Well said.
Thought Iâd throw this out there:
Hypothesis: God Bob of religion Bobism exists exactly as described by religious book the The Boble.
Methods of Proof:
- Belief:
Person X (Bobist) - âI believe God Bob exists as described in the Boble.â
Person Y (Non - Bobist) - âI donât believe God Bob exists as described in the Boble.â
- Anecdotal proof:
Person X (Bobist) - âI survived a fall from a helicopter. It was a miracle. I felt the power of Bob save me. Hence I believe in Bob.â
Person Y (Non- Bobist) - âI was a law abiding citizen. The molten lava destroyed my swimming pool. Where was Bob? He doesnât exist.â
- Rationality - âCan an omnipotent being like Bob create a rock that he canât lift?â
Well if heâs omnipotent he should be able to create anything. But if heâs omnipotent he should be able to lift anything! SYSTEM EXPLODES DUE TO PARADOX.
OR
We are heading towards greater and greater computing power and AI. Itâs not inconceivable that we will in the not-so-distant future design a self-sufficient simulation which will essentially be a universe like our own (Rick and Morty reference). Hence itâs quite conceivable that a godlike being(s) created our own universe as well.
- Empiricism/Scientific Method - We donât have the tools to design an experiment to investigate the existence of Bob because the definition is so vague and subjective.
Hope that helps. The debate should always be about the methods of proof not about the hypothesis. Only the Sith shut down hypotheses.
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The devil is in the detail however. Here we are âjustâ synthesising and introducing a mix of known genes to a known structural milieu to generate âlifeâ from previously nothing - no direct life ancestor. If however you mean devising new genes or a genetic code with new structural components and so on, then that is a different ball park of required skill set - which we donât have⌠yet.
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And itâs in these areas of ignorance that religion has prospered, some might say exploited. This is a further issue I have with religion. It exposes the basic insecurities of âmanâ that nothing can be left unexplained. The intrinsic need for comfort to know the answer to âwhyâ.
All parents will be familiar with it. Your young child constantly continues to ask âwhyâ so that you are forced to delve further and deeper into explanations until ultimately you reach a point where you simply donât know. As a parent, of course, youâre not all knowing but there are loads of questions where âwhyâ similarly ends with a âdonât knowâ even when you combine the worldâs knowledge.
Into that void, humanity has always found the need to insert some form of faith-based construct. I see this as borne from a fundamental insecurity within humanity at large - the inability to allow things to remain unexplained until they have been. Why have we felt compelled, over millenia, to insert some other mystical reason for things we were unable to comprehend or explain? I see this as a fundamental weakness in the human psyche and one that people/cultures have been exploiting for thousands of years.
As these voids have been filled with knowledge acquired there have been fewer areas where religion has been able to occupy. I think it is inevitable that the furtherance of humanityâs enlightenment precedes the degradation of religious belief.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07289-x
My guess is theyâll achieve greenfield new life in a lab within our lifetimes. Theyâre already really really close.
Ok, so some beings have discovered how to synthesize life in a lab and we are the result of their experiments. Presumably they are inconceivably huge, and they operate on a completely different time scale, so that a million years are like a second for them. The whole of our universe is bubbling around in a test tube in one of their labs.
So far this theory is not the worst.
Thatâs not quite right sorry. We cannot observe the Big Bang. There was a period between the Big Bang and the moment when the Universe became opaque. It is that moment we observe in the CMB.
Sure there are many unknowns and that is the beauty in learning and diving deeper. I think itâs fair to say however that much of what we know now really does raise some massive questions on the current thinking of Christianity.
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind
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Noice.
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I find the following answers useful for life.
Where did the universe come from / how did it begin? As I donât think that it has any impact on life (unless god did it) then Iâm not actually that bothered. For example it being eternal or a one hit fluke make 0 difference to my life. Until we can travel at CxC weâll probably never know and Iâll be star dust again by then.
Why are we here? Not sure that there is a why (as in thereâs no reason, we just evolved) but we do seem to be here so letâs enjoy it.
What happens when we die? I donât remember the time before I was born (which certainly wasnât unpleasant) so I suppose I wonât be that bothered to have no existence.
To me, leaving religion lead me to realise that a lot of the deep philosophical questions are essentially redundant.
The front of the JW pamphlet I got the other day has âWhy are we hereâ and âWhy is there sufferingâ questions that theyâre keep for us to ask. They certainly donât like the response âFor loads of sex and because your god inflicts you on usâ
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We are certainly living in interesting times.
Religious frameworks have for millennia dominated (monopolised, even) any significant narrative addressing where it is we fit into this vast cosmic soup.
Feels very much like those thousands of years are drawing to a close. Of course, such change plays out over decades, if not centuries, so I doubt very much anyone itt is going to be able to bump it and claim victory at some point in the futureâŚ
Maybe the climate crisis will finish us all off before then anywayâŚ
At any rate, I donât think anyone can argue against the notion that âGodâ as an explanation is on the way out, but as I said earlier, I think the more important questions address why we needed him in the first place.
And I wish I could be there when science ends up realising it canât tell us why weâre here either!!
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My parents generation thought that and here we still areâŚ
Ironically, God finishes us off just as he was about to be exposed as a fraud⌠
Maybe thatâs the objective? Do you think that once all of humanity has discarded the need for a belief in God or Gods because nearly all things have been explained a big sign will fall from the skyâŚ
Brilliant post.
Explain the unexplained with a smattering of legend and blind faith. And fill in the gaps as we see fit. Maybe the genesis of all stories is borne from the inability to accept âI dont knowâ.
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I also suggested that such fundamental change takes far longer than you, I, your parents would be able to recognise.
If I may assume youâre talking about the mid-20th century, I am not at all surprised.
A booming voice from the heavensâŚ
GOTCHA CUNTS!
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I appreciate that it will take a long time.
However, what I see around me are people my age (approaching 50) and younger that donât really believe but as they get older (30s and older) they start to pay lip service (at first) and then become more and more devout in their belief as they get older. Most of the marriages are in a church or worshiping centre of sorts and have a religious figure involved. This may be observational bias but I am left a little sceptical as to its waning.
The thing is that many systems have come and gone, or catastrophes come to pass, and yet religion persists. It may outlive this questioning age as easily as the systems and catastrophes it has already outlived.
Power and control in my book.
Not in Arabic then?
Parentsâ generations for 2000 years have thought the same.
âDoth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.â
(Euripides 480â406 BC)
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