What events or experiences in your life have hinted or suggested that you were created for a specific purpose?

I don’t really understand what you mean by ‘specific purpose’?
Do you mean by a certain career?
Or do you mean as in maybe put on the earth to save people’s lives?

Created implies something designed me—not buying it.

He’s trying to con you into Christianity – he’s planning to use your answer to argue that you were created for a specific purpose, but that the purpose is known only to God.

Christianity can stand on its own merits, shorty, and doesn’t need con games and trickery to spread its message. Go proselytize elsewhere.

Oh, it’s worse than that. It’s a “when did you stop beating your wife?” question—based on a false premise, that everyone’s life should have hints or suggestions of purposeful creation. No matter how you answer that, you buy into his premise. The only solution is to unask the question.

Intellectual dishonesty of the first order, shorty. Screwtape would be proud.

There is some evidence to suggest I was created specifically to reproduce and pass my genes on to the next generation where hopefully my children will survive long enough to do the same thing!

What cwilber said.. And nice C.S. Lewis reference.

@cwilbur
I want deny I’m very proud to be a child of God and I do agree we were created by God and called before the foundation of the earth for His purpose. I also won’t disagree if it were up to me all would choose Life instead of death. We all would be Bro and Sis thru Christ.

What I don’t agree with is you judging my motives for asking a question or trying to call me a con. From day one of coming to Fluther I have not hid anything about my beliefs in God and I want. I have promoted Loving your neighbor as yourself which I’ve found out it seems to be hard for some.

Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life and I believe we were made to have meaning. This is why people try dubious methods, like astrology or psychics, to discover it. When life has meaning , you can bear most anything; life without meaning life is unbearable. In my belief without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence, so to speak, and I would not trade this side for no amount of money or temptation.
I feel that without meaning life has no significance or hope. Why spend a life of hopelessness. The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.

@shorty:

Ask questions here because you genuinely want to know the answer, not because you plan to respond to people with religious proselytizing.

You have found meaning for your life in God. This is a great thing. But you must recognize that other people find meaning for their lives in other ways, some of which might not look very meaningful to you.

Imagine if someone found meaning for his life in music, and kept on asking you leading questions intended to demonstrate to you, once and for all, that music was the only source of meaning in life. You’d get pretty tired of that, especially as you’ve already found a source of meaning.

In fact, you’d probably get pretty tired about hearing about any source of music.

And that’s what you’re doing here. God speaks to everyone; whether they listen or not is up to them. But when you pester people with dishonestly leading questions, they shut you out, which means they’re that much less likely to listen to any other voices on the matter.

You want to testify about the greatness of God? Great! Get a blog. Get a pulpit. Write a book. This is Fluther, where people ask each other questions about things they want to know, and discuss the results. Let your faith be known by your actions, and not by your Epistle to the Flutherites.

@cwibur

Aren’t you doing what you are accusing me of doing? Aren’t you trying to speak for all instead of them speaking for themselves?

proselytize |ˈpräsələˌtīz|
verb [ trans. ]
convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another;
advocate or promote (a belief or course of action) : Davis wanted to share his concept and proselytize his ideas.

If you really stop and think it was you who brought Christianity into the question.

Yes we can all hear from God if we have invited Jesus into our heart. At that time the Holy Spirit will come to live in us and will lead us into the Will of the Father, if like you say, we listen.

@ shorty: go pray in the closet where Jesus told you to do it.

I think i’m going to leave now….I don’t want to get mixed up in religious arguments.

I can see shorty’s point about having a meaning in life (hers being God)
But i can also see cwilbur’s point about how others find different meanings to their lives.
Heck! Some even enjoy life even when they havn’t found their meaning yet!!

If God is welcoming and kind, and he forgives others, then it shouldn’t matter if we beleive in him, or follow him without a second thought, because he apparently loves us all the same!.....right?

All in all, i’m afraid i’ll have to take cwilbur’s side in this. Sorry.

I find it very fastinating that those who are anti christianity bring the subject up of God – then mock those who experess their beliefs. And to make it worse they imdediately jump to the don’t acusations like your proselytizing or if the bible is brought into it your bible thumping.
It really makes one wonder what the real source of their protests are. Do they really fear Christianity and therfore attack those who express their views and faith. I woud hope not but I see a lot of negative emotionalism in many of their responses.

We who are Christians have every right to express our views of life and faith. To just post a sermon or litnany of why one should accept God (out of any context related to a question) would be wrong. In this case shorty is correct – shorty didn’t bring the subject of God up. shorty asked a ligitimate question and because shorty has openly proclaimed themselves a Christian the attacks started. Then when shorty expressed his/her beliefs some of you blew a fuze and dumped on him/her.

It looks more like some of you are playing wack the Christian – or do you really think people like shorty should just keep their faith to themselves and if so why do you fear them expressing what they believe and trying to help you understand it. If your not interest just don’t read it.

For all you know the motive was to just understand people better – not to con or trick people.

