Would you, then, look at God different?

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-11-15 11:48pm

I'm saying that his psychology would, at the very least, be entirely different from ours. Upon meeting an alien being, would you assume its cognitive functions and motivations to be at all like a human's? Why would you assume this for God? Honestly, for an unknown sentient being with completely different origins then us, I doubt you could actually claim to be certain of any similarities between its mind and ours. Why would there be any? Emotions exist primarily as a result of evolution, right? If there is a God, it likely never evolved. It's basis for emotion may be completely different from ours. What commonalities could we even claim to have with such a being?

Why should you be able to demand from me evidence that it's mind would be different when there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to support the assertion that it should be the same?

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-11-16 12:42am

Magnetic wrote:To add to, or to make clearer, God is real, but those who wrote down the information in the Bible misunderstood or completely got it wrong. In other words, the 6-day creation, the global flood, and the like were parables, not supposed to be remembered as a literal event. .

In the words of (The lawyer from the monkey "Darwin teachnig vs the bible" trial in missisispii)-
How could it have been 6 days if time was only made halfway through the process?
Couldn't each day have been a n unspecified period of time, such as say- a few hundred million or billion years?
(Brilliant line, I need to remmemeber to sig the original)

These are the things I'm talking about. Not necessarily changing the religion, but the idea that many of the writings were misinterpretations of what God was wanting them to understand

This is exactly my opinion, the reason I was always sosecular is the fact that we know that the Bible was written and interpreted by Humans (See the glorification of David in the book written during his times and the making of K.Saul into a raving madman [earlier than normal].

The fact is that the bible should have always been taken as a collection of parables,fables and myths due to the innacuracy of mouth to mouth depictions over the millenia until it was written down by biased scholars.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2005-11-16 09:44am

Epicurus' riddle still applies, regardless of the source mythology.

God would still have to answer for the sheer amount of natural unpleasantness that abounds in the universe without his intervention. Any moral person would see kittens, puppies and babies dying as something you would intervene in if you were a god, yet evolution is the deaths of trillions of puppies, kittens and babies.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-11-16 05:40pm

Does anyone but me see the irony in the contrast between this thread, and the thread related to giving up all rights to govern ourselves as a species for the sake of eliminating almost every problem that we have?

I find it odd that many of the same people who blame a God for not helping us also say that if godlike beings offered to take care of all problems, they wouldn't want them to do it for the sake of maintaining a sense of freedom and autonomy.

Does anyone but me think these are contradictory ideals? I very probably am missing something...

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-11-17 01:33am

Who in their right mind says they don't want god helping them with everything? I sure as hell would, unless he's not all-powerful, and can't keep me from getting bored. But, since we are assuming an all-powerful, all-knowing god, he should have created all life in a state of perpetual bliss, while simultaneously making us grow and advance as a species. How? Who knows. Gods that are all-powerful don't necessarily need to obey the rules of logic.

Cykeisme · Post by **Cykeisme** » 2005-11-17 06:54am

Zero132132 wrote:I find it odd that many of the same people who blame a God for not helping us also say that if godlike beings offered to take care of all problems, they wouldn't want them to do it for the sake of maintaining a sense of freedom and autonomy.

One sec.. how does being helped remove your freedom?

Sean Gray · Post by **Sean Gray** » 2005-11-17 01:36pm

How much of human suffering comes from humans inflicting evil on other humans?

God could remove a huge chunk of suffering here on Earth by simply preventing people from doing evil. A rapist would try to rape someone and find himself physically incapable of doing so. But now he isn't free to act as he pleases. There's no more evil, but only because we've given up our ability to do it.

God could have puppets who are only capable of doing his will, or he could have actual people who can make a choice to do it. If God exists, he apparently chose the latter.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-11-17 01:46pm

^Sure, there is inherent value in choosing to be good instead of being forced to be good, but since many people don't make that choice, it is still better to force them to be good, because the end result is the same: harm is done to no one.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-11-17 07:06pm

wolveraptor wrote:^Sure, there is inherent value in choosing to be good instead of being forced to be good, but since many people don't make that choice, it is still better to force them to be good, because the end result is the same: harm is done to no one.

That's assuming there's only value on the end results, and that harm is always bad.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-11-17 09:17pm

That's not what I'm saying at all. There is value in the process of achieving those end results, but it is better to not go through that process and still achieve those end results than to not achieve them at all. The process is only valueable if the correct results are recieved.

And when can harm possibly be good? Only when punishing crimes, but if they can be simply prevented, is that not superior?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2005-11-17 09:34pm

Zero132132 wrote:Does anyone but me see the irony in the contrast between this thread, and the thread related to giving up all rights to govern ourselves as a species for the sake of eliminating almost every problem that we have?

