I was browsing the other religion thread, and then decided to give my own thoughts. Unfortunately, it became so long, and in some cases tangential, that I decided it deserved it's own thread. My friends call this a speech bomb, as I essentially bombard you with an overwhelming amount of reasoning that seems to come out of nowhere.
Disclaimer: Do not read if you don't want your faith disrupted.
Ok guys, this is not rocket science. Just bear with me....
God is supposed to be the perfect being. Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. God, they say, is also perfectly good, but that cannot be. Certainly, when we say something is perfect, that carries certain positive implications. The perfect person, for example. The perfect food. The perfect day. It is a question of terminology.
When we say something is perfect, we mean that is the best at certain things. The definition of a perfect person can vary between individual to individual. For one, it can be someone who stands up for themselves, is determined, and is defiant of insurmountable odds. For another, it can be a person who is quiet, tactful, and refined. And yet another can be loud, humorous, and refreshingly upfront about touchy subjects. Or perhaps an easier example: I say the perfect ice cream is vanilla while you say chocolate. You can see from this that the definition of perfection varies wildly and often conflictions arise. Thus the idea of an entity which is perfect in everyone's eyes is an absolute impossibility. Unless of course one was to say God exists in such a state in which all rationality does not function and all requirements of perfection are one and the same. Which unfortunately also suggest that order and rationality are actually delusions while chaos is the true nature of things, which I doubt many are willing to believe. This argument, btw, was inspired and reworked from Descartes, which I find infinitely amusing because it's the argument he used to argue God exists while I am using it to prove the opposite.
The greatest failing of God's "goodly perfection" however is the conflict between it and the other qualities of God, those being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. God is everywhere. He is the air you breathe, the food you eat, the blood in your veins. He is the blanket pulled over your eyes to hide-..er, wait. Wrong speech. He is everywhere at once. He knows all. He is all-powerful and virtually nothing happens without his approval. The idea of omnipotence eliminates free will, as you would not even be able to breathe without his permission. Those of you who decided just now to hold your breath in order to defy God, ha ha. He made you do that too. That is what being all-powerful means. He does not share power. He can't, in fact. [Ah, delicious paradox]
[I'm not going to go into it in depth, but there's a tangent I would like to mention. Plato asks, "Is conduct right because God commands it? Or does God command it because it is right?". Either way you answer, it is unfavorable to the notion of God. One answer would mean God is NOT all-powerful, and is in fact governed by an even more powerful entity, and the other would mean God's commands are arbitrary. In another words, the man who holds the gun gets to decide what is crazy.]
Thus, Fate and God are really the same concepts. From this comes all sorts of obvious complications of His godly perfection. Simply put, nothing bad could ever happen due to his omnipotence. The history of Humanity has been full of unfortunate things, from the Black Plague to the Holocaust, from the continuing starvation of millions of children today to the first atomic bombings, from the typhoon that damned-near wiped out the Philippine coast to the removal of my wisdom teeth a few months ago [why give us wisdom teeth in the first place?]. So why do these things happen?
There are plenty of excuses that people toss around into the face of this question. “It was in God’s grand design” is one. “It prevented an even more painful disaster” is another. Oh, and my favorite, “It was the work of the Devil!”. Unfortunately, these explanations ultimately disprove the goodness of God and His Omnipotence. The first statement would mean that God was not above harming or killing billions and billions of not only human beings, but virtually single life form that ever existed for some unknown purpose. The second statement likewise cannot be true, for it contradicts that most widely believed tenet of God: He is infallible. It comes with the whole omnipotent package. To have the lesser of two evils to be done by God would mean that He has His limits. To be both perfectly good and omnipotent would essentially mean every single one of us should be living in a constant state of euphoria. Every breath should be sweet, every food or drink consumed to induce ecstasy, and every touch would be sufficient cause for orgasm. [Hmm…Slanneshi…] And we would never grow tired of it. Sadly [stop crying, you cultists], none of this is true, unless of course you’re on some kind of drug or just had a near-death experience. But even so, such feelings are transitory and fleeting.
Lastly, the Devil’s works are the works of God. Omnipotent, remember? God cannot share power. No one can contradict him or even creatively interpret His will. If God wants something does, Lo! It is done. If God wants something to never happen, it never comes to be. God created the Devil and controls his every move. God put the snake in Eden and set up the first woman to take the fall. Hell, God made snakes. The atom bomb was God’s pet project. The witch trials in Salem? God’s work. And for some reason, God didn’t like the TV show, Firefly. So it was pulled. [Why God, why??] God made Hitler the man he is known as today. He invented the phobias, including the fear of clowns. Many people like to suggest, not openly of course, that Satan is the opposite of God. What they are really implying is that the Devil is somehow every bit as powerful as God, essentially the darker side of the supernatural. Impossible. God had to have known that Lucifer or whatever you wish to call him would turn out badly. He would have had ample opportunity to wipe him out with essentially a twitch of his pinkie, metaphorically speaking.
