On reincarnation of God

[Farm Boy]

If you love the world, you love its god. If you don't, you don't.

 

[Samson]

Let say:
- It can answer you everything about its creation - the world you live in -> Full understanding of its creation
- It can't answer you about things related to you & determined by you -> Like if it let you exercise your own "free will", it can't predict to you beforehand something like the next word you gonna speak next. But it knows what action it can take to make you arrive to its expected action of yours. If not, it just replaces your memory with "fake" ones. Its method is unknown to you
- It shows you its power of manipulating nature. Like create matters out of nothingness or teleporting. -> Implying it has full control over its creation
- It shows you its power to create another world and let you take a look at it. -> Implying the technique of create our own world is within its reach
Is that a solid positive?

That last one sounds like a pretty good one, given enough access to the world to see the complexity. All those sound "harder" than the prayer one for God, considering what he is reputed to do.

 

[El_Machinae]

Those are all descriptions of a more-powerful being, not necessarily an all-powerful being

 

[Samson]

Those are all descriptions of a more-powerful being, not necessarily an all-powerful being

Exactly how big "all" is in all powerful really is a question. Capable of creating as universe as complex and detailed as this one is pretty much up there isn't it? In christian beliefs even God is not capable of making us both have free will and not able to sin.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

I'm gonna leave it at that, because it dawned on me that this isn't really a Science vs Religion thread.

And there is no need for such a thread.
They are not opposites, it is possible to embrace both.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

On the one hand there is nothing to be proven to justify religion. No matter what the religion it's all based on faith anyways.
On the other hand one could argue that there is evidence everywhere that God exists. Just take a look at nature and ecology. I find it real hard to believe that a random big bang explosion, which usually means absolute destruction, was the force that precisely arranged everything to create life on earth and it's intricate inter-dependencies

Note: That's just my opinion. I'm not trying to force my opinion on anyone. If you do agree with me though thank you! But if not no harm done.

I accepted that you're not trying to force your opinion.

But your first paragraph reminds me of every person who has ever said to me: "Give evidence for atheism."

No. I don't have to "give evidence" for why I or anyone else do not believe in a deity. It's not like we're doing something wrong and are on trial.

There's a difference between "give evidence for your belief/non-belief" and "give evidence for what you claim is factual."


I will take exception that explosions cause absolute destruction. The planet we're sitting on, and the computers we're using to have this discussion are only possible because ancient massive stars blew up billions of years ago. They forged new elements in their interiors, and when they exploded, they scattered those new elements into the universe, creating clouds of dust and gas we call nebulae.

Eventually, parts of these nebulae start to contract as gravity pulls them together. Bits of matter start to clump together, and begin to rotate. They get hotter. If they get hot enough, they become stars, and some of the other matter around them might become planets - or possibly a companion star. These are comprised not only of hydrogen and helium, but also the other elements forged by the previous generation of stars that created the nebula.

Cosmic recycling - or, as Carl Sagan so poetically and accurately put it: We are starstuff. Every atom that makes up our world, including ourselves, was once part of ancient stars that existed billions of years ago.

That, to me, is truly awesome. The universe is not just "out there." The universe is here, within each of us.

Also if I may take it one step further.

Let's just say someone was able to provide scientific proof beyond doubt that God exists. Would that be enough for people to worship God? I think not because it's very difficult to humble yourself before an all powerful but loving God. Man is too proud of himself to admit he needs a god.

What if they provided scientific proof beyond doubt that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? Would everyone wear colanders on their heads? I think not because it's very difficult to humble yourself before an all powerful but loving bowl of spaghetti. Especially those who have gluten issues.

(before anyone accuses me of mockery, there are jurisdictions that have declared Pastafarianism to be a valid religious belief)

And given all the things wrong with this world, I very much doubt that your hypothetical scenario would come to pass. An all-powerful deity would have noticed and corrected these problems after the beta testers got done (cue those who speculate that we ARE the beta testers).

If my guess is right, religion should become closer and closer to the true truth.
That the faster science advances, the faster religion develops?
But that doesn't seem like the case.

