Religion Thread

[Iv121]

I'm going for a compromise here. Science, at its current level, cannot explain many phenomena and so religion takes over there, such as the meaning of life and how we came to be. As science advances, we will grow to an advancement of understanding where nearly every phenomenon can be explained, yet religion will still hold because the theories will be possibly wrong. It is of my opinion that religion is, in a way, based off of science. Once we get to an extremely advanced level of technology, there will be little or no difference between us and what we view as a god.

This is just me throwing out ideas, but what if we were a sort of 'experiment', where an extremely advanced civilization set off our universe in order to understand their own. They helped set off our evolution to understand their own. Through doing this, they become more all-knowing and all-powerful. They may have introduced the concept of religion, based on themselves, to see how it evolved in their own culture, since they couldn't know whether it was true.

It would be a cycle, and every-time, the new civilization would view the former as 'gods' since they might of created everything. That would be a rational definition of a god.

(NOTE- The views expressed above are not necessarily the views of the person presenting them.)

Deus Ex Machina huh ? It is true that religion is our way to explain things bigger than us... And BTW you speak quite poorly of the people's hygiene at that time which was not too bad in the east. People took baths that were part of the cultural life or part of religious exercises , in the west we did have some problems with it however but it's a story for another day ... I wonder why the western people were so dirty while the rest of the world kept itself relatively clean ...

EDIT: Craftqq you ninja -.-

[Ivan2006]

Hey, anyone else noticed how the story of god creating the world is similar to the scientific approach in order?
1st day)Earth; Day/night creation (It makes sense the story says that both happened at the same "day", since day and night are pretty much exactly as old as the earth itself.
2nd day)earth-sky differentiation, with the heaven being pictured as an ocean. (creation of atmosphere (?); ocean-sky propably due to personal imagination of the writer)
3rd day)ground-water differentiation; plant life (cooling down of the planet and first liquid water -> oceans; soon after first life (technically plants due to photosynthesis)
4th day)sun, moon, stars (for the first time, the atmosphere is actually fuly transparent, allowing (if there was anyone) one to see other celestial bodies.
5th and 6th day) Animal life, humans, encouraging humanity to rule the world (animal life not in evolutionary order, but minority, humans are indeed one of the newest species on Earth and the "encouragement" could also just be an explaination of their abilities)
7th day) God rested. (considering how Earth looks like right now, this could be the present, after all, for a being like god, time is irrelevant)
Actually, It´s mainly the time that´s incorrect, but who is gonna take numbers from a religious text exactly? It says Noah bacame father of three sons at an age of 500! I think that should be proof enough to not rely on numbers over there. (remember, people tended to take the doings of god and glorify these already glorious things even more at that time, as Iv said, god propably told them what to write about and they decided about the wording)

I also have an explaination for the bible (and other religious texts) being scientifically wrong at some points: If God had told his prophets of science, noone would have believed them and his religion would have never spread, making the effort of communicating with them futile and useless from the very start.


Personal note: I believe in a way for both religion and science to be true and I think I´m quite successful at finding possibilities to fit basic religious beliefs into the standard scientific model.

[Iv121]

I don't think god holds religion as fan clubs ... More of a way to teach humans morals because ever since humans were made they had pretty twisted morals in his opinion so he decided to take one group of people as an example for the others.

[Chairman_Tiel]

God is Satan in disguise fooling with us. He just doesn't want you to eat bacon and laughs at your misery.

[Iv121]

I'm quite sure Tiel was joking ...

I didn't say God told what to write, I did say there are to approaches to interpret the bible with the traditional approach being this one.
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[Ivan2006]

I don't think god holds religion as fan clubs ... More of a way to teach humans morals because ever since humans were made they had pretty twisted morals in his opinion so he decided to take one group of people as an example for the others.

Still keeping my point that the community would not have been successful if god smashed people with evolution and physics valid.

[Dr. Mackeroth]

I think that if "God" or whatever you want to call it was perfect, then the world it created would also be perfect. It is not, ergo, "God" does not exist, or at least is not all-powerful.