I find it odd that many of the same people who blame a God for not helping us also say that if godlike beings offered to take care of all problems, they wouldn't want them to do it for the sake of maintaining a sense of freedom and autonomy.

Does anyone but me think these are contradictory ideals? I very probably am missing something...

It's a black/white fallacy between total control/nerfed existence and living in a hostile universe full of dead kittens. I can think god is a bitch for not intervening, and I can think aliens are bitches if they want to take away all autonomy with the best of intentions. It's like saying "how can you on the one hand, reject a police state dictatorship and on the other react badly to an anarchic warzone?" There's no hypocrisy or contradiction with wanting to live in a just society/universe and not wanting a completely dictated one.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-11-17 10:17pm

Rye wrote:
Zero132132 wrote:Does anyone but me see the irony in the contrast between this thread, and the thread related to giving up all rights to govern ourselves as a species for the sake of eliminating almost every problem that we have?

I find it odd that many of the same people who blame a God for not helping us also say that if godlike beings offered to take care of all problems, they wouldn't want them to do it for the sake of maintaining a sense of freedom and autonomy.

Does anyone but me think these are contradictory ideals? I very probably am missing something...
It's a black/white fallacy between total control/nerfed existence and living in a hostile universe full of dead kittens. I can think god is a bitch for not intervening, and I can think aliens are bitches if they want to take away all autonomy with the best of intentions. It's like saying "how can you on the one hand, reject a police state dictatorship and on the other react badly to an anarchic warzone?" There's no hypocrisy or contradiction with wanting to live in a just society/universe and not wanting a completely dictated one.

That's a very good point, but would you prefer that God only intervene SOMEtimes, instead of being dictatorial? Would you prefer he only intervene in very big disasters? How would you want things?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2005-11-17 11:00pm

I would have him prevent death altogether unless a person wished to die, for starters, the rest is pretty much as described in the culture. Just a friendly, happy anarchy for sentient beings, with a means of gaining mental maturity for the humans without stuff like "character building" bullying and the bullshit we have to contend with currently.

Beyond that, change the laws of physics so humans can do cooler things and have infinite paths to travel. There, a better universe than this one.

Sean Gray · Post by **Sean Gray** » 2005-11-18 01:10am

wolveraptor wrote:^Sure, there is inherent value in choosing to be good instead of being forced to be good, but since many people don't make that choice, it is still better to force them to be good, because the end result is the same: harm is done to no one.

Are you talking about just physical harm? Because if someone took away my ability to choose my actions, I would consider myself harmed.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2005-11-18 07:41am

Sean Gray wrote:
wolveraptor wrote:^Sure, there is inherent value in choosing to be good instead of being forced to be good, but since many people don't make that choice, it is still better to force them to be good, because the end result is the same: harm is done to no one.
Are you talking about just physical harm? Because if someone took away my ability to choose my actions, I would consider myself harmed.

I think you're overreacting here, taking away your ability to choose to molest a child, for instance would be a moral thing to deny you. Same thing in intervening in a murder. And so on.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-11-18 10:46am

Sean Gray wrote:Are you talking about just physical harm? Because if someone took away my ability to choose my actions, I would consider myself harmed.

The only action being denied to you is that which causes harm.

Sean Gray · Post by **Sean Gray** » 2005-11-20 09:12pm

Was there ever a science fiction story that followed similar lines? (Replacing God with science, obviously) Something like every human on earth having a chip implanted in them, and every time it sensed the "violence" brainwave or chemical, it incapacitated the person or called the cops? The concept seems familiar but I can't place it.

dworkin · Post by **dworkin** » 2005-11-21 04:28am

Sean Gray wrote:Was there ever a science fiction story that followed similar lines? (Replacing God with science, obviously) Something like every human on earth having a chip implanted in them, and every time it sensed the "violence" brainwave or chemical, it incapacitated the person or called the cops? The concept seems familiar but I can't place it.

The Fresco by Sheri S Tepper.
Aliens come to civilise earth because their religion says so.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2005-11-21 05:01am

I like the idea of the bored God who is basically just playing Sims to while away the eternity. He might know everything going on right now, but isn't omniscient to the point that he can predict everything that will happen in the future. He put everything into place, being careful to make it all look natural, then ran off and hid to see what would come of it all. The fact that we came up with religions which describe a being similar to him would be sheer coincidence, and he wouldn't have actually done any of the good or bad shit ascribed to him.

