Do You Believe In God?
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and it isn't satisfactory to some. Think of your brain, why on earth are we the only creatures with such hugely complex brains, granted, primates are pretty darn smart but still nothing close to our intelligence levels in things like using tools and speaking. And thoughts, we can hardly explain them. I don't really feel like getting into a huge discussion right now but that's just my 2 cents. Evolution just seems to random for everything to work out so well.
More believable than a non-existent being that created us from dirt.
Evolution, aliens and spirit aren't mutually exclusive.
You could perfectly develop a mutation that gives you a new organic module being a seemingly mindless/not-so-rational animal that would allow you to do X task, however, you don't even care you have the mutation, so how the heck do you know that mutation would allow you to do X and survive with it? Ah, the phenomenon of "instict", a programmatic event of intelligence that involves learning, right? Still, programatic phenomena found in biology are something-something to give a time to think about. Not only about animals of course, talk about plants and fungi, those ones seem to be "non-intelligent", however they have a very smart behavior and development! Without the so called "instinct" and "neurological intelligence".
Well, that's just one of hundreds of creation stories... stories told as allegories/metaphors/etc, that could have whole other stories behind (then talk about alien theories and such), refering to different deities (in what I know, the biblical one the Zeus-like guy with anger problems, is another alien, so I leave the "God phenomenon" to spirit and mystic understanding, but know there's also some science that can couple with them to understand it).
Here is what I have to say on the matter. It is radical to say the least, and it could use a bit more polish. It is not like any idea that you have ever heard before…
God exists, but not in the way that you think.
Our multiverse is not real. We are not real. Everything that we know of is just part of an extremely advanced computer program. God is simply the administrator of that computer. He constantly watches over the program.
If he feels the need to intervene to help one of the worlds in his program, he creates a character, and he uses advanced virtual reality (like in the movie Avatar) to enter the body of his character. This explains how Jesus came to exist. Bad situations were taking place, so God intervened on Earth to help others more accurately understand how he wanted things to work in his multiverse. Who is to say that God has not done the same thing for other life forms in the multiverse? Maybe Jesus has already returned, but not in our particular solar system, and not in human form.
How did Jesus perform his miracles? Simple; it was just like hacking and homebrew! As the person with full control over his computer and the programs running on it, he decided to temporarily overwrite some of the physics and science code to help illustrate points to humans via normally impossible means.
How did God make it possible for digital beings to form and develop? Probably something like in the movie Chappie. At some point, the technology in God’s world was finally advanced enough for someone to develop code for digital consciousness. Later on, the first digital beings figured out a way to back up the consciousness of God’s kind to digital files. This enabled God’s kind to live forever and be as efficient as high-end computers. With the infinitely faster technological developments that took place after this, God and the others managed to create a computer program that was the digital equivalent of their multiverse! With the efficiency that only digital beings can have, God and his team developed a physics engine, laws of science, and various program assets (such as the elements on the periodic table) for their digital multiverse in only seven days! After some initial tests, they finally booted the program, and watched on the screen as their digital multiverse started out with the big bang.
Other advantages to a digital multiverse included being able to run diagnostics to analyze every single outcome for each possible variable, and the ability to “fast-forward” and “rewind” to quickly see every event without waiting it out in real-time. This has always been useful for whenever God feels the need to become Jesus in order to set the digital multiverse on the best possible path.
Does heaven exist? Of course! God and his team are always analyzing the digital beings and the type of people that they are. If a digital being has demonstrated exemplary morals, the being will have its consciousness uploaded to God’s cloud storage servers, where it will live on eternally in those servers in a program known as “Heaven.” Otherwise, the being will be moved to the Recycle Bin, and later be deleted once the Recycle Bin is emptied.
God may also live in a digital multiverse and not even know it. The God that created God’s multiverse may also live in a digital multiverse. And this could go on infinitely…
Therefore, there may not even be a God at the “root” of everything, because the “root” may not even exist! It could just be an infinite chain of digital Gods, and humans may be the next Gods in that line!
TLDR:
God is a digital being, who exists, and yet may not technically exist.
Sorry for the huge wall of sentences. Despite how overwhelming it may seem, I think that I have compacted the information as best as I could.
Describing our existence in a GBATemp post in only 42 sentences is no easy feat!