Actually, that's an interesting question: would a hypothetical "perfect being" be able to create imperfection, or would that make them imperfect? It's like that old question: can God make a rock so big he cannot lift it? Either way, an all-powerful God is impossible, or completely outside of human understanding.

You know: I find any "God" that demands worship rather poor, especially if people are "punished" for not worshiping. Essentially, it's saying: "We/I gave humanity free-will to not worship us, we give them no proof of our existence, we mess up the world big-time, but if they don't worship us, they suffer."

To summarize that rambling: I'm not going to worship anything that I have no proof of and that can't take care of its creation beyond its selfish desires.

[joykler]

true that

[Iv121]

Well oddly the bible discussed even this (it is really not just a religious text but a collection of literature of that time including history books, poetry, philosophy ... ). You know there is one story about Abram (Which I believe you know ...). One day god comes to him and says "Take your son, your only son, that you loved , take Isaac to wherever I'll tell you and sacrifice him for me in the fire". Notice that god "says" and not "orders" in this case as it was written. Abram actually does it though it was really difficult to him. Eventually on the mountain a god's angel stops him and says "Don't touch him as now I saw that you didn't hide from me your son, your only son, Isaac" . Now let's play "spot the difference" between the opening and the closing , see it ? Yea he didn't say "That you loved" after the sacrifice. Some people believe it is a criticism towards Abram which might point out that god doesn't want blind following.

[Error]

Religion is kind of like marijuana for me. I see the appeal, I wouldn't take it away from anyone, but I'd also never stand in line for it.

[fr0stbyte124]

I think that if "God" or whatever you want to call it was perfect, then the world it created would also be perfect. It is not, ergo, "God" does not exist, or at least is not all-powerful.

Actually, that's an interesting question: would a hypothetical "perfect being" be able to create imperfection, or would that make them imperfect? It's like that old question: can God make a rock so big he cannot lift it? Either way, an all-powerful God is impossible, or completely outside of human understanding.

Perhaps a perfect being would have need to create an imperfect universe ruled by entropy in chaos in order to see the birth of something new, something which couldn't be conceived from pure order. Take, for example, everybody's favorite logical straw man, Spock. Time and time again, he would deem something impossible or foolish and Kirk would then do it anyway and pull off some miracle to put Spock in his place. Assuming the Big Man doesn't need his ego stroked by lesser beings, this would be the reason I would think of to make a whole new universe and fill it with such crazy things.

I know the bible sees the world as a transient place which will one day end, and that the ultimate goal is heaven, but God already had heaven and it was filled with divine beings whose grace a human could never hope to match, so why make Humanity? I've asked this question before and gotten a bunch of interesting answers, most of which come down to "God needed a hobby" when you remove the fanfare. There are other things which make it complicated, such as his ultimate game plan which involves defeating Satan in an epic battle (though Lucifer himself only fell from grace due to his jealously of humanity in the first place, but for the sake of argument we will assume that causality can get screwy when dealing with omnipotence.) So the ultimate goal is still to get people into Heaven's army, but that they need to get there of their own free will or there is no point. But if that is the case, why would Earth and the universe be so elaborate? Why set up a world that keeps progressing through the ages and people build pyramids and discover science and travel to the moon if the goal is simply to produce people who have lived virtuous lives of their own free will? You can't chalk it all up to giving people personal challenges to overcome, because that exists everywhere and in all walks of life, so famines and earthquakes seems like a bit of a dick move if that was intentional.

So I don't buy that viewpoint. Even if God just really wanted to create Humanity and even if he eventually wants everybody to join the fight in the afterlife, the universe is too special a place to just be a training program. If anything at all is expected of us, it's got to be something more important than simply graduating.

