Does all of God's creation have a purpose?

Tralhob:

That is an interesting way of looking at the concept of "purpose". Mine is a bit differant. I do believe that everything in nature and the universe has a purpose; we may just not know what it is. As I mentioned before, I believe in a certain way, Mercury is alive just as much as the Earth is a randomly-formed lump o' rock. The earth has some very unique characteristics that allow life to form and I believe other planets may have these too.

Getting back to "purpose", I don't believe that the only things with purpose are those that benefit humans. Poison Oak has no use for us, but it feeds Deer which are fed on by Mountain Lions, so each of these things has a purpose for something even when it doesn't directly or indirectly affect us.

Of course, I don't believe that any of this has anything to do with "god" in the Chrisian sense.

I believe everything created by God has a purpose. The things that exist with no discernable use must have been created by another entity. Consider flys, mosquitoes, and slugs (and Hillary). I would suppose the question of the planet Mercury's usefullness would be better answered by an astrophisist (sp?). Does the close proximity of Mercury to the Sun affect the gravitational field responsible for all of the remaining planets orbits? To those who say "There is no God" all I can say is "Go make an apple in a laboratory. That's not hard to duplicate, really. Now, go plant that synthetic apple, and let's see how big the tree grows."

"I would suppose the question of the planet Mercury's usefullness would be better answered by an astrophisist (sp?). Does the close proximity of Mercury to the Sun affect the gravitational field responsible for all of the remaining planets orbits?"

I'm not an astrophysicist, but I can tell you the answer: no. Mercury's gravitational influence on the other planets is efectively nonexistent.

Yes, I believe all creation has a purpose. Telling a Soul in heaven to find God would require little effort and therefore little growth. Like telling a miner to dig up a ton of gold in a city of gold. But, if you put that miner on Earth and told him to dig up a ton of pure gold, it would require quite an effort just to find it, then, to dig it out and refine it. Thus, if you put a Soul into human form and put it on a planet like Earth where all the spiritual realities are hidden, it would likewise require great effort and thus, build great strenght and character over many lifetimes. Mercury is part of the 'Athiestic' creation by God. All spiritual things are hidden. One must dig deep (within and without) in order to find them. In the end, this creates very strong, mature, pure Souls, ready to graduate to greater things.