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Post by Xtermo on Feb 8, 2005 19:00:46 GMT -5
Okay, everyone! This is a touchy subject, lso let's try to keep things limited to either statements of facts. If you wish to give an opinion in this thread [glow=red,2,300]YOU MUST SAY THAT IT IS AN OPINION[/glow]. Standard antiflaming rules apply. Now that the formalities are out of the way- God, gods, etc.- Do such powers exist? What do they want for/from us, if anything, if they exist? What do you think and why? Be prepaired to stand behind your point of view! **This thread carried over from conversation at X's Plothole of Junk. It started with the last comment on page 6, and carries into page 8. mspb.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=ntm&thread=1097291293&action=display&start=75The last statement made was: Well our god (they are many gods it says so in the bible a few times) never really told us his name, so it's three main ones, Yaweh, Jehovah, and Alla. Jesus was a god on Earth. so they're 4 really. Plus the one in Zororastic  |
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Post by The Giant-Size Man Thing on Feb 8, 2005 20:46:44 GMT -5
I don't quite understand why we need the concept of a "higher being" to explain what we don't quite understand. I'm an Athiest based on the principles of logic. We can explain the universe, where we came from, and who we are without having to add the extra unknown variable of a deity.
Let me explain. The concept of God is that He/She/It/They is undefinable. He/She/It/They are so mind-boggling superior to us that we cannot comprehend His/Her/Its/Their power and majesty and knowledge and so forth. Thus, undefinable. Then we add the undefined variable to an equation that's fine without it. What's the point? Both lead to the same answer, just that one has an extra variable attached to it.
Then you can get into a whole bunch of silly arguments such as:
"If god is omnipotent, can he create a rock so large that he cannot lift it?"
"If god is omniscient, wouldn't the fact that He/She/It/They know what you are going to do, know when you're going to do it, and know how you're going to do it negate your free will?"
"If god is good, and everything god creates is good, and god created everything, why is there evil in the world?"
This is just how I feel about the subject. To quote Han Solo: "There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny."
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Post by Mega Raptor on Feb 8, 2005 21:15:52 GMT -5
I like to think there is some kind of all powerful force out there, not necessarily any of the defined 'gods' (I myself don't buy into organized religion, ya know?).
The way I see it, is that this god started things and now is just a functional part of the system, like all of us. Perhaps even through all of us. A spiritual connection between everyone and everything, if you will.
Another thing, is that if a god truly is all powerful, then it doesn't need to work in ways that we can define. Like Goji said, the equation works whether you count the undefined or not. Doesn't change the fact that maybe something might be there, though.
As for free will, again, we have the all powerful thing going on. Who's to say that an all powerful diety wouldn't know what we were planning to do with the free will it gave us? It's still our free will, just the diety already accounted for it.
Okay, I'm rambling, and I probably shouldn't be writing this when I need to be out the door in five minutes, so I'll get back to this later.
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Post by The Giant-Size Man Thing on Feb 8, 2005 21:24:11 GMT -5
Not really. If the undefined deity of your choice knows every action that you are going to ever take, you're basically playing the part straight from a script, since it's all predestined and written out. That's cool if that's what you believe, but that also opens up a whole new can of worms once we get into the whole rewards/punishments issue.
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Post by Mega Raptor on Feb 8, 2005 21:58:43 GMT -5
All I really believe in is the connection I mentioned. I was just bringing up the all powerful stuff for the sake of starting a discussion there.
Then again, there's also the matter of perspective. This theoretical entity could in fact be quite limited, either through self imposed things or just not really being all powerful. If that were the case, it would simply be making due the best it could with what it had and we wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the perspective of our day to day lives.
Sort of like how we are with, oh, I dunno, ants. If an ant even notices us, it is also much weaker than us.