Shorty did not ask a ligitimate [sic] question. Shorty asked a leading question designed to elicit the sorts of answers she wanted to see.

A discussion is a two-way street; if shorty wanted to discuss her faith, because she was genuinely interested in other people’s beliefs then she’d be welcome. But she seems more interested in asking leading questions and bringing the discussion around to her faith so that she can preach at people.

And Besafe, here you come to play the persecution card. You’re not being persecuted for being Christian; there are several Christians here who don’t get the same responses you do. You’re being persecuted for being preachy bores.

I really wonder how you know what shortys motive was. Regardless of the motive freedom speech rights do exist even on fluter Also since you seem to dislike what some post don’t read it. If you chose to read anyways don’t dump on people. Saying you disagree and why is ok but don’t attack the person like some have and don’t ascribe motives.

”...You were created,” that’s a not-so-subtle reference to religion. One can infer motive from statements such as these; either you’re too stupid to realize this, or intellectually dishonest in your response. In either case, you’ve got some serious growing up to do. Go read some books on critical thinking and then get back to us once you’re capable of higher level independent rational thinking.

so why did you read and respond if you thought it was going to be about religion?

Who made you a post cop? Please just skip over posts that do not meet your standard of critical thought.

@Besafe: by the time she had posted this question, Shorty had pretty much made it clear that she had an agenda; that, together with the content of the question, made it pretty clear what her motivation was.

And I read it and responded to it because part of “discussion” is pointing out the flaws in other people’s positions. The same free speech that allows you to proselytize allows me to point out that you’re proselytizing.

Are you really so thick and tunnel-visioned that you don’t see this, or are you being intellectually dishonest because you’re seeing it but claiming not to? Neither speaks very highly of you, and I’d be pleased to see an alternative interpretation that puts you in a more positive light.

yes you have a right to give your opinion – However pointing out flaws often can come across as being critical or attacking the person.

We all need to keep from putting down people we don’t agree with or who not write or spell well- ESP since it is hard to correct stuff on the iPhone.

Um, I am being critical, because I think her question is inappropriately leading.

Then don’t read it or if you do ignore it. There is a lot of C___p on the site i want to part of—I try not to dump or respond in a a critcal way. A real pet peeve for me, because I’d guess we may have tons of young people who read the posts, is the obscene language and hateful responses I have observed.. Admitidly it seems to be a few specific people but I find it inexcuseable. (why isn’t spell check working – I am horrid at spelling).

@Besafe: taking action against things that I see as detrimental to Fluther is the way I work to preserve things I consider valuable and unique to Fluther.

This is a place where questions and answers are discussed, and sometimes that discussion involves criticism of the question or of other answers. If you can’t handle that, Fluther is not the place for you.

@cwilbur What things do you consider valuable and unique to fluther? The abilty to be highly ciritcal of those who may not have a good education or abilty to write or express mockery and hate toward those who have beliefs you do not share? I would hope you are a better person than that.

@Besafe: a diversity of opinions, and people who can think clearly and write clearly. A variety of topics to discuss, with a variety of people discussing them. People asking questions they want to discuss. A place where ideas can be criticized and examined.

Education is not a requirement for thinking and writing clearly; if you take the time and effort to think clearly, and you write coherently, nobody will care what your education level is. And I don’t think I have yet seen actual hatred; I have seen frustration and annoyance and disagreement, and if you cannot distinguish between those and hatred—or, worse, if you see those and label them as “hatred” in an effort to elicit sympathy—then you are going to have severe problems in any open discussion, as most people can distinguish between them, and can tell when you are just playing for sympathy.

@cwilbur
So in your view if someone cannot write clearly (in english) we should be critical of them? I would guess some on fluther may have english as second language. I know my daughter in law does and does not write (or speak) clearly in english—but she knows five other languages better than she does english. I suggest as soon as we begin trying to judge people by their use of english or assume we know their motives that we show ourselves to be narrow minded and foolish.

@Besafe: if someone writes English so unclearly that they cannot get their point across, they ought to be open to constructive criticism.

And English is not my first language, either.

Finally, motives can be inferred from a pattern of behavior; in fact, it’s the only way to make any sort of guess about what someone’s motive is, because people can be dishonest and manipulative.

Brilliant use of the implicative “we”, by the way; if you want to show yourself to be narrow minded and foolish, do so in whatever way you care to, but leave me out of it.

I doubt we can ever fully know the motives of people who post on fluther – we can however determine if they are posting things that build up others or put them down. You will likely find a lot to attack in my use of the english language – grammer spelling etc. Which makes me glad I had good editors for the six papers I authored that were published in international safety engineering journals – one of which won a best paper award. I am not bragging – just using to show you can’t judge a book by the cover or in this case by their ability to write and spell well on fluther. For some of us, what we post is a quick response – not a well crafted response – because we are too busy to spend much time on it and it is harder for us to see our errors than perhaps it is for you.