Since there are millions of people who still cling to Bronze Age beliefs about certain matters of human biology that science has thoroughly debunked, not to mention beliefs about other things that science has also thoroughly debunked (ie. Noah's Ark), it doesn't seem that the faster science advances, the faster religion develops.

A developing religion would accept what science has verified. I suppose it's a step that the Catholic church finally exonerated Galileo - 400 years late, but better late than never. It would have been nice to do it while he was still alive, though.

This is mostly true, but science can also beg to be questioned which can be a fallacy.

Science uses the scientific method. That's not to say there are no corrupt scientists who willfully falsify their findings, but that doesn't mean the method itself is wrong.

It's perfectly fine to have a conversation about reincarnation from a religious POV, but when you throw a bunch of people in a room who practice varying religions (or a lack of them), surely such a conversation would not go very far, with people tripping all over each other's axioms and definitions.. Imagine if it were the 1500s and we were all discussing gravity, and what it all might be and how it might work. Such a conversation in a religious context, whether it's Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, or what have you.. is perfectly fine, but it's a completely different conversation from : "Hey, so how does gravity actually work, and what .. the heck is it?"

I'm reminded of the YT videos of Kristin Auclair, a "mom" who made headlines years ago by demanding dinosaurs be removed from the school curriculum because (in her view) they not only never existed, but that all the fossils were faked, made and planted by paleontologists so other paleontologists could dig them up and make "millions of taxpayer dollars" doing so. She also declared that dinosaurs led very "sinful" lives (interesting how they could do that if they never existed).

Then she posted a video purporting to explain why the flying dinosaurs couldn't have flown. Her "experiment" consisted of draping a leather jacket over a kite frame, dropping the kite off a tall building, and observing it fall to the ground instead of flying under its own power.

Yes absolutely. Those who already believe won't change their mind or need to worship based on concrete scientific proof. If one however was in doubt before this hypothetical proof came out might still choose to no want to worship God for the reasons I gave.

I have no patience with the "You're just rebelling against God" argument. For me it's like saying "You're rebelling against Santa Claus." It's pointless to claim that someone isn't a believer because they're "rebelling" against something they don't think is real.

It is going to depend on a lot of stuff. Your description would include Kirk from Star Trek for example, and good as Shatner may be I am not sure worship is appropriate. Also exactly what worship meant. But there are certainly answers to those questions that would get me to worship.

Kirk himself (the character, not Shatner) would be the first to say it would be wrong to worship him. Respect? Yes, as far as his rank merits. Personally? As far as he's earned it. But worship? No.

To add, my comment about prayer earlier was not flippant. I seriously consider it an experiment that the world should do to distinguish between different models of the universe. If that gave a solid positive I would consider it very strong evidence.

Hm. It seems that an unofficial experiment with prayer has already been done, during the plague years several centuries ago. It didn't work during the Black Death, nor did it work in the time during Galileo's life when a plague broke out. One of his own daughters was a nun, whose task was to spend her days on her knees praying for God to take the plague away. It didn't work, and she was one of those who died from it.

If you love the world, you love its god. If you don't, you don't.

So if I don't love your god, that means I don't love the world?

I wonder what "god" - if any - the world itself would worship? I suspect this is likely something most lifeforms on the planet never think about, being too busy trying to survive and not being capable of such abstract thought.

 

[Samson]

Hm. It seems that an unofficial experiment with prayer has already been done, during the plague years several centuries ago. It didn't work during the Black Death, nor did it work in the time during Galileo's life when a plague broke out. One of his own daughters was a nun, whose task was to spend her days on her knees praying for God to take the plague away. It didn't work, and she was one of those who died from it.

Did you see the paper I linked earlier? It has been done many times, with varying results. But never properly funded and designed to produce powerful answers.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

.
...

I'll kowtow to my boss merely so I don't get laid off, and I live in a world of employment insurance and have an active savings plan. We encourage our clients to dress nicely for the panels and judges, even though it's their job to consider only 'the person on the inside'. Of course I'd kowtow to something more powerful if there was something more serious on the line.

