ADNAUSEAM WRITES:

ADNAUSEAM posts:

I take it by your statement that you do not give much credence to the Holy Bible. However, given what you said, there is one part of Genesis 2 which explains so well how God created the first man that is worth bringing to your attention.

When God created man, He said, Let us make man to our image and likeness, and give him dominion over all animals and over the whole earth. He then formed a human body of dust (or slime) of the earth, breathed into his face the breath of life and man became a living soul.

So, from this we learn right away that God created mankind above the other mammals and that God himself formed the human body of man most perfectly out of the earth. The soul (our spirit) therefore is not made from the earth, but is a breath of God. What that means is that man became a living being when God breathed a soul into the human body. The soul is the cause of the body's life and without it the body cannot live. When the soul is separated from the body, the body dies the physical death, but the soul (also called our spirit) is eternal.

Animals are far lesser creatures than we humans not having eternal souls and each person has their own soul as he has his own life. Our soul is our own for eternity.

Man is made in God's image and likeness means that the word image applies to the natural, and likeness applies to the supernatural resemblance to God. The likeness of  man to God is that man has a spiritual soul which makes his body live, but also is immortal, has intellect and gifted with free will. These 3 qualities are in a very small finite way, like unto God in that God is Eternal, has Infinitly Supreme intelligence, and an Infinitely free Will.  

The body of man bears no likeness to God for God is a  Spirit Infinitely Perfect. The body is important though becasue it is the dwelling place of our immortal soul.

Concerning the afterlife, I would add this on the end of man...

The end of a thing is the purpose for which it was made. For example, the end of a watch is to keep time, and the end of a pencil is to write. When we look around the world we see a purpose or end for everything. Everything in the world was made to serve something else. Now for what purpose was man made? Man is higher than animals as I've already pointed out besides having an immortal soul, he has reason, intelligence and can understand, while animals cannot. Therefore man must look higher than himself. but there is nothing higher than himself in this world so we must look beyond it and cnsidering all things we find man was made for God---to know, love and serve Him both in this world to be with Him in the next.