The primordial existential subject that has been argued over for millennia on the grounds of philosophy, science and theology is the problem of divine purpose versus the absence thereof.
The argument for the existence of divine purpose is in essence the following: The universe was created by a God or an omnipotent intelligent being (call it what you will) in the most absolute of all dimensions. There is also no origin to this God and he exists outside the realm of space-time.
In the religion of Christianity God is said to have created the whole universe out of nothing. At the end of the creation act, God said that it was all good. God saw everything as perfect and needing no improvement, thus kicking the need for evolution out of the door. This stamp of approval by God over his own work forms the inner most centre around which the entire idea of Creationism revolves.
Creationism stands in direct opposition to Evolutionism. Just by studying the definitions of the two words: Create and Evolve, we can see the utter distinction in their meaning: Create means to create something new out of nothing and rendering it into a final, polished and finished form, comparable to a work of art; Evolve means simply the reverse: it implies change, constant alteration or development into another form. If a God created the universe as a perfect work in his own image then obviously, as God is perfect, his creation must also be perfect – he did after he finished creating say that everything is good, and “good” means just that - no visible change in the development of species or cosmic constellations would have been present if everything was as “good” and “perfect” as only a God can create it. And so, when we understand this we can see that there is no God, as there is evolution all around us – everything seems imperfect and to struggle all around us – things are changing shape and new species are appearing constantly!
Moreover, even if one argues that everything seems too much planned and mathematical to be a mere result of chance and that there simply must be a higher dimensional intelligent being that created everything, the weight is just shifted. Now with God as the cause of everything the problem of plan; order; origin and meaning has just shifted onto the shoulders of God. Where does God come from? Did he also have a God who created him? Where does his order and existence come from? What ever the dimension of God is, it still must have a cause. And if God has a cause, he fails to be a God anymore. If one explains the three dimensional realm of human life in terms of being a creational result of a higher dimension – what ever that dimension may be – the problem still remains: where does that dimension come from? It is totally ridiculous to say that the universe must have a cause or a creator (as it is simply to complicated and ordered not to have been created) and then saying that there is a creator even more complicated and ordered who created the universe but who doesn’t have a cause himself?! It is a simple contradiction. In essence, what religious people are saying is: an uncaused first cause which is also intelligence with no creator has created another intelligence called human beings. Saying there is a God is saying there’s no God, because that very God or dimension that created our dimension has no creator himself! God or no God amounts effectively to the same thing, because the purpose of postulating a God is to explain existence, but we leave God out of the explanation – we are still left with something unexplained – the problem of explaining existence has remained with us! One cannot explain existence by explaining it through a creator who himself cannot be explained. a God is no answer as to the problem of existence, as the problem of existence merely shifts to God, who then needs to be explained. Existence is mere infinity - no beginning, no middle, no end and no reason/purpose.
It is indeed a very daunting task to sway a believer into a non- believers realm.
A note: I feel that after this post I will have said enough on the topic of God and the persuasions of believers and that I will not respond to any other posts directed against my ideas about the non existence of God. If someone doesn’t agree to what I am saying on this topic it is only because of the intoxicating effect of the imagination of the existence of a God who “saves” one from this harsh world. Also, rational and irrational individuals find it hard to communicate with each other.
One of the many things people of faith say is: God is not a figment of someone’s active imagination.” Here I would like to say that my idea that imagination is at the core of superstition and belief in higher beings than humans, is based on the fact that most human beings experience life as harsh and threatening to human existence. Frankly, the raw mechanics of godless nature disgusts many people. They feel afraid of life and can’t swallow the idea that life is busy devouring them every moment and that it all ends with death. Hence, they create this refuge called God – an omnipotent being full of love and with the promise of an after life to good people, coupled with the threat to evil doers which is off course, hell. Faith in this absolutely just and superior being brings comfort to their souls. The mind is a powerful thing and it can lie to itself very easily.
I once told a Christian: “In the religion of Christianity, God is said to have created the whole universe out of nothing.” And he replied: “No. Christianity says no such thing.” Here I would like to say that if there is a God and if that God is a Creator he must have created everything out of nothing – if he used something else that existed before everything else, then he did not create at all, but rather just developed or improved an already existing substance – isn’t God supposed to be an entity from which everything originated? In other words, if God was the first existent then obviously there was nothing else besides him and everything that he created must have come from nothing. The definition of a creator is someone who creates something out of nothing – an originator.