But you created an even more specific scenario, 'proof that God was all powerful and loving'. That would require knowing things that I don't know now, perspectives or insights that I don't have. "Proof" is a strong word.

...

Your first paragraph quoted above is actually very on point. There is something more serious on the line and that's eternal security going to one destination rather than another less preferable destination. I won't get more detailed than that but pretty much when a Christian approaches trying to preach the gospel this is what they're going to tell you about. As for kowtowing to your boss this is something I do too because I realize I need to feed my family so my pride goes out the window in order to earn a paycheck.

I accepted that you're not trying to force your opinion.

But your first paragraph reminds me of every person who has ever said to me: "Give evidence for atheism."

No. I don't have to "give evidence" for why I or anyone else do not believe in a deity. It's not like we're doing something wrong and are on trial.

I agree with you here. There is no need to ask for evidence for atheism. The onus for evidence is on the believer in what ever god we're talking about. Faith is the realization of things hoped for despite the evidence not being seen.

What if they provided scientific proof beyond doubt that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? Would everyone wear colanders on their heads? I think not because it's very difficult to humble yourself before an all powerful but loving bowl of spaghetti. Especially those who have gluten issues.

(before anyone accuses me of mockery, there are jurisdictions that have declared Pastafarianism to be a valid religious belief)

And given all the things wrong with this world, I very much doubt that your hypothetical scenario would come to pass. An all-powerful deity would have noticed and corrected these problems after the beta testers got done (cue those who speculate that we ARE the beta testers).

But is the flying spaghetti monster a god? If he's just a creature like any other animal or being it would be easy for me to like him because I love spaghetti. I wouldn't worship it though because it's not a god. (unless you meant that the flying spaghetti monster was proven to be a god)

And I didn't take this as you mocking me I do see the point you're trying to make. However what I'm saying is that what if proof of a supreme deity was presented to you? What would the average person do with that?

 

[Farm Boy]

I haven't been able to bend knee much, and that, upon observation, idles the hands. Hands, roughly speaking, seem to be in charge of producing almost all of the decent parts of the world I see around me. If managing to capture useful prayer enables good works, or even create less bad ones than otherwise, it's as real and powerful of a force as any I've ever managed to care about. Fundamentally more useful even than increasing skill, by changing where they're aiming.

So, I guess to circle on the OP: No. But if we are going to try to climb, our struggle is with the mountain, not with the valley.

 

[Farm Boy]

So if I don't love your god, that means I don't love the world?

The use was universal, not specific. And this is one of those instances where if you change the order of the terms, it no longer means the same thing at all.

 

[Rg339]

If you love the world, you love its god. If you don't, you don't.

Gotta eat. Which, is probably brutal to the thing eaten. If god designed that system, it’s uh, arguably pretty brutal.

It’s still possible to love the world trying to do its best despite limitations of resources and the inherent difficulty that springs from that, while despising God for creating the system, IMO

 

[Farm Boy]

Why are they considered so separate? It's never made sense to me. An all powerful summary of power is embedded in the world in more ways than I am in my own flesh. I didn't even try to grow most of it. I'd give it up for a number of things.

 

[El_Machinae]

Gotta eat. Which, is probably brutal to the thing eaten. If god designed that system, it’s uh, arguably pretty brutal.

It’s still possible to love the world trying to do its best despite limitations of resources and the inherent difficulty that springs from that, while despising God for creating the system, IMO

The observation breaks down if you ascribe personhood to God, especially if too many people have described God as 'loving' or 'perfect'. If you think of the creative force that is something that holds no blameworthiness (I don't, since I think the universe just is) then the observation makes more sense. It's an insight from Job about gratitude, and it's damaged by imagining God as a person.

But, being grateful for life and being awed by the Universe is going to be a feeling that's heavily affected by whether you love life.

 

[Rg339]

The observation breaks down if you ascribe personhood to God

Is there a belief system that doesn’t ascribe personhood to God? Or at least, something that vaguely resembles personhood?