OMG, I like that way of thinking. I support ideas coming from analogies to computer science or systems theory. In fact, I support the essence of this, but not fully, I mean, they have said one theory this is all but an analogy to a computer, but I say computers are analogous to reality (in terms of systemic logic, semantics, objects, entities, abstraction, programmatic energy, the great superuser root, and that... metadata would be like the essence they talk about in ontology).
Last edited by AnonDragon,
Well evolution and my thoughts are both theories, so we don't know which is true or false. This reminds me of something I learned in Physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. There had for be something that transfered all this energy right?
The word "theory" in "The theory of evolution" doesn't mean that it's just a theory.
And my own answer to the question: No, I don't believe in any god. I just don't have any reason to believe. I am happy for those who do have faith, and I'm always interested in hearing their opinions and thoughts.
I see myself as a very passive agnostic (atheist). I can't be sure there is no god, but I don't believe. If I'm proven wrong, I'll gladly accept that.
I believe in cosmic justice though. Karma. Do good and good things will happen to you. Not that someone watches and decides that we've been good enough for something to happen, but I believe that some kind of energy builds up in us. A static charge of positivity, which triggers the energy of other people around us... like charged up magnets...
And my own answer to the question: No, I don't believe in any god. I just don't have any reason to believe. I am happy for those who do have faith, and I'm always interested in hearing their opinions and thoughts.
I see myself as a very passive agnostic (atheist). I can't be sure there is no god, but I don't believe. If I'm proven wrong, I'll gladly accept that.
I believe in cosmic justice though. Karma. Do good and good things will happen to you. Not that someone watches and decides that we've been good enough for something to happen, but I believe that some kind of energy builds up in us. A static charge of positivity, which triggers the energy of other people around us... like charged up magnets...
The word "theory" in "The theory of evolution" doesn't mean that it's just a theory.
And my own answer to the question: No, I don't believe in any god. I just don't have any reason to believe. I am happy for those who do have faith, and I'm always interested in hearing their opinions and thoughts.
I see myself as a very passive agnostic (atheist). I can't be sure there is no god, but I don't believe. If I'm proven wrong, I'll gladly accept that.
I believe in cosmic justice though. Karma. Do good and good things will happen to you. Not that someone watches and decides that we've been good enough for something to happen, but I believe that some kind of energy builds up in us. A static charge of positivity, which triggers the energy of other people around us... like charged up magnets...
Yep, it is an inductive scientific matter of hypothesis, observation, test, etc.
However, inductive reasoning is limited (because it wants to build the general knowledge from a particular set of proven facts, but when a contradictory proven fact falls into the bowl, everything just explodes, everything is wrong and has to be rethought).
Both inductive and deductive approaches (like mathematics) don't have to be necessarily mutually exclusive, but complementary. That's the way we can get into bigger and more complex phenomena and cover them from both a reductionist to a holistic perspective (for example, when we start talking about the systemic nature of everything in the whole cosmos, then systems, then talk about systems theory and everything derived from that)
Last edited by AnonDragon,
Well, that's my point exactly. I'm saying that if you do the wrong thing but legitimately believe that it's for the right reasons, you're probably not going to be eternally punished for that
The scientific method is in part both inductive and deductive, and regardless, it's both the best and only way we have to discover the truth about, for example, our origins as a species. The theories of evolution and common descent are supported by mounds of evidence, including but not limited to DNA evidence, fossil evidence, their predictive power, etc. It would be picking and choosing to accept some theories (e.g. germ theory, the theory of gravity, etc.) and not other theories (e.g. the theory of evolution). I'm not aware of any other method of inquiry that has been demonstrated to be better than random chance.
There's a lot I could say here about the evolution of intelligence in humans. I could talk about how the evolution of intelligence is connected to our evolution as upright tool-using animals. I could talk about how the evolution of intelligence is connected to the evolution of our complex physiological vocal processors. However, it doesn't matter. An absence of an explanation for a specific thing does not cast doubt on the rest of evolution and common descent. If we didn't know how complex brains evolved, that would just mean we didn't have a specific answer to that question yet. Absence of an explanation is never evidence for another.
This doesn't explain anything. It just adds another layer. I don't understand arguments that claim some God created the universe because they don't answer anything. Where did this God come from, then?Here is what I have to say on the matter. It is radical to say the least, and it could use a bit more polish. It is not like any idea that you have ever heard before…
God exists, but not in the way that you think.
