also determines your character, your reputation, your legal status in that world, your fame or infamy, and your success or failure...just as in the real world we live in. You can end up as a an admired hero, a despised thief, a hated murderer...or just an average person who muddled through and remained fairly obscure...or you can die young...it's all up to you. What a great parallel to our real lives!

In this case the game designers would be equivalent to the Creator God of Oblivion...and I (the player) would be sort of like a great oversoul who helps guide the central character of the story.

Very neat stuff! ;-)

If our Universe had been created in a sort of similarly analagous fashion, now wouldn't that be interesting? We would all have bit parts in some gigantic game. A very few might have a fairly major part in that game.

I'm not saying that's the case....but it's one possibility among many.

I am humble enough to admit that I have no idea how the Universe came to be, and I don't expect to ever know for sure, though I hear theories about it. All ancient peoples had creation stories to explain the origins of the world, the stars, and the people and other creatures on this planet. Those creation stories appear in great variety. At least two of them are in the first book of the Bible. I suspect that those two came from much earlier sources.

There's no point in people being snide and flip about stuff like this...stuff that they can't possibly have the final answer to....but that won't stop a lot of people here from being snide and flip about it...because although they know quite well that they don't know the truth about EVERYTHING, they are quite capable of being arrogant and bloody-minded enough to imagine that they know categorically what things AREN'T true and never could be! ;-D And they'll tell you about that immediately if you state something they don't believe in.

I'm not so confident that I can just decide for sure what isn't true when it comes to things like the hypothetical existence of a God. And that's why I say that I don't know if there is a Creator God such as you allude to. I have no way of knowing, and the Bible can't help me out with that, because I don't necessarily consider the Bible to be an authoritative source...nor do I totally discount it as a useful source. Again....I don't know for sure about stuff like that, and I probably never will. And I accept that. I am not afraid of being uncertain about things like that. Seems to me that a lot of other people are afraid. They'd rather be categorically against something they've decided not to "believe" than admit that actually...in truth...they simply don't know.