I dunno. Maybe there is. I wouldn’t call my spiritual thought well developed(because I wouldn’t call myself spiritual). I would say I have difficulty squaring away the prevalence and effectiveness of ruthless self interest with an idea that God is loving.

People are comforted by the idea of a caring God. Suggests to me that ideas God is caring, if they don’t match the observable realities of existence, are just our emotional biases made manifest in various systems of theology

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And according to quantum physics I saw in the internet, our world is not deterministic, or that's just our observations are not deterministic.

last i saw this still wasn't pinned down for sure; that some deterministic explanations were still possible based on our observations.

Science is based on experiments, objective facts and verifiable truths; science is a discipline that accepts and embraces its own fallacy.
Religion is neither of the above; religion is subjective and belief based. Religion has historically been very poor at explaining and accepting fallacies, within its own narrative/tenets.

the similarity between science and religion is that they are models of the world. science has a much better track record in terms of predicting things that happen in the future consistently, but prior to science religion was all we had.

you can find examples in religious texts of various things being put to the test, with (wrong) interpretations of the outcomes observed. we use science because it's a stronger model of reality. an angry god we can't observe or interact with doesn't do a good job at helping us anticipate future outcomes, physics does a lot better (despite some holes in our understanding of it).

explaining the "how" vs "why" aren't that far apart from each other as concepts/process. it just turns out that one did better than the other at constraining anticipation of future things.

What if they provided scientific proof beyond doubt that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists?

imo any hard/verifiable evidence of a deity in the sense of gods or w/e would necessarily imply massive updates to belief in how reality works.

as an aside, despite being an atheist myself i always found it amusing when characters in games like dungeons and dragons are atheist, despite that you can cross planes of existence and have a conversation with them. i guess that what they actually mean is that the character in question hasn't selected any particular god to worship, but it's still kind of funny to think of a world where actually being "atheist" rather than simply not worshiping is objectively absurd because your high level wizard friend can take you to one and let it smack you in the face with a fish 50 times or polymorph you at a whim.

Is there a belief system that doesn’t ascribe personhood to God? Or at least, something that vaguely resembles personhood?

technically, any system that doesn't define god/entity in the role of creator but is still a belief system would meet this criteria. atheism works here, but i think some other belief systems might too.

 

[El_Machinae]

Is there a belief system that doesn’t ascribe personhood to God? Or at least, something that vaguely resembles personhood?

I will admit that the concept of 'God' seems to contain 'personhood' in the definition. Especially for those influenced by the Abrahamic faiths. But, for example, I hold many of the tenets of the Christian faith (which are religious positions, not scientific ones) without believing in the personhood of the Creator (well, and without the belief that Jesus was a representative thereof).

But the lesson of Job, from an atheist perspective, is that "you gotta be grateful". Not for any specific reason other than "otherwise you'll be miserable". Now, some of that will be determined brain chemistry (I'll know that better than most). But some will be something we can choose to be.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But is the flying spaghetti monster a god? If he's just a creature like any other animal or being it would be easy for me to like him because I love spaghetti. I wouldn't worship it though because it's not a god. (unless you meant that the flying spaghetti monster was proven to be a god)

Yes, I meant what if the FSM was proven to be a god, would you (general 'you') worship it?

And I didn't take this as you mocking me I do see the point you're trying to make. However what I'm saying is that what if proof of a supreme deity was presented to you? What would the average person do with that?

I have no idea what "the average person" would do with that, because I'm very unlike the "average person" at least in terms of where non-fannish/SCA/gamer culture is concerned. I'm not even like the "average person" in my community because of how I was raised and what my political views are.

But what I personally would do with it would be to require ALL laws of nature to conform to whatever this supreme deity claims they are, and whatever goes wrong had better be fixed. And even then I doubt I'd worship it, because what would be the alternative if I refused? No deity who says "love me or suffer eternal torment" is worth worshiping regardless of what else they do or don't do.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The use was universal, not specific. And this is one of those instances where if you change the order of the terms, it no longer means the same thing at all.