Our multiverse is not real. We are not real. Everything that we know of is just part of an extremely advanced computer program. God is simply the administrator of that computer. He constantly watches over the program.
If he feels the need to intervene to help one of the worlds in his program, he creates a character, and he uses advanced virtual reality (like in the movie Avatar) to enter the body of his character. This explains how Jesus came to exist. Bad situations were taking place, so God intervened on Earth to help others more accurately understand how he wanted things to work in his multiverse. Who is to say that God has not done the same thing for other life forms in the multiverse? Maybe Jesus has already returned, but not in our particular solar system, and not in human form.
How did Jesus perform his miracles? Simple; it was just like hacking and homebrew! As the person with full control over his computer and the programs running on it, he decided to temporarily overwrite some of the physics and science code to help illustrate points to humans via normally impossible means.
How did God make it possible for digital beings to form and develop? Probably something like in the movie Chappie. At some point, the technology in God’s world was finally advanced enough for someone to develop code for digital consciousness. Later on, the first digital beings figured out a way to back up the consciousness of God’s kind to digital files. This enabled God’s kind to live forever and be as efficient as high-end computers. With the infinitely faster technological developments that took place after this, God and the others managed to create a computer program that was the digital equivalent of their multiverse! With the efficiency that only digital beings can have, God and his team developed a physics engine, laws of science, and various program assets (such as the elements on the periodic table) for their digital multiverse in only seven days! After some initial tests, they finally booted the program, and watched on the screen as their digital multiverse started out with the big bang.
Other advantages to a digital multiverse included being able to run diagnostics to analyze every single outcome for each possible variable, and the ability to “fast-forward” and “rewind” to quickly see every event without waiting it out in real-time. This has always been useful for whenever God feels the need to become Jesus in order to set the digital multiverse on the best possible path.
Does heaven exist? Of course! God and his team are always analyzing the digital beings and the type of people that they are. If a digital being has demonstrated exemplary morals, the being will have its consciousness uploaded to God’s cloud storage servers, where it will live on eternally in those servers in a program known as “Heaven.” Otherwise, the being will be moved to the Recycle Bin, and later be deleted once the Recycle Bin is emptied.
God may also live in a digital multiverse and not even know it. The God that created God’s multiverse may also live in a digital multiverse. And this could go on infinitely…
Therefore, there may not even be a God at the “root” of everything, because the “root” may not even exist! It could just be an infinite chain of digital Gods, and humans may be the next Gods in that line!
TLDR:
God is a digital being, who exists, and yet may not technically exist.
Sorry for the huge wall of sentences. Despite how overwhelming it may seem, I think that I have compacted the information as best as I could.
Describing our existence in a GBATemp post in only 42 sentences is no easy feat!
I've seen the theory of gravity cited a lot here. I think it's time for a science lesson.
Science is at its core a way of describing natural phenomenon in terms of other natural phenomenon, the details of which are determined with the scientific method. The whole process starts out with an observation. Multiple observations can be generalized as a Scientific Law. A Scientific Law describes direct observations we can make, like the Law of Gravity. The Law of Gravity basically states that what comes up must come down. "But why is this?" is what a scientist asks, so next part of the scientific method is to come up with a guess (in terms of natural phenomenon) that fits all of the observations, known as a hypothesis. This hypothesis is tested repeatedly, and if it holds, it will become a Scientific Theory. This Scientific Theory is generally regarded as fact unless future observations prove it wrong, in which case a new hypothesis is formed and the cycle begins again.
Notes about the terms:
-Scientific Law
--A fact based on direct observation
--If it doesn't occur in some circumstances, the requirements of nature have not been met, and will be described in a theory.
-Scientific Theory
--Tested extensively and is generally our best attempt at explaining something
--While treated as fact, can be disproven with future observations
How does this relate to the current discussion? I've seen people saying that because evolution and gravity are both theories and gravity is fact, then evolution is too. However, this is not necessarily correct because the law of gravity is a fact, while the theory of universal gravitation is at its core just a guess that happens to coincide with direct observation. It's also hard to compare the theory of evolution to the theory of universal gravitation because while gravity can be directly observed, research on evolution relies mostly on historic records (like fossils). Evolution is considered a scientific theory because the current model fits the observations that have been made time and time again. While there is substantial evidence to believe micro-evolution, opponents to the theory of evolution often believe that it's a bit of a stretch to say that all life came from a common ancestor (i.e. macro-evolution).
