Lurker - I think you are sort of right there: free will IS the sole reason for human existence. I think God (the process of Life itself) gives everyone free will. An overriding intelligence which gives free will does not issue commandments! A command presupposes the denial OF free will (as in the military...when the soldier receives a command he is not expected to use his free will and do something else, he is expected to obey that command). Therefore, as it's abundantly clear to me that God (Life) has provided humans with a tremendous measure of free will (provided they are willing to have the courage to use it) then Life has not issued any Commandments!

Why is it worded in the Hebrew writings as Commandments? Because the people at that time, including the scribes who wrote that stuff down, were incapable of imagining a divine being who would not be authoritative, judgmental, wrathful, and punishing...because that was the kind of behaviour they took for granted. That was what they were like, and they naturally saw the Divine in their own image (as does pretty well everbody who believes in a divine being or power). They got it partially wrong. But they were not wrong in perceiving that there was a divine force and presence behind and within reality.

You are exactly correct that if one cannot determine one's own course, then there is no point in life. Right on! And that's why we have free will...absolutely free will. At all times. In that respect, we are godlike...not surprisingly...because, as I said, we are all Sons and Daughters of Life (God) and are in the process of emulating that from which we sprang...through constant evolution and self-development. That takes (usually) many physical lifetimes, not just one lifetime. A physical body simply doesn't last long enough to get it all down in one lifetime. So when it wears out or gets "killed", then the energetic soul that formed it a cell at a time, and gave it consciousness, sets about at some point forming another physical body (through the normal biological mechanisms of conception) and has another go at experimenting with the wonders of free will in a physical World full of possibilities.

To study this sort of thing you don't need to read just one book (the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, etc)....you would be better off to read all of them, and to also read Taoist writings, North American Indian subject matter, and everything else you can find that's "spiritual" in nature, plus science books, and philosophy.

In all of them you will find recurrent themes that may lead you to bredkthroughs in perception.

Or maybe you won't.

Depends on your own basic nature, and that's up to you.

You also asked: "If God has no motivating desires, why does God do anything?"

Ah. That's a BIG question! I said that God doesn't want anything. "Want" means "lack". What is everything lacks nothing, therefore desires nothing.

But...God just naturally does things, because God is the very process of change and action itself (as well as the process of rest between actions). God may also do things simply in order to see what will happen. In other words, like any powerful intelligence, God is not content to rest on his/her/its laurels and stay in a comfortable rut forever, but prefers to experience new things and achieve new things on a regular basis.

God = Life = Change. Without change, everything becomes static...dead...frozen. With change everything becomes lively, enlivened, moving, new, developing, improving, evolving, happening. God is that very process of Life and of Change.

Religious authorities don't like change! They want everything to be written down on a stone tablet or in a sacred text, and held rigidly that way forever! They are not enlightened. They want to kill the very process that is Life. And they are the ones who took the committments and turned them into Commandments! (Oooooo...scary! scary!) They were the scribes and pharisees. They were the guys who killed Jesus. They are the guys who run most churches. They are the guys who call you "a sinner". They are usually (but not always) males.

A lot of scientific authorities don't like Change either! (specially if it invalidates a long-held pet theory of theirs) And you will see them opposing it mightily, unless they thought of it themselves! In this respect, they are exactly like religious fundamentalists in their thinking.

Since God is the very process of change, movement, and doing and using free will...God doesn't have to exactly desire something in order to initiate change...God merely has to be what God already is.

Does the wind blow out of a desire to blow or does the wind just blow because that is its nature?

Or is it both? (laughing)

Like I said, you asked a BIG question there. Fascinating. See if you can come up with your own unique answer to it.

- LH