Who is God?

[lord of the mark]

any god who could be described in a reasonable length post, and debated in a forum like this, would be not worth worshiping.


Instead, please read "The Star of Redemption" by Franz Rosenzweig.

[MORON]

[otaku] GOD is a GUNDAM [/otaku]

I believe 'god' is a fuzzy word in human language worthless for debates as it means almost all possible things. It doesn't matter what my conception of the supernatural is, as the point of language is communication and I can't use the word to communicate with any detail.

I'd think we should have a word for "really damn powerful compared to the observer" and a word for "a logical impossibility which exists outside of logic" and a word for "cause of mingapulco vacations".

There is no debate necessary if people actually defined the terms for once, but people want to use a set of definition to 'disprove' concepts derived from another set of definitions for some reason.......

[Japher]

It's like they're saying "What? We're God?!"

[Sava]

The idea of a single, intelligent, omnipotent being or "God" is silly and the product of primitive human thinking.

It's obvious that the concept has evolved from other forms of mythology or superstitious thinking... i.e. "spirits" or many "Gods" being responsible for things like the weather, natural disasters, creation, the sun, the moon, the stars, etc...

So what is God?

It's primitive man's way of explaining things he doesn't understand. It's ignorant superstition.

I guess what disturbs me the most is that at this point in our development as a species, we still cannot move past primitive concepts like belief in supernatural forces and beings.

[Dis]

god makes people happy and takes away their fears.

[Japher]

god makes people happy and takes away their fears.

and their lives... god giveth and god taketh away!

[Sava]

Originally posted by Dis
god makes people happy and takes away their fears.

ignorance is bliss

[Japher]

ignorance is bliss

then why are you suicidal?

[Dis]

[Winston]

Actually, I would say Japher demonstrated quite a bit of self-pwnage by that line of 'reasoning'.

Think about it..

[Bill3000]

Why are you bothering to ask a philosophical theological question in Apolyton!?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Well how I see it is that it is inevitable that God exists.

Just looking from thee perspective which the currently accepted evolutionary model suggests.

Solar System ~ 5bn years
Earth and life here ~ 1bn Years
Universe ~15bn years

The logic is the following:

The knowledge accumulated within lifeforms is expanding exponentially (roughly 500 mil years to get to cell stage, another 200mil to higher cell organisms> even less to more developed ones etc etc etc.. ) to get to humans and human "knowledge explosion" in the last 5000 years, geting faster by the minute without stopping.

The fact is that the universe seems to be run by a number of finite rules. Thus to our current knowledge the laws of physics and the way the universe functions does not change.

Therefore the exponetially growing knowledge within life-forms (we can take ours for example )will one day reach the stage where "universe and the laws are conquered" which will in principle give us currently ascribed "godlike" powers. IMO it is clear that if you give us an "imaginable" 1 billion years, let alone 5bn, at the current exponential pace of knowledge gathering and advancement we will dig all the knowlege that can be dug and certainly move to some higer way of existance comparable to the current one.

Thus if universe was about 10bn years without Solar System even existing, and only 1 bn years with good conditions on Earth to get to this stage. Given the sheer number of observable galaxies and stars that many millions are bound to have conditions like this planet (assuming those are the only ones acceptable for life formation) I think the odds are very good that someone else got to the "God" stage by now. And perhaps many. This is just plain logic, that somehow seems to be missed all to often in such conversations. If we expand this thinking to an "infinite time" universe or multiverse, than God becomes a certainty.

IMO the right question is Who is God and "why does he let us develop as we do, without clear interference?"

Potentially you could say this:
Is the universe too big for life to know about "everything".

I would think no, In the same sense that Earth was too big for fish to know about everyhing, that some brave ancient greek could dare to think it would be possible to know everything going on the surface of the Earth one day. Fast forward to modern man who can know it all if he just wanted to (or this is a very real possibility if this was our intention).

I think the correct question would be "who" is God and not "does" God exist. One can clearly dispute the presence here on the planet, but surely I think it is logical to think that he is somewhere already. Even if he is not, clearly higher life forms will be possible in time in the same way that once there were fish than there were reptiles, and now there are humans. One point is clear and that is that the presence of it is clearly concealed as for whatever reason we are left to develop on our own.

To top it off, mankind does have the "sense of God" everywhere, didn't miss a single culture no matter how small it was and while it is convenient to ascribe that belief to the realm of "explaining the unexplainable" or "fear of death", the problem is in individaul experiences of people which overcome the "rationality" of this day and age and despite all the proof to the contracy they cannot be untrue to themselves and deny that something exists. Some try to put it in the box of the already "prescribed" religious contexts, and others just let it be, but just so to make a point it (or God) is not entirely without presence IMO. (not saying that your average religious nut is that kind of person, but some people are, and some in 5bn people make up to a considerable number from all spheres of life)

[Bill3000]

The problem with that line of thought is that technology does not conquer the laws of physics. Technology by definition follows the laws of physics and takes advantage of some aspects of those laws to make things into the favor of a being. That's not the same thing as changing the laws of physics. A god as you say would not be omniscient - Impossible through the uncertaincy principle, for one.

While there is the fact that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, that does not mean that using advanced knowledge of the laws of existance would rewrite the laws, or conquer them.

[MosesPresley]

I think Michelangelo said it best:

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Bill3000
The problem with that line of thought is that technology does not conquer the laws of physics. Technology by definition follows the laws of physics and takes advantage of some aspects of those laws to make things into the favor of a being. That's not the same thing as changing the laws of physics. A god as you say would not be omniscient - Impossible through the uncertaincy principle, for one.

While there is the fact that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, that does not mean that using advanced knowledge of the laws of existance would rewrite the laws, or conquer them.

sure we are here at this point in time however for fish it would have been outside of realm of imagination or possibility to use nuclear power. Just the same. Not to mention that some of the "godlike qualities" like "eternal life" etc could even now be seen as "on the horizon". We are in the position now like the ancient greek was than about "seeing everything that happens on earth".

Even if you could put "trascending" the laws of the universe as "currently unimaginable" I'd say that the highest improbabiliy or the "true transcendance" happened when those amino acids turned into something resembling life forms eventually. The "physic laws breaking" bit seems just like a less of a challenge. Not to mention that you do not necessarily need to break them, maybe you can just bend them if you know how.

As we have seen so far the sky is the limit and if you want my example from "fish" to "human" is just a good picture of huge gap in life form as it could potentially be from"human" to "God". Or better to say the gap from the "original ocean to human" is surely just as wide as from "human to God". I'd say we are 1/2 way there as it stands, not to meniton that the knowledge is rising exponentially so the time to get there could be considerably less than one bn years. Logically it's a given that others are there already.