Can God make mistakes? How many 'likes' will it take for him to back down?
- Thread starter craptakular
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If we go with the whole ''pantheist' thing, then no, God never makes mistakes, we merely misinterpret God.
Why don't we go with the whole atheist thing instead ? Thousands of years ago, everyone was a Polytheist, worshiping all kinds of different gods at once. Then Monotheism kicked in and we just threw all those other gods under the bus and started believing in just one. So that's progress of a kind I guess as we're getting closer to the true number of gods. The world just needs to go one god further and chuck him out too. Then we can all stop typing crap about transcendent sky pixies and instead type crap about the the other crap we always type crap about.
I like your sig Elrein. I'm partial to beer, porn and bacon too. Just not all at the same time cause that would be weird.
Why don't we go with the whole atheist thing instead ? Thousands of years ago, everyone was a Polytheist, worshiping all kinds of different gods at once. Then Monotheism kicked in and we just threw all those other gods under the bus and started believing in just one. So that's progress of a kind I guess as we're getting closer to the true number of gods. The world just needs to go one god further and chuck him out too. Then we can all stop typing crap about transcendent sky pixies and instead type crap about the the other crap we always type crap about.
I don't think atheism is necessarily incompatible with pantheism, given that it is the interpretation whereby the universe actually is God (as a generalisation it would not necessarily have the characteristics of the Christian God).
That being said, my answer was intended to be religiously sceptical. I meant that if you think the universe is making mistakes, your interpretation of the universe (God) is wrong because the universe supposedly follows a lot of set rules (which we currently have an incomplete characterisation of in physics).
As an aside, Einstein apparently subscribed to the idea of pantheism (I don't myself) which is apparently where his scepticism about the apparent meaning of the rules of quantum physics, where the famous "God does not play dice" quote comes from - i.e. his view was supposedly that the universe is deterministic, not random.
That said, I'm not sure if hard-line atheism actually makes sense. The web comic SMBC once made a lovely point about there being evidence that the universe is actually optimised for computation - and that if we can make a limited simulation of the universe, who is to say that we are not in a limited simulation of another universe above us? As to whether there is a truly benevolent, personal God - I think that idea is fairly unlikely. It's too comfortable. It seems 'made up' because it appeals to so many human biases and has at times been forced upon citizens (e.g. crusades) which probably accounts for a lot of its initial spread. Other, looser interpretations of a creator of the universe as we know it might actually be plausible, though.
Soldato
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Similarly, belief in the non-existence of god is the sign of an incredibly close minded, arrogant and ego centric individual.
Nothing wrong with belief in something that you don't understand. So long as you acknowledge what it actually means to 'believe' in something, versus 'knowing or understanding' something. Both of them have their advantages and limitations and can co-exist, despite what some people fiercely claim.
Remember, we have barely left our planet and looking at the way things are going, we mostly likely won't go much further either. We're probably already under some sort of the 'special measures' list of alien civilisations and our planet already being put up for auction for recolonisation. That's how insignificant we are.
How about the solipsistic view of the universe ? No god required. Only your own mind exists and everything you experience is just a fabrication of your mind. Then there's the 'Brain In A Vat' hypothesis. A little like the matrix, it states that we are all just brains in vats living our life through our minds but not actually in the physical world.
I'm always fascinated by the different ways in which people try and make sense of their existence. Everything from solipsism to pantheism, it seems like people are always searching for that numinous quality, that transcendent nebulous aspect which might give their life greater purpose or meaning. It fascinates me because I'm not given to such folly. If an idea hasn't enough evidence to support its self, I just refuse to believe it.
Christopher Hitchens once said, 'What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence'.
I'm always fascinated by the different ways in which people try and make sense of their existence. Everything from solipsism to pantheism, it seems like people are always searching for that numinous quality, that transcendent nebulous aspect which might give their life greater purpose or meaning. It fascinates me because I'm not given to such folly. If an idea hasn't enough evidence to support its self, I just refuse to believe it.
Christopher Hitchens once said, 'What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence'.
Soldato
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I'm sorry (not really), but to say that the belief in the non-existence of god of egocentric is absolutely insane. To believe, as religions tend to, that humans are in some way special is incredibly egocentric, and ridiculous.
Soldato
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Then you don't understand what it means to believe in something.
How so ? I believe in many things for which I have sufficient evidence. For instance, I believe that tomorrow morning the sun will rise and the dark skies will become light. I don't need faith for this because I understand fully why it happens.
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Give it a few thousand years and harry potter will be the true one God..
I know this to be true because it happened to that story the bible that was later edited and called the Koran or vice versa..
I know this to be true because it happened to that story the bible that was later edited and called the Koran or vice versa..
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I'm interpreting this like you think it's a bad thing??
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So how can we inform God of our discontent? Should we start a poll?
Soldato
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When it comes to god, you really only have two possible options. Either you don't care or you believe in his existence.
To say you don't believe that such a being or thing can exist is just massively ignorant. It puts us at massive odds to how we have already evolved as a species thus far.
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How does it? It's not ignorant; there is no evidence to support a god.
No need m8. Apparently you just kneel down and put your palms together in front of you and then whisper what you want. I think it's called prayer or something. Best thing about it is the coverage. It doesn't seem to matter where you are in the world, you can always get a signal.
Yeah, but at the end of the day, it's all one big game of speculation. The real problem is that people actually project any degree of importance onto it. To me, the most sensible way of thinking about it is the same way you can reason about any other 'black box' style event - there is some probability space composed of all the things which plausibly could have brought the universe into existence. Given the large amount of combinations of these things, there is likely an infinity of them (for all intents and purposes). So all the possible theistic ideas would probably be a smaller infinity contained within the other infinite set which might be like [not a god, not a god, not a god, a god, not a god...]. If we're throwing darts at the board of possibilities there, there is no chance of you guessing the right one unless you say something extremely general (like "a god" or "not a god" - saying "a god which cares for me, gave me free will and is benevolent" is going to reduce your chances to something very small).
Like, there's going to be some amount of universe creations which do project meaning onto our lives and some amount which do not. You could say 'I think the universe has meaning' but the amount of causes for the universe to exist which do not project meaning onto our lives are probably much higher in number. Saying 'the universe was created without an implicit meaning for me' is where I'd put my money if I were gambling man.
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Actually everything in the universe, including all that is conceivable is evidence towards the existence of god, but at the same time it is virtually an insubstantial amount of evidence.
Proving that god exists is impossible. No amount of evidence is will ever be sufficient, hence my previous point. You can only ever believe that he exists.
I guess what we are actually debating here is what 'belief' actually means. If you take the stance that you can never truly 'know' anything and everything has to be 'believed' to a certain degree (depending on how much evidence there is for it), then sure, belief in god is meaningless.
Euphemistically spoken. I can think of another way of putting it, but I'd probably get suspended.
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