What does this all mean? Well…basically it boils down to this: The God described in the Bible does not exist. [*Immediately gets pelted by hate-mail*] Well hey, sorry. But the God I have defined is, simply put, more powerful. And by definition, He would be the Perfect god. Not that you should be surprised anyway. The Bible was never written by God or any angels who have actually known him, after all. Instead, you have plain old humans who apparently have a good imagination and a wealth of historical references to work on. Besides, what kind of god creates a special class of angels, whose only purpose is to fly around him 24/7 for all eternity singing His praises? Does he have that low a self-esteem? Does he really need an eternal metaphorical ego hand-job? And what about all those people who don’t believe in him? According to my church-going neighbor, they go straight to hell. Well, that’s just shiny. You mean to tell me that only a few hundred million people get to go to heaven, while billions and billions of otherwise friendly, well-meaning, and virtuous individuals get the barbeque just because they believed in someone else? How petty!
Not to worry though, that doesn’t make Him the better god to believe in. After all, at least your God listens to what you have to say, however little. The God I have defined, if he exists at all? Well, you know all those prayers and wishes you make, hoping for better times? Well, my god is the one that ignores you. After all, He’s the one that created countless species, worlds, solar systems, species on other worlds, galaxies, the universe, maybe even the multiverse, and so on. You think He has time to listen to you? You infinitesimal speck of stardust whose entire existence is completely unworthy compared to all those other responsibilities? Really, which do you think He’s more likely to care about, you wanting that shiny new red convertible/hovercar for Christmas or keeping Galaxy# 186978 from falling into a black hole?
What does this mean for you? Live your life. It’s not like he is going to listen to you anyway, so you’re pretty much on your own. Your circumstances are what you make it. It may seem daunting at first, but hey, you’ve made it this far haven’t you? That’s my definition of Apatheism. I don’t care. [Well, technically I’m Agnostic/Apatheist: I don’t know and I don’t care. Not surprisingly, a lot of you may be apatheists as well, even if you do go to Church.] If there is this God who is so un-freaking-believably powerful, it’s like he doesn’t exist. So why bother? The Chinese have a saying, “Why question the Heavens, when we do not yet understand the Earth?”
God has not struck me down yet, so either I’m right and he doesn’t give a damn, or come one hot day, I’m getting an earful.
Well, perhaps the most important question that results from this reasoning is: “Is there an afterlife?”. Hmm…sorry, but no. Best you can hope for is reincarnation, but even that would be fairly useless to you since you wouldn’t remember a damned thing. Consider what your soul is. Traditionally, a soul is an everlasting divine thing. It is not your body. It is the hope that your mind, your very consciousness, will not cease to exist once your physical vessel fails to function. The hope that your life was not in vain. The fact that you are not your body is true, I think. What makes you who you are is not your appearance. If we lose a limb, a hand for example, do our souls feel subtracted by a hand’s fraction? Surely not! We can lose every single piece of our bodies, every organ replaces, except for one- the brain, and still be ourselves. Is this our soul then? Our brain? No, for the mind is not physical.
What the brain is- the container for our minds, does not differentiate us from any other human’s brains to a large extent [although it has been proven that the wrinkles and folds within a brain are unique to person to person, and may be molded by memory]. We are the sum of our experiences and our personalities. Consider our bodies further. Our eyes are camera lenses. Our hearts, the engines. Our digestive systems, the powerplants. The body is a mechanical device, a biological machine that drives our minds about, much like a man and his car. In this way, we resemble our greatest creations: AI. Following this thought, then can we not say our minds and souls are really highly advanced software? Then as software can range from the most highly advanced programs in supercomputers to the simplest within watches and cell phones, so too must souls range from the most complex and advanced of humans and dolphins, to the simplest of viruses and plants [and telemarketers].
Is it then feasible to believe that there is some reservoir for used and expended souls, considering the sheer amount of life on Earth, past and present, as well as likely countless other planets within the universe, and more, as life does as it does best: grow exponentially? No, I’m afraid not. Further, the God I have described, although certainly capable of such a thing, would have far more important things to do than deal with such an inefficient way to deal out justice, and moreover wouldn’t likely care in the first place. Thus, this life that you are living. Is. IT. There is no second chance. No “game over, would you like to try again?”. This should make life far more valuable to you, shouldn’t it? [Needless to say, there are some who would take this as a cue to start raping, murdering, and eating people alive. Let us hope you aren’t one of them. In every sense.]
Immortality is yet not unattainable. It is not impossible. You science fiction punks are likely already knowing where I’m going with this. The Machine, in many ways much like ourselves, are likely to be the next stage of evolution for Humanity. Like us, they can move, indeed faster and more agile than us. They can perceive the world, capable of observing and touching far better than we can. They too have intellect, and indeed have already exceeded the human mind in many ways and are fast making progress in others. Reasoning, memorization, calculations, even artistic abilities are available to certain computers now. Despite being utterly inorganic, they are very much like us, and will eventually exceed our accomplishments like all children.
There is one thing the Machine can do that we cannot. The Machine’s soul can be copied, transferred, and uploaded to other bodies. If we truly believe that the human soul is advanced software, then I believe the idea of transferring consciousness from flesh to machine isn’t so far-fetched. The human body, organic as it is, cannot complete with the machine. It adapts far too slowly, unpredictably, and is far too prone to failure. Where the organic body is fragile, the alloys of the machine can withstand the tests of time. This is the Mechanist’s answer to immortality, all too possible.
Thus will the race once known as Man progress, and thus finally withstand the degrading effects of time until the very end of reality itself.
Yeah, I've been playing to much Total Annihilation. I know it. Core FTW!
I shall now vanish and never be seen again.