As a Christian, I've observed that people on both sides of the evolution debate, theists and athiests alike, both base all their arguments on their conclusion, and work from there. I'm of the mentality that it doesn't matter. So what if God started with a single-cell life form, and did His thing to turn it into something more complex? So what if God made each animal individually. While some like to say that the theory of evolution challenges the book of Genesis, it's important to keep in mind the original target audience of Genesis: laymen without any scientific knowledge. If God were to explain the details of His work, it would not only go over their heads, but likely ours too. So He told us what we need to know: He created the heavens and earth first. Then plants. Then various animals, and finally us. (If anyone here is skeptical of my claim that it's not literal, go read Revelation, where John's vision explicitly tells him that at least part of his vision was figurative. If that's figurative, it's not a stretch to believe the beginning of Genesis is too.)
Given all of that, I don't believe one should choose whether or not they believe in God based on all of that. Base it off of whether or not you believe in intelligent design.
Think of a 200GB micro-sd card. There's no chance that would be formed if I were to get the correct materials and let them sit for however long it takes.
Now think of a DNA molecule. It stores mindbogglingly more information than the micro-sd, and yet people want to believe that this formed by chance? I don't think so.
One more thing before I end this post. While I haven't seen anyone mention it, the Big Bang Theory also does not contradict God's creation; after all, it's only an affect. Within the scope of the theory, the cause is unknown. Put simply, I believe that the cause is God.
I don't think we should attempt to grasp infinite concepts like God with our finite minds. It will make everything easier.
Science is at its core a way of describing natural phenomenon in terms of other natural phenomenon, the details of which are determined with the scientific method. The whole process starts out with an observation. Multiple observations can be generalized as a Scientific Law. A Scientific Law describes direct observations we can make, like the Law of Gravity. The Law of Gravity basically states that what comes up must come down. "But why is this?" is what a scientist asks, so next part of the scientific method is to come up with a guess (in terms of natural phenomenon) that fits all of the observations, known as a hypothesis. This hypothesis is tested repeatedly, and if it holds, it will become a Scientific Theory. This Scientific Theory is generally regarded as fact unless future observations prove it wrong, in which case a new hypothesis is formed and the cycle begins again.
Notes about the terms:
-Scientific Law
--A fact based on direct observation
--If it doesn't occur in some circumstances, the requirements of nature have not been met, and will be described in a theory.
-Scientific Theory
--Tested extensively and is generally our best attempt at explaining something
--While treated as fact, can be disproven with future observations
How does this relate to the current discussion? I've seen people saying that because evolution and gravity are both theories and gravity is fact, then evolution is too. However, this is not necessarily correct because the law of gravity is a fact, while the theory of universal gravitation is at its core just a guess that happens to coincide with direct observation. It's also hard to compare the theory of evolution to the theory of universal gravitation because while gravity can be directly observed, research on evolution relies mostly on historic records (like fossils). Evolution is considered a scientific theory because the current model fits the observations that have been made time and time again. While there is substantial evidence to believe micro-evolution, opponents to the theory of evolution often believe that it's a bit of a stretch to say that all life came from a common ancestor (i.e. macro-evolution).
As a Christian, I've observed that people on both sides of the evolution debate, theists and athiests alike, both base all their arguments on their conclusion, and work from there. I'm of the mentality that it doesn't matter. So what if God started with a single-cell life form, and did His thing to turn it into something more complex? So what if God made each animal individually. While some like to say that the theory of evolution challenges the book of Genesis, it's important to keep in mind the original target audience of Genesis: laymen without any scientific knowledge. If God were to explain the details of His work, it would not only go over their heads, but likely ours too. So He told us what we need to know: He created the heavens and earth first. Then plants. Then various animals, and finally us. (If anyone here is skeptical of my claim that it's not literal, go read Revelation, where John's vision explicitly tells him that at least part of his vision was figurative. If that's figurative, it's not a stretch to believe the beginning of Genesis is too.)
Given all of that, I don't believe one should choose whether or not they believe in God based on all of that. Base it off of whether or not you believe in intelligent design.