[CommanderKobialka]

Hey, anyone else noticed how the story of god creating the world is similar to the scientific approach in order?
1st day)Earth; Day/night creation (It makes sense the story says that both happened at the same "day", since day and night are pretty much exactly as old as the earth itself.
2nd day)earth-sky differentiation, with the heaven being pictured as an ocean. (creation of atmosphere (?); ocean-sky propably due to personal imagination of the writer)
3rd day)ground-water differentiation; plant life (cooling down of the planet and first liquid water -> oceans; soon after first life (technically plants due to photosynthesis)
4th day)sun, moon, stars (for the first time, the atmosphere is actually fuly transparent, allowing (if there was anyone) one to see other celestial bodies.
5th and 6th day) Animal life, humans, encouraging humanity to rule the world (animal life not in evolutionary order, but minority, humans are indeed one of the newest species on Earth and the "encouragement" could also just be an explaination of their abilities)
7th day) God rested. (considering how Earth looks like right now, this could be the present, after all, for a being like god, time is irrelevant)
Actually, It´s mainly the time that´s incorrect, but who is gonna take numbers from a religious text exactly? It says Noah bacame father of three sons at an age of 500! I think that should be proof enough to not rely on numbers over there. (remember, people tended to take the doings of god and glorify these already glorious things even more at that time, as Iv said, god propably told them what to write about and they decided about the wording)

I also have an explaination for the bible (and other religious texts) being scientifically wrong at some points: If God had told his prophets of science, noone would have believed them and his religion would have never spread, making the effort of communicating with them futile and useless from the very start.


Personal note: I believe in a way for both religion and science to be true and I think I´m quite successful at finding possibilities to fit basic religious beliefs into the standard scientific model.

I havent thought of that... But it makes so much sense. Perhaps scientists theory on how the universe was created is correct and God made it all happen. I don't believe that the authors of the Bible could possibly have the slightest amount of knowledge about how the universe was made, without God though, thus proving the existence of a God.. almost.

[Iv121]

Perhaps a perfect being would have need to create an imperfect universe ruled by entropy in chaos in order to see the birth of something new, something which couldn't be conceived from pure order. Take, for example, everybody's favorite logical straw man, Spock. Time and time again, he would deem something impossible or foolish and Kirk would then do it anyway and pull off some miracle to put Spock in his place. Assuming the Big Man doesn't need his ego stroked by lesser beings, this would be the reason I would think of to make a whole new universe and fill it with such crazy things.

I know the bible sees the world as a transient place which will one day end, and that the ultimate goal is heaven, but God already had heaven and it was filled with divine beings whose grace a human could never hope to match, so why make Humanity? I've asked this question before and gotten a bunch of interesting answers, most of which come down to "God needed a hobby" when you remove the fanfare. There are other things which make it complicated, such as his ultimate game plan which involves defeating Satan in an epic battle (though Lucifer himself only fell from grace due to his jealously of humanity in the first place, but for the sake of argument we will assume that causality can get screwy when dealing with omnipotence.) So the ultimate goal is still to get people into Heaven's army, but that they need to get there of their own free will or there is no point. But if that is the case, why would Earth and the universe be so elaborate? Why set up a world that keeps progressing through the ages and people build pyramids and discover science and travel to the moon if the goal is simply to produce people who have lived virtuous lives of their own free will? You can't chalk it all up to giving people personal challenges to overcome, because that exists everywhere and in all walks of life, so famines and earthquakes seems like a bit of a dick move if that was intentional.

So I don't buy that viewpoint. Even if God just really wanted to create Humanity and even if he eventually wants everybody to join the fight in the afterlife, the universe is too special a place to just be a training program. If anything at all is expected of us, it's got to be something more important than simply graduating.

God can't fight Satan. Well if you say Satan can even match god's power you basically claim he is also a god (while the bible claims there is only one god) so it's not exactly like that. Satan is one of god's servants. He goes among the angels and is present on their weird "summits" I described earlier, he just has an unusual purpose. He obeys god and requires his permission (which actually makes us ask questions about why god does this again). They do argue from time to time ...

I guess those proposes are too big for us to understand , how can we understand something bigger than all the universes we ever knew and never knew ...

[Avenger_7]

This is interesting. It's also the only real check to fr0st's "...why make humanity?" question. It's not really meant to be a treatise on the existence of a god, rather as an interesting philosophical piece, but I think it belongs here.