You said "the world's god." How can an entire planet have one god that it, not its subordinate lifeforms, worship? That presupposes that Earth is a self-aware, sentient being all on its own. There's a pagan religion or several that covers that idea.

imo any hard/verifiable evidence of a deity in the sense of gods or w/e would necessarily imply massive updates to belief in how reality works.

as an aside, despite being an atheist myself i always found it amusing when characters in games like dungeons and dragons are atheist, despite that you can cross planes of existence and have a conversation with them. i guess that what they actually mean is that the character in question hasn't selected any particular god to worship, but it's still kind of funny to think of a world where actually being "atheist" rather than simply not worshiping is objectively absurd because your high level wizard friend can take you to one and let it smack you in the face with a fish 50 times or polymorph you at a whim.

Not sure where you're getting your data from on FRPGs. Whether or not characters are people of faith depends on 1. If the DM allows it in that campaign, or 2. If the DM requires it in that campaign.

My own take on D&D and faith is that if you're going to play a cleric or paladin, worship of some kind of deity or spirit is a given requirement. My only stipulation is that it not be a RL, currently-worshiped mainstream deity. In short, I don't allow Jesus in my campaigns, but if the person playing the cleric or paladin can find another deity in the Deities & Demigods manual (or the equivalent source book for whatever setting they're playing in) that is sufficiently similar to Jesus that they are comfortable with their characters worshiping, then that's who they may use. I don't want RL issues dragged into gaming, especially not when it's a player who argued with me that the entire life of Jesus happened between 1 BC and 1 AD.

D&D is by necessity a game that uses pantheism as part of its basic structure. So yes, it makes perfect sense that a wizard can take you to meet some god, but you don't worship that god. Maybe you worship a different god or maybe you think all of them are jackasses and don't deserve your worship.

Or maybe you happen to live on the planet Krynn in the span of centuries between the fall of the Kingpriest of Istar (when the gods chucked a fiery mountain at the planet and vanished) and the events of Dragons of Autumn Twilight when the gods returned, some in the form of dragons, to do battle. Until that point, Krynn had been without true clerics for several centuries (lots of pretenders) and mages were looked on with suspicion. Atheism was a stance many people took during that time because they saw no evidence that worshiping gods was of any benefit at all and without clerics with true power granted by the gods, no evidence would be forthcoming.

One of my NaNoWriMo projects - the one that garnered me my first win in 2016 - was a novelized version of a Fighting Fantasy gamebook called Caverns of the Snow Witch. It might surprise people to know that while my RL self is atheist, the characters in my stories are for the most part, people of faith to some extent. It's a pantheistic kind of faith in the Fighting Fantasy setting, though my characters are partial to one or two specific goddesses (there are deities for the realms of luck, justice, war, and so on).

When I embarked on my current project that's been going now for nearly 4 years, I realized I'd need to make a decision about religion. The game it's based on is set in an AU of 11th century England, but makes no mention of real history. So I decided that I would forego the issues of RL history and simply invent a religion for my characters. So far it's working out well.

technically, any system that doesn't define god/entity in the role of creator but is still a belief system would meet this criteria. atheism works here, but i think some other belief systems might too.

I have a problem with the idea of atheism as a "belief system." There's no "system."

 

[Birdjaguar]

Is there a belief system that doesn’t ascribe personhood to God? Or at least, something that vaguely resembles personhood?

Within Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufism (mystical Islam) God has no form or shape but exists as "all in all". However, in each of those, God consciousness can and does manifest in human form as an Avatar, God-Man, or Sadguru. Such manifestations though are temporary and not actual representations of God. Personhood as we think of it is not really part of the picture.

 

[Farm Boy]

You said "the world's god." How can an entire planet have one god that it, not its subordinate lifeforms, worship? That presupposes that Earth is a self-aware, sentient being all on its own. There's a pagan religion or several that covers that idea.

Sure. The Pan-God, the all-whatever. From dust we are made in the image of God, with life breathed into us for a time. From then we're made from each other and sustained by all which surrounds us. Star stuff, as it were.