Lets say that they notice us and take action (and just for the sake of argument, imagine they could communicate meaningfully between themselves on the level our species does). One of them does something to anger us, we have all sorts of options that to the ants could seem 'all powerful'. We could crush the ant, shrug it off and move on, or if we're feeling really vengeful, bring some oil to a boil, follow the bastards back to their hill and pour said boiling oil all over it.
If we crush the offending ant, the others who see it would think that the ant had done something bad and was worth instant destruction over. Option number two they wouldn't think anything at all had happened. Number 3, and the survivors watch in horror as their entire ant society is leveled by a 'vengeful god'.
See what I'm getting at here? Kinda? We humans are far from all powerful, but from the perspective of something as small as an ant, we are. Perhaps there is something out there that is on a similar scale with us as the ants.
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Post by dragonclaw15 on Feb 8, 2005 22:00:09 GMT -5
I wrote something that has something to do with this subject about an hour ago. I'll paste the section that's most relevant. It was me musing about humanity and souls, but there is a part on god (and the superiority of man) in here.
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Post by Mega Raptor on Feb 8, 2005 22:02:36 GMT -5
To reply to DC
If something did make us (I'm not saying we were made, but we really can't know for certain at this point), WHY would we be made perfect? What would the point of living at all be if we were perfect?
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Post by dragonclaw15 on Feb 8, 2005 22:11:19 GMT -5
Perfection doesn't necessarily mean uniformity. For one thing, I'm sure the world would be a lot better run, and definitely a lot cleaner.
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Post by The Giant-Size Man Thing on Feb 8, 2005 22:24:53 GMT -5
An interesting concept, the "not all powerful" deity is. I kind of equate it to like Space Aliens being our creators. They aren't perfect, they're mortal, but they are more powerful than us. Unfortunately, we have no evidence for such beings or whether or not they created us.
Let's use the Ant analogy again. We are more powerful than a colony of ants and we have perfected ways to killing them. Pesticides, poisons, and even the magnifying glass and the thumb. We are gods, in a sense, to the ants, but we did not create the ants.
So, let's say that these all powerful beings come to Earth. Whose to say they are our gods and are the reason we exist? We have found evidence here on Earth that we humans came about naturally. On the other hand, we have found no evidence of a superior race. These "higher" beings may be more powerful than us, but they didn't create us and probably never controlled our lives until they arrived.
Now, onto whether or not we were created perfect:
Why create us to be imperfect? So that we can be entertainment to the deities? So that we can fall flat on our faces and be sent to an eternity of punishment because we made human mistakes? The deities have a pretty sick sense of humor, or are just simply sadistic, if this is the way that they want us to be. All of the evil and corruption and the suffering and the violence in the world is because the creator created us that way? I don't get it. Why make us this way? So that we can fall back on Him/Her/It/Them and admit we are imperfect and that we need him so that we can help the creator's inferiority complex, maybe? I don't buy it.
If there is a god, it's definitely not one that I would be proud to worship.
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Post by dragonclaw15 on Feb 8, 2005 22:34:48 GMT -5
On creation - I was thinking about it in the (christian) sense that god is benevolent, but of course different ideas apply for different religions.
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Post by The Giant-Size Man Thing on Feb 8, 2005 22:42:21 GMT -5
Yeah, the benevolent creator idea, I think, can be tossed in the trash. Then again, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe in this case here, literally.
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Post by Infested Manae on Feb 8, 2005 23:41:50 GMT -5
Cripes, go read Genesis, the lot o' ye. Not saying believe it, but read it, and you won't be scratching heads on why evil exists.
Suffice to say, it didn't. Good and Evil came into existence for humanity when we ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In other words, eat the fruit, gain a moral conscience. Now don't come running crying foul and start tossing a dozen different questions and arguements on this. Go read it like I said first, and think on it a while.
