3 replies to this topic

[Ryan the Paradox Master]

Hello everyone! I'm going to try a social experiment on this site, and see if we can successfully construct a god or divine being's "personality" or "consciousness."

The idea behind this is that we are looking at a monotheistic deity, one that created this universe as a whole. What we are doing is looking at the universe in all its aspects (From morality, laws of physics, earth, humans, stars, death, society, and everything else we can think of.) and then trying to construct gods personality from it.

Here are some rules
1. No using already established religions, I'm trying to use some scientific observable principles but as this isn't an official experiment, I'm just curious what people will come up with.
2. If your going to examine one aspect of the universe (aka death) be sure to examine the oposing aspect of it as well (aka life) to make a reasonable judgment. Example, if you were to focus on just the aspect of death god created, you could say that he is an evil deity, that only cares about seeing us perish. That would be illogical however, because he also created life. View both sides.
3. Be free to add in some human touches if you see evidence for it, just don't add in random irrational stuff like "I think god is kind and merciful because that's how I would be if I were a god."
4. More rules may be added in later at my discretion, or at others suggestions.
5. Do not be offensive, or abusive to other peoples beliefs.


I'm a theist, however I have many different ideas about god, and what it/he/she may be like. I also understand that if their is a god, probably we will never come close to imagining him because all we have to go off its consciousness and personality is the universe it created. Here are a few examples I have created


Chances are "God" is a amoral being. I have taken this evidence from the fact that it gave most of its conscious creations (that are advanced enough in the brain) free will (or at least a very strong illusion of free will). As far as we are aware, this divine being doesn't seem to step in when we do wrong or evil things. Society is what punishes and stops us of committing evil. We can therefore conclude that God either doesn't care about morality, what we do, or we can conclude that god has a stronger belief in free will, the power to choose your morality, over forcing its/his/her creations to act a certain way. We also could conclude instead that god prefers for us to solve our own problems, and is testing us.
Interesting, I examined just one focus on the universe, morality. When you examine just one focus, you get multiple possible reasons god created it the way it is, therefore I believe that in order to fully understand god, we must try and understand all aspects of creation and the universe simultaneously. That I believe is impossible for the human consciousness, but we can at least try.

Thanks for any feed back, commenting, or just stopping by to read this. I'll be posting more idea's and contributing to this thread as it grows

[Lister]

I think critically you have to consider what level you see God as being.

Primitive humans would view God as someone who controls the rains, the tide, the rising of the sun and the rising of the moon. They would view God as someone who makes fire Hot and involves themselves exclusively in every element of human activity.

We now know why fire is hot, why it rains and why the sun goes up and down. We can associate these things to something other than God fairly easily. Where we fall short is explaining why everything is here and for what reason (Theories are all we have for most of that).

If you take these examples into consideration it would seem that we now view God as being higher level than we once did. The majority of religious people wouldn’t think God is a man standing on a mountain in Greece and that’s because we think God is bigger and more powerful than we did.

So then is God a being that doles out Freewill? Or is God a being that views the Freewill of his creations in the same way a carpenter views the atomic structure of the wood in his creations (he doesn’t concern himself with such small things)?

To me for God to exist they would be so far above our understanding; considering his existence would be next to impossible. I highly doubt our existence and daily life is much of an issue for God. Do we consider the daily lives of the bacteria living in our stomachs, helping us digest our food? Even then I think that would be giving us too much credit.

Regardless I’ll take a shot… To me Balance is the keystone of the universe. If God is low enough for us, with our extremely primitive brains to imagine then I would say he IS Balance.

Thoughts?

[Ryan the Paradox Master]

Lister, you raise many good points, a few of which I have not considered. Your first point, on how we view god compared to our ancestors is one I never considered, and makes a lot of sense.

I personally wonder if we are even a deliberate creation, or just the byproduct of the universe (god creates the universe for some grand unknowable purpose. Then on some random planets, in the environment and within the laws he created, life randomly evolves.)

Balance does seem to be a very important part of our planets ecosystem. However, if you look at the individual creatures on this world, we are not balanced individually. Locusts don't stop themselves from devouring entire fields on their own, its the bird that eats them that brings balance. If it wasn't for the bird, the locusts would destroy their food supply and then go extinct.

Also more on balance, you reminded me of a quote that an anon posted on the internet.
"Creation is an act of will, will is an act of desire, desire is an act of self interest. Creation therefore can not be perfect, so how can a perfect universe have been created by intelligence? Perfection of the universe is a result of balance, not intelligence."
While I like that quote, I disagree with it's final half. We are assuming god is an intelligent/conscious being as in what we view to be intelligence and consciousness. I sometimes wonder if we are even alive compared to our creator (if that's the right wording?)

[Lister]

Your question “I sometimes wonder if we are even alive compared to our creator (if that's the right wording?)” is very difficult for me. “Alive” is pretty subjective if we’re trying to compare what we understand as being alive to a great being of some sort. I would ask the question “Are we conscious compared to our creator?” and to that question I would say “Probably, but at such a low level we are easily influenced by the mere existence of a greater consciousness like that of a God.”

Your example of locus is a good one. They can become imbalanced when they consume to the brink of extinction. What you missed though is they are ultimately part of a larger ecosystem. This is why when they’ve consumed everything, they perish.

When the balance falters, the cause of said imbalance is often destroyed. This then restores the balance.

You could say that Humans have the ability to nearly destroy the planet and completely eradicate all forms of balance; but then the universe may still exist without the earth. Also, we haven’t pushed the button yet... I think that again is another tribute to balance.

It’s a lot easier to understand the effects of balance when viewing things through the eyes of a physicist. In physics, everything is trying its best to find equilibrium. You take a glass of cold water and add it to a glass of hot water and they will balance to form warm water.

Now Quantum mechanics is always trying to cause trouble but as far as we can see thus far, it’s had no luck. We may find in the end that there is some strong imbalance we can’t account for but I believe (somewhat religiously) that balance will always find a way.

I like Karma because it’s an easy way to explain the larger effects of balance on a smaller situation. Adhering to the ideas of Balance has allowed me to constantly do good things because I know deep down good things will be returned to me. I don’t associate that to a higher power directing good things my way; I associate that to a larger system of balance that I, a mere human, cannot explain or hope to fully understand.

In my experience if you find imbalance, take 1 step back and you’ll find balance again. Sometimes taking 1 step back is something you can’t do because you can’t see things from the position of someone much higher up... perhaps that’s God... I don’t know.

Were we created? Perhaps we were to correct some imbalance. Maybe our consciousness is the only thing that really exists... My goal in life is to live as long as I can to figure all this out. Hence why I’m here.