The same Christian also told me this: “What many of the more philosophic types like Werner (my real name) fail to understand is that the earth we all stand on today bears absolutely no resemblance to the earth God made. The simple explanation for that is God’s own curse upon his creation upon the disobedience of Adam. Sin brought the creation under God’s wrath.” Here I will say the following: It is said in the Bible that God is omnipotent and that he knows a human being even before he is born. It is also implied by the definition of a God that he knows the future of everything. Now, if God knows the future, why did he create? Why did he create if he knew things were going to turn out as they are at present? Why would a God curse his own creation – it’s like cursing himself.
A quote from the same Christian: “Men have subjugated themselves to birds, and beasts, and creeping things and the sun and the moon and all kinds of stars, plants, the ocean, the desert, you name it! They are all wrong. God is none of that. God has asked for none of that.”
By implication, if God is the creator of everything, he obviously knows the insides out of everything – he knows every action before it happens, because he created the workings of the universe – so if God is a creator he is very obviously responsible for everything that happens and that doesn’t happen.
The same Christian again: “Did man invent God? No. It is a stupid thought, and a highly illogical one that men would invent something, and then places the something they invented as their higher power. God assuredly exists.” Here I have no comment as this is a common remark of believers. Well, okay, let me say one thing - the statement or expression “Man invented God” or “Man created God” is off course a metaphor – what I mean is that man or rather some people postulate the existence of a God/Creator i.e. they imagine one and then believe in it – it’s analogous to the psychological condition of a lonely child entertaining the comfort of having an imaginary friend. And yes, it is illogical and stupid to invent a God – but that’s what people do – they can’t accept the rational reality of life and want to hide from it, clinging to God’s leg like a two year old when scared by something and quickly clutching onto the parents leg – I’ve seen this with my 2 year old daughter.
As a conclusion to this I only want to say that everyone should feel free to believe in what they want and to live out that belief in a peaceful manner.
Call it a gene, a chemical composition of the brain, or whatever, but the idea of a god and spirituality is simply the result of primitive thinking; in fact, it lacks of thinking at all. People postulate a god to appease their hearts and minds: they find the world a harsh place and so look for something to hold on to, in this case: an exalted father figure to love them in this apathetic world. They also think that the universe must have been created – they cannot accept that Nature is a self-sustaining eternity of Being, without the need of a beginning, middle or an end. They also fear mortality and cannot accept that this is it – no afterlife. These people also feel the need to find a higher purpose in life and thus create this god to define the purpose of life, while they fail to realize that there is no purpose in that – what is the meaning or purpose of a god as such? And then there is the problem of “justice”: these people experience the world as an unjust place and so they have faith and they “know” that in the end their god will give the final judgment over all “sinners”.
Don’t they realize that it was this “god” after all who created all the chaos in the world, but no, they blame that on the sins of people – well, if god knows every person even before he creates them, and if god knows exactly what a specific person is going to do with his life – why go ahead and create such people anyway?
People of faith are simply weak, as they don’t have the capacity to create their own moral values and to find their own purpose in life. They are intellectually challenged and cannot think for themselves – they need someone else (god) to think for them. They are like people who need a leader to tell them what to do and what to think.
Well, I suppose one cannot really expect the primitive mind (?) to think clearly about life.
Consciousness, Creator and Absolute In Separated Conversation
Consciousness:
O flat, one-sided world, in this dimension I am high. But the condition of being is such as the condition itself – Its act is condition and thus the dimensions soar and dive into infinite realms. I am high, but not the top, and there are depths below in doubling eternity.
Creator:
I am your God, man, the single cast of this universe! Creation is my play…what I command you shall not disturb. In swelling time I have cast your every sensation - and in sensing Me, your solid object I will pull you into the loftiest fantasy of mind. But in the failure of being my subject, I will down you in heated selfishness.
Absolute:
I cannot conceive that which elevates me to the stardust and beyond My own will and concept - for only in dreams can clouds be real, unreal or whole.
Consciousness:
Well, can anything continue then without fear of the higher?
Creator:
Why do you allow a higher when high and low are all the same and running off in no direction?
Consciousness:
I neither questioned, nor imagined - I implore some mercy, because none of us are able to ascend with incompetent limbs of the will.
Creator:
I think your question, or fear should be whether I am and if so, whether I formulate you.
Absolute:
I certainly have neither form nor up time.