Now, personally, I like to think there is something... else... going on. For me, it's a lot easier to believe something is pulling some strings over thinking a bunch of sub-atomic particles decided to work together to form atoms where decided staying in their nice, stable basic formations was for the birds and worked together to form molecules which decided to form groups of molecules happy to arrange themselves in ways that defied normal behavior and went on to defy equilibrium across membranes formed by themselves, ultimately forming the first cell. Which, then, went on to become a multi-cell blob which decided becoming a tissue in some larger multi-cell blob to help out would be beneficial which decided... you see where I'm going.
Also, Carl, you're 'defined equation' has a major flaw. Think about it... how many times has it changed in the past two hundred years alone? Humans know nothing about the real workings of the universe. It's utter hubris to think otherwise, towards whatever higher power you look to. We're describing the whole box of crayons looking at one or two, and there are colors in there we're yet to name.
Now, then. I also have a peculiar belief for those of some sort of faith around us. Fits with Sab, sort of. See, I look at it as this: why bother giving a commandment of "thou shalt have no other god before me." What's up with that? And it's seperate from the ban on false idols. Could we look at this and say, "You know, just maybe, the Greeks weren't wrong." I mean, hey, the Romans did adopt their gods, right? So, maybe in the foundation of Christianity is the admission other gods do exists, and that frankly, we aren't even told not to believe in or even worship them. Just, the Big Guy comes first and foremost.
Something to think on.
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Post by Mega Raptor on Feb 8, 2005 23:44:02 GMT -5
As far as the imperfections of man go, I think that these are necessary for us to be human at all. If we were perfect, we not only wouldn't make mistakes, but we also would likely not involve ourselves in the better aspects of our imperfect nature. Things like love, for example. By the very definition of a 'perfect' being, we would be above such things and frankly, the thought of that kind of existance saddens me.
Humans have the capacity for good and evil, be it through our DNA, our experiences or our theoretical soul. Regardless of where this comes from, this capacity and the inherent conflicts with it are what make life worth living (I use 'conflicts' very broadly. Everyone has some sort of conflict in their life, be it big or small. Without it to overcome, why would you exist?).
And back to supreme beings, here is another theory. Who is to say that our physical universe itself is not the supreme being? This kinda ties into the connection thing I mentioned believing in, along with the so called Gaia Hypothesis. It could just be that 'god' is the universe itself. Existance is the entity and we are all just parts of it.
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Post by Draco Starcloud on Feb 8, 2005 23:45:06 GMT -5
"If god is good, and everything god creates is good, and god created everything, why is there evil in the world?" This is just how I feel about the subject. To quote Han Solo: "There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny." It's always Han Solo with you, isn't it? On a serious note, this is what I believe about God. He can either be all-good or all-powerful, but not both. The all-powerful choice seems to be correct, since would an all-good God flood the world, especially one who forgives all sin? |
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Post by Tobari Sabbatine on Feb 9, 2005 0:16:46 GMT -5
Well the true is that the only things we can explane with logic are the 3rd best thing in live.
The 2nd best are meditfors for the best things in live.
The best are those that you can't explane in human words only in emotions.
The need for religon is as old as humans are the fist being about 10,000 years + ago.
If you want logic here
about 4000 years ago, Yaweh god of the herbews made his people in and graden, they were a few, Adem, Linit, Eva, Cain, and Abel are some. after they left the graden they became the 10 tribes of the jews, they married the people the other gods made. about a few hundread years later Yahew cuases a massise flood in Sumiera, he tells Noah and so he builds a bout to carry his family and animals, after 40 days the flood waters have ended and the land returns. in Ur a man name Abram is told by Yahew to lead his people to Isreal. they Josive goes to Eygpt and does great things there.
a few hundread years later Rames enslaves them his brother Moses who was really Hebrew himselfs tries to make him free, after a few pleages he does (and removes it form records)
20-40 years walking they final comes back to Isreal.
ok now I'm going to stop cuz I'm only on the middle of Exodus.
But Religon does make laws and morals.
read the book of Exodus that has the laws which was based on the code of Hamabbie(sp)
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