G0d as Programmer

I had a really fascinating conversation about 2 weeks ago with my new buddy Dennis (sounds like Denise). He's a college student at the University where I teach, but not one of my students. He comes to the English Discussion Club. I usually see him two or three times a week and we talk about life, the future, and often times very philosophical topics. He brought up the topic of G0d as a Computer Programmer. I thought it such an interesting concept of G0d. One, it really helped us to communicate about such a complex topic, because of course, my language skills don't handle really difficult conversations all that well yet.

He's studying computer programming to work for an oil company (and English on the side) and my background has lots of computer stuff in it too. So we're able to communicate on this level really well. Here are a few of the more specific things that we talked about:

* He programmed for 7 days to create the world

* He also programmed lots of sub routines (smaller programs) that run on their own -- like an auto pilot. These programs include things like time (days/nights), gravity, and other laws of science that keep things moving along.

The Players

- The Programmer, is of course, G0d.

- Adam was the first program that was able to not only run and monitor itself, but to also reprogram itself and to be aware (the first artificial intelligence -- although it's real intelligence, not artificial).

- Eve was a copy of the Adam program, that was then modified to work well together with the Adam program. So for the ladies out there - you can always claim that man was the Beta program and woman the improved model!

- The snake program, or Satan, was created for good (like the internet), but was corrupted with some bad code that replicates itself into other sentient programs (translation: Snake is the first computer virus from which all other viruses stem).

- The anti-virus software (which works on all platforms, and requires no internet connection for updating), Jes^s, works for anyone who chooses to install it onto your hard drive (which is a hardened heart, until you allow G0d inside).

* The B!ble tells us that we're created in the image of G0d, who was the original programmer. What does it mean to be created in His image. Well, I think it means that we are eternal just as He is. The biggest difference is that we're an image. In computer terms a disk image is a computer file containing the complete contents and structure of a data storage medium or device. So we're like the original in some ways, but NOT the original. I think that this means we're eternal. But in a different way than He's eternal. We have a definite starting point. Once we exist, we continue existing. For a short time here on earth, we have a corporal body, and then that body dies, but the spirit continues to live. G0d on the other hand, has always existed. He's eternal in both directions.

So this is our conversation so far… it's so interesting to discuss such deep philosophical things in this manner.