Creator:
Things will continue as long as they matter and matter while they threat or concur.
Consciousness:
Oh! Damn this…Absolute and Creator are just copulating in my own creation. But what to do? My definition is incomplete and fickle. I am not even what I am, but that I am is the only surety, or is it? All I can do is to question, but my mass seems to think the opposite. My embodiment even claim to be human. Therefore, I ask what is human. What is animal? Is there yet a Human? Has the divide between animal origin and the true human been consummated? Surely not; the human still share the surly, base marks of animal. Only once the human being is without all natural instincts and bodily form, being a pure mind - an abstract intellect, will it be human. However, for now he is still quasi-human striving towards human definition.
God: Well, I feel guilty for being such a lousy God and it keeps me awake at night. I have tried sleeping pills, but it seems that I didn’t create a pill for myself. You can imagine the quantities of medication I have to take before it has an effect on me. I mean, I am a God after all and you know how it is - the bigger the patient the bigger the dosage required.
Werner: Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m on psycho analeptics and sedatives for the treatment of my depression and anxiety disorder. But it doesn’t work miracles, you know. I’ve tried praying and asked for your healing, but you didn’t seem to respond.
God: Are you trying to aggravate my insomnia? I know, I’m sorry, but it’s just that my inbox is so full of spam mail – by the way, you’re a computer programmer, how do I go about deleting that stuff? And then there are all these emails from Jesus freaks trying to tell me they need another son of mine down there – for God’s sake, don’t they know by know that Jesus of the Bible – who wrote all that crap in the Bible about me anyway? - was just a schizophrenic who also had a knack for illusion magic?!
Werner: Yeah, whatever. I can see that you are very much preoccupied with all the chaos in the universe you caused. But I have another question. Did you really create man in your own image and if so, why?
God: No, certainly not! But it seems that some people come out the way I look and those others come out quite handsome and sexy – just look at that sexy Jennifer Lopez! God, if I could just get her up here and show her my you know what! I’m sorry for those people being born with two heads or maybe missing an arm or a leg or just without brains like myself, it certainly wasn’t my intention. I just do the best I can, I mean, give me a break, I'm just human after all!
Werner: Yes, ok, I understand your frustrations and natural instincts, I mean you being the origin of all these base urges and all, you really must be on the verge of bursting. But now, I’m really curious to know whether or not you maybe use creativity enhancement props to really fire your inventive drive. I enjoy cigarette smoking and red wine and I really think nicotine serves as a stimulant for cognitive abilities. What about you?
God: Well, I must admit that alcohol is one of my greatest inventions, as it can be administered for both the drowning of personal sorrows, which I am full of, and for the celebration of success. I thought it would’ve seemed obvious to you that I am quite a heavy drinker. Just why do you think the Earth is spinning and that there’s a bit of a wobble every few thousand years in the orbits of the planets around the Sun? When I quit drinking, I fear that the Earth will stop spinning. Thank God for alcohol!
Werner: I always suspected that.
God: Yeah, well, no one’s perfect. Now, Werner, can I ask you a question?
Werner: Sure God. Go ahead.
God: What do you think are you?
Werner: Well, am I not one of your favorite creatures, partaking in the magnificent form of your creation?
God: No, ignoramus. You are a figment of my imagination. And I am a figment of your imagination. We are in one mind, devoid of the separate personalities of you and me.
Werner: And where do I come from?
God: You come from the infinity of an imagined mind imagining. In short, you are your own creation.
Werner: And where am I going to?
God: To Hell off course. No, not really. Nothing is going anywhere. Being is infinity without any real direction. You see, existence or the absence thereof is not a question of when, what, how, where or why. It is THAT it is. It just IS. That’s it.
You have pressed many keys to make many letters to make many words to make many sentences to make many posts, but let me break it down for the Zen-proles amoungst us...
God? No. Me? Yes. You? Probably not.
__________________ Come, my child...Your life begins here...
When talking about philosophy, surely you should use hypothetical situations. You shouldn't point out a crazy guy and say, "This human is crazy, and therefore all humans are crazy". You shouldn't say "he says that the world revolves around pie, and therefore all humanity is stupid for saying that."
First, the Adam and Eve thing. I might say, humans choose to live a life outside God's direct protection, when they used God's power to lie to God. That's freewill. Mind matter, what God claims we are in true form, doesn't always go left if you push it on the right. Only matter does that. God cursed Adam to live with pain and pleasure. This was because Adam choose it (by eating the fruit, and using his freewill to twist it to evil). God's just, so he would never do something against a person's will.