Think of a 200GB micro-sd card. There's no chance that would be formed if I were to get the correct materials and let them sit for however long it takes.
Now think of a DNA molecule. It stores mindbogglingly more information than the micro-sd, and yet people want to believe that this formed by chance? I don't think so.
One more thing before I end this post. While I haven't seen anyone mention it, the Big Bang Theory also does not contradict God's creation; after all, it's only an affect. Within the scope of the theory, the cause is unknown. Put simply, I believe that the cause is God.
He always was.
I don't think we should attempt to grasp infinite concepts like God with our finite minds. It will make everything easier.
Last edited by evandixon,
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That is THE question that needs to be answered, I feel. Every time it's brought up, it's treated like a rhetoric and just shoved aside, ignored. Which doesn't make sense to me. People can jump up and claim God created all, like nothing was before this omnipotent being. Then proceed to argue that the big bang doesn't make sense, claiming you can't come from nothing. It's a giant loop, never ending..
Given our experience, there has to be a cause for the universe, there has to be a source. The only thing that makes sense is something eternal, always having existed, and because our finite minds can't comprehend infinite concepts like this.
Athiestic scientists try to say that matter is eternal and the source of the universe, while Theistic scientists believe God created everything. Because eternal things cannot be observed and are fundamentally different than the finite things we're familiar with, it is outside the scope of science to attempt to explain this. After all, the difference between a guess and a hypothesis is that a hypothesis can be tested. We cannot test anything infinite or outside the universe, so everything is pure speculation.
Given all of that, the argument is now whether or not to believe in intelligent design (i.e. God designing things). See my previous post for a reason to believe in intelligent design.
No biologist claims DNA formed by chance. The first "living" thing might've been an RNA molecule or something like that. We don't know. You're making an assumption.
Also, there doesn't HAVE to be anything. The fact is we don't know how the universe started. We don't know that eternity is even a thing. Time is relative. At a black hole, no time passes because of the gravity. It's different depending where in the universe you are. More gravity means slower time.
A few very quick notes. First, we can agree that whether something is called a scientific law or a scientific theory has no bearing on its truthfulness; both can be considered facts. Second, the term macroevolution is used in scientific circles nearly synonymously with speciation, and microevolution is used to refer to evolutionary change that isn't related to speciation. When referring to the idea that we're all descended from a common ancestor, you'll want to use the term common descent, not macroevolution. It should also be noted that, in addition to the direct observational evidence for microevolution and macroevolution, there is substantial evidence for common descent. Third, I agree it would be absurd to expect modern DNA to form suddenly on its own from natural processes. DNA, like complicated life, likely evolved from more primitive molecules. While we don't know the exact process by which DNA and its precursors formed, we do know numerous ways in which precursors to DNA could have formed, and once we have self-replicating precursors to DNA, evolution can run its course to today. I can talk more about ways in which DNA precursors might have formed, but it's pretty dry for a gaming forum. Lastly, even if we disproved evolution and/or had no explanation for how DNA came into being, absence of an explanation is never evidence for another explanation.
Might the universe have had a cause? Sure. Is there any reason to think the universe is required to have had a cause? Not really. If causality is a property of the universe, it's a bit silly to talk about causality requiring a cause. It's also possible the universe in some form has always existed. In essence, there's no excuse for a hypothetical god not requiring a cause that couldn't also be applied to the universe. In fact, it might be fair to say the universe has always existed when time as we know it exists a finite amount backwards, but that's a matter of semantics.
If the universe did have a cause, there's no reason to think it wasn't a natural cause. Perhaps the natural cause to the universe has always existed in some form. Perhaps the cause is atemporal. Perhaps it's a causal loop of the universe in a future state causing the universe in a past state (e.g. something natural, or Stewie Griffin's time pad exploding and causing the Big Bang). We just don't know, and absence of an explanation is never a reason to believe another explanation.
Last edited by Lacius,
No one can say if something similar exist or not, but for sure the image that Masons invented, ie the old-beard man like Gandalf, is surely fake, for the reasons i explained earlier. So if you really have the urge to believe in something, believe in The Force!!
P.S: I always think that everybody we are the One with the Universe, the absolute consciousness
P.S: I always think that everybody we are the One with the Universe, the absolute consciousness
Because its a paradox. If he is allmighty, could he create a stone even he couldn't lift?
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