He watches everything that's going on, and while there is pain in the universe he made, he doesn't feel too bad about it. After all, would we rather he hadn't made the universe at all in the first place? Besides, he's ethical enough to put all the sentient results of his experiment into an eternal "Heaven" after they die, so nobody really has too much to complain about in the long term.

This is the only concept of a god I can think of, which is both consistent with reality and not horribly malevolent. Too bad there's not a jot of evidence for any such thing. /shrug

CaptJodan · Post by **CaptJodan** » 2005-11-21 11:34am

I tend to think of God as an enity of some kind which is...well...Godlike. That is to say their power doesn't necessary come from technology, and that said power is able to do anything, at least wtihin this universe we know of.

That said, I think a reasonable point is that, literally, a God like this wouldn't give two shits about us. We are like Gods to a single celled organism. We can grow them ourselves in a lab, we can kill them, we can manipulate them and their enviornment if we choose to, but we feel no kind of morality towards them of how we treat them. (at least as far as I know) I figure a God with as much power as he would have would be somewhat similar in this regard. He just doesn't care....we are too small as beings to be bothered with.

In a way, God could be making his own little science experiment, independent of any of the Bible's teachings. What do little organisms do when they are faced with this enviornment and this set of skills. How do the plants react? How do animals react? To even suggest that God have morality towards us and not the other creatures who live and die on the planet is a kind of elevation that humans should be treated differently than others here, let alone elsewhere in the universe.

Not sure that makes him immoral, just amoral in regards to his lower creations. It doesn't make him evil, per say, just uncaring. And when you look at it in the context of the general public not giving a damn about some harmless microbe in Africa because of the smallness of the issue, then it could be understood why a God would react like that.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-11-21 01:23pm

CaptJodan wrote:That said, I think a reasonable point is that, literally, a God like this wouldn't give two shits about us. We are like Gods to a single celled organism. We can grow them ourselves in a lab, we can kill them, we can manipulate them and their enviornment if we choose to, but we feel no kind of morality towards them of how we treat them. (at least as far as I know) I figure a God with as much power as he would have would be somewhat similar in this regard. He just doesn't care....we are too small as beings to be bothered with.

But since God has omnipotent power and complete knowledge, he knows what it is like to be one of us. The great difference is that we can think, while bacteria can't. Besides, you're putting the human flaw of indifference to suffering on god.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-11-21 01:28pm

Sean Gray wrote:How much of human suffering comes from humans inflicting evil on other humans?

God could remove a huge chunk of suffering here on Earth by simply preventing people from doing evil. A rapist would try to rape someone and find himself physically incapable of doing so. But now he isn't free to act as he pleases. There's no more evil, but only because we've given up our ability to do it.

God could have puppets who are only capable of doing his will, or he could have actual people who can make a choice to do it. If God exists, he apparently chose the latter.

Or he could eradicate the AIDS virus, which would have no impact on free will at all, but apparently the suffering, death, and misery of millions is not as important to Him as keeping people from having too much sex.

Besides, here's a novel thought: why not simply remove free will from someone at the moment he is about to do something horrible, while leaving the decent people unaffected? Why the black/white fallacy?

Magnetic · Post by **Magnetic** » 2005-11-21 03:13pm

Funny. I just watched (over the weekend) a rerun of Charmed (and before you laugh). It was about the Avatars wanting to make a Utopia and did so (anyone who caused problems was just gone/killed), but the sisters realized that such an existance was actually less desirable than an existance where everyone's actions/'free will' were basically "staged".

Same would go with this post. Bad things happen here because it is the way the universe operates, . . . based on physics, so you have effects of a spinning earth, causing hurricanes, tornados, . . . you have new strains of flu largly because of increasing human populations (thus increases chicken farms to feed them), . . . . people cause many of these problems, . . . cancer, diseases, . . etc. . . .

I wonder how many of these problems (that we see, such as AIDS) were brought on by the way some people choose to live, or because of the choices few people make that effect millions of others?

There may be some things that a supreme being could stop, but putting a stop to things of our own doing, . . . . . that wouldn't be anybodies problem but our own.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-11-21 03:42pm

Magnetic wrote:I wonder how many of these problems (that we see, such as AIDS) were brought on by the way some people choose to live, or because of the choices few people make that effect millions of others?

AIDS was brought on by a viral mutation. Don't be an idiot.

Magnetic · Post by **Magnetic** » 2005-11-21 05:24pm

Yes, but did we (some humans) do something that caused that mutation? If not, then AIDS isn't a good example for my last post. Perhaps something along the lines of 'the effects of global warming', or the possible 'flu pandemic'.