My view differs from that of him. I think that we chose to have God remove us from a position of ease, of our own free will.
Only till we came. We can change the preset course of events.
Your daughter clung to you because you were a being who had done her kindness, and who was willing to go to great lengths to please her (i.e. to remove the scary thing or to make it not scary). You feed her id (Freud stuff) and so she responded. When humanity advanced, they put out Gods to govern the world, so that they could live longer. This is the Ego God (you forget to donate, you get thunder bolted).
What you're saying is that some people made a superegoistic God. People don't do this. They might make a Super god that can deal out divine justice, but they always throw in a God of mischief to counter it. People don't like worshiping invisible powerless forces, which might hell them if they don't obey the law. Look at Sikhs; you get as many tries as you want to connect with God (Waheguru). Your daughter wouldn't imagine an invisible friend who told her that if she didn't obey all her rules, she would be locked up in a dungeon.
That's one view. It's wrong of course. For a start, you cannot have endless time; infinity is impossible as then you cannot ever reach the present (Have you read "The Phantom Tolboune"? Imagine an infinite stairway, each step being an event. You can never reach the top.) Also, your daughter looks up to you as the exalted father figure, and you find that perfectly acceptable. Don't put what could be reality as foolish if it isn't. Your daughter would be a fool to imagine that daddy would talk to those boys who called her names, parents, according to you, whilst in truth it's only maybe. It's very likely that she's right as well.
In part three you get obscenely rude. Your daughter doesn't want to face a world without guidance, so when she asks you if it's right to ignore happy laughie bulling by popular kids, you can equip her with your superior wisdom. It's not weakness to ask for help. An stupid person would be one who doesn't know what to do. I need a person to help me. I need my French teacher to explain the imperfect tense, my friends to make me laugh. A soldier has weapon specialists, communication specialists, tactic specialists, and much on every step to help them. Only a fool takes on the world alone.
You are really annoying me. We work best together, we think best together, we live best together.
Now were to begin on this very long passage.......ill respond to the god one, ok..... now you say that human beings are just expirenceing as harsh, but that is not the truth peopel put in the minds what they want to belive so if that is what they choose then that is what they will get, also about god creaating the universe out of nothing is surtainly true of what i have learned and that the reason he put us "human beings" cursed is that he gave us the choice od freewill and humans dicied to put him out of there lives and not respon to him and not belive in him , all becuase they chose to.He porbably did know how we were going to turn out but he had promised not to drawn the peopel of earth ever agin so he let us be and could not break his promise.Now i ask that question all the time if he created us or if we created him becuase people mind are influinced and diceved so easily that someone could have easily made that up, look at the Romans back during the Troy Centerys they belived in many gods that some fool made up, i belive we (human) crate gods that are supior to us because we have "HOPE" so we have somthing to look up too and ecnolage and worship so we are not alone in liife at our loneniess time of our misurable liitel live, i say missurable becuase this world has become so curapted and destroyed peopel do not know what to belive any more so they dont belive in anything, so when they die they dont die in peace. ( please excuse my spelling ) but im done for right now becuase im tired....
I'll admit when I say this is a subject I have not given a considerable ammount of thought to. Mostly because I don't rightly care. Somewhere in me I believe in a God, simply because the existence and miracle of life is something inconcievable to me. I understand that God must ahve his own creator, but that is something I doubt anyone will understand.
God exists to the extent that an individual needs Him. I myself have no need for God. I find that whether or not I believe in him, my life will go on with no change. Some people need the influence of the church and other religions to find solace in life. To them, God is very real. This isn't so much of a topic about whether or not anything exists but in a persons mind. Its more of a topic that should be left alone in my opinion. Some people need God in their lives, don't ask me why. If he were to not exist, a lot of peopel would be crushed. To you, Philo, he does not exist, because you don't need him. To me, he exists almost as a matter of explanation, but I havent bothered examining the issue further because as I stated before, it makes no difference to me whether he exists or not.
If this damns me to hell, so be it. I doubt it would though. Just because someone doesnt believe in a set religion, or in God in general does not make them amoral, or bad people. In fact, one of the reasons that I am vehemently against organized religions is their all or nothing approach. How is it that God could make so many religions possible, and have so many people choose these varieties, and then damn them to hell because the correct religion was some tribal function off the coast of western africa.
I realise my thoughts on this subject jump around a great deal. I appolagize. But really, the question of God isnt whether he exists, it is whether you need him or not. A friend of mine who was depressed recently found God and is now a lot happier. I, have not found God. Oh well, no biggie there. He can keep himself hidden or show himself to me, I'm not going to take the hours out of my life to find him or prove him. Why should I, its not necessary.
I agree to an extent. I agree there is no God but I don't know about the universe having no beginning. That's always something I've struggled to understand.. either the Universe was started in some big bang out of no where and any time before that event there was no time or space and everything was compressed into a moment of "singularity," or the universe has just always been here. Neither one really makes sense to me.. I mean how can time be never ending?
YTaker: "When talking about philosophy, surely you should use hypothetical situations. You shouldn't point out a crazy guy and say, "This human is crazy, and therefore all humans are crazy". You shouldn't say "he says that the world revolves around pie, and therefore all humanity is stupid for saying that."
First, the Adam and Eve thing. I might say, humans choose to live a life outside God's direct protection, when they used God's power to lie to God. That's freewill."
I never took a specific trait of one human being and then extend it in a generalising approach onto the whole of mankind.
Freewill? If God really gives us freewill, then he must give iot to us unconditionally, in other words, if we choose not to believe in him or to act evil, we are exercising freewill and then God is not allowed to send us to hell, for that would be a violation of our freewill and also the opposite of unconditional love, as it is an act of hate.
Infinity? Existence must be infinite - how can it be finite, then there must be something beyond that finite edge, by logical implication. Being cannot simply stop somewhere with an edge rounding of its finite form and then there's just nothing beyond that. Existence is infinite Being. Scientists believing in the general theory of relativity always try to say that the space and time was started by the big bang, but what do they suppose was before that? Space-time is not the whole of Existence, but only a part of it, if it did indeed start with a big bang. Quantum theory suggests that space-time is infinite - no beginning, middle or end. It is a mind bender to grasp this concept, but infinity is still the most 'logical' answer.
LOL
The classic "god gave you a freewill" phrase that every Christian repeats. If you did not have freedom with your "will", you would not even have a "will" at all.
I wrote this
"Make it appear "good", and people will want to try it. Only by trying it will you "personally" know if it is "good" or "bad" for you. With your choice you will receive consquences and you will "personally" know the truth and whos telling it. It is possible to know something beforehand, but you will never really know for sure if what you know is true. People must ultimatly decide to make those choices. By restraining others from making a choice, you may actually cause them to desire to try that choice."
One goal of Christianity and Catholicism is to restrain the will of the people. (this statement is bias because I have knowledge of entities who may have created these religions, I also refer to these entities as Demons/Angels/Aliens)
Philosophicus, I've been through some of the the same thoughts you have written here. I'm not sure how far you have come, but keep going. People like us are getting really close to the truth.
we got arguments against the existence of god in other threads, based on physical theories...
in this case i mean mainly the quarks theory...
its been said that the singularity of sub-atomically gravitation would prove the big bang and so the evolution (what would be in contradiction to the bible), and that its proven by the existence of quarks... we discussed that already and it just resulted to be not correct, cause the the singularity cant be adopted to physics and sub-atomically physics here...
now ive read a sience report in school which said either the theory of quarks or the theory of relativity has to be wrong because they cant be both right cause theyre contradicting each other...
while thinking about which theory i'd prefer i thought about what the big bang is supposed to have been...
an energy conversion from an in one point compressed mass into a young universe...... the creation of matter and anti-matter!?!
....
i think the quarks theory cant help in any way in finding out if there is a god or not...
if quarks will be proven wrong in future i dont see any effect on any religion with it.
i guess many people think, if it will be proven right, it was another step to disprove gods existence...
but if they exist i dont see any problem either.
- if god is almighty he could acutally create the world in 7 days... the word almighty includes that
thats possible because of quarks and matter and anti-matter. what would an almighty being detain to create the universe of matter and anti-matter exactly in the way the universe should work and works today? why should an almighty being make it just more complicated with putting a big bang and the evolution before its intent? you cant say its less elaborate to create it with a big bang and an evolution of everything. just imagine how many things that almighty being had to think through additionally to go sure that it all happens the way its supposed to...?
just was an idea i had, so... post your opinion
KMC Community Forums
The Question of God
Jan 13th, 2005 08:22 AM
