Carl Sagan said it best

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

Carl Sagan also said

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

I bet if he'd released a recipe book they'd have been quite long and detailed instructions.

I have always loved :

"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" Arthur C. Clarke



hence my name and my job

"Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotton this". Anonymous.

Let's take that a step further, and speculate that perhaps all laws of science haven't yet been discovered, including some which can make the God that is actually "set of physical laws that govern the universe" a sentient God as well.

coco

All the laws of science haven't been discovered. I don't think many would say they have.

If it were sentient then it wouldn't be a physical law would it? Doesn't sentience imply some sort of choice, while physical laws are provable and repeatable?

Its fun and easy to speculate: Flying noodle monsters, man dreaming he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man, Brains in a jar hooked to a giant computer simulation of reality (and YES this idea existed before the matrix *sigh*), old men with flowing white beards and giant books filled by an army of angles with feather pens, giant beasts on mountain tops flapping their wings to create the wind, etc...

my personal favorite:

A man was questioning an old woman about her belief that the entire world rested on the back of a giant turtle. He asked her, "If the entire world is on the back of a giant turtle, what is the turtle standing on?" She replied, "Another turtle, of course." As the man tried to speak again the woman stopped him and said, "I know what you're going to say and you won't trick me. I know its turtles all the way down."

Sorry, people, are you sure you want to discuss this ? You risk getting replies like the following............

In seeking to understand a person, it may be wise, before analysing every personality detail, to first ask:
"Is this person how they seem ? Is s/he wearing a deliberate disguise ?"

The same is true of the universe/reality.

Unless you are confident that things are indeed as they seem, Sagan's cosmological efforts are no more (nor less) significant than those of a car mechanic - even an SL car mechanic.

In both cases the attention of the wisest is perhaps best directed away from the superficiality of the mask's construction (laws of physics etc ?) and onto the reason for the disguise, who made it, and who/what it conceals.

Please don't attempt to correct me. Everything I say, and everything you say, is accompanied by an alternative opposite viewpoint from which it is totally untrue.

So God (as you call him) is simultaneously intimately, lovingly, concerned for your every move, and utterly hugely impartially indifferent, with nothing like a personality or a consciousness which you could conceive. Only when you can begin to embrace this, and every other paradox, do you begin to see past the veil. To glimpse who/what you are, and what you are "doing here".

Despite the agreement to the contrary which I noticed in another thread, it is perfectly possible to believe two opposite things at once. There is a place to stand, viewed from which such contradictions are perfectly sane and even logical. This is the direction to view reality from if you are foolish enough to seek true wisdom.

Whoever knows himself, knows god.

Muhammud

"What a fucking crock of shit" - Kris Ritter

I recommend a double helping of Sartre with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for dessert.

Blessed be!

"Every organised religion is based upon a partial glimpse, and upon the ramifications of the subsequent misunderstandings" - Guru V

Your quote is from one of the better bits. They all have better bits.

Gee - I must be bored today.......

Even further proof :
I've just been playing ww2ol again under their free re-evaluation offer. Wanted to try paratrooping but didn't get the opportunity. Don't think I'll re-subscribe.....

you're absolutely right, god must be the most sneaky and underhanded thing in the universe, I mean, why does he go through such pains to stay hidden? Malice? or perhaps just forgetfulness. You know, wake up one day and just sort of forget to exist.




The strongset motivation to believe this is because it is frightening to think that there simply is no deeper meaning to existance. Sadly, unlike "the wizard of oz", not only is there no head of the great and terrible OZ, there's no one behind the curtain either.

This is one of my all time faves. The pure genius of this should be recognized.

I'm looking for the unified bullshit theory, did I come to the right place?

"If what I'm saying doesn't make any sense, that's because sense can not be made, it's something that must be sensed and I, for one, am incensed by all this complacency."- King Missile (from "It's Saturday"

Thats down the hall and to the right. This is just the bullshit collection area.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe -- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.



Not my words, by the way.

Are you saying science is a thief of faith? Damn looters are everywhere.

How about: God - for lack of a better term - doesn't stay hidden; we just have trouble finding God. And the REAL God is so mind-blowingly awesome that humans - when they do run into Him/Her/It/Them, simply can't handle it, and reject it. They may know the experience was real and reject it by choice, so as to live more easily, or they may reject it as something impossible, and therefore merely the result of some kind of misperception.

coco

No. We are sentient, and we still follow all physical laws. Being sentient is the result of many physical laws. There could be a physical law that allows for the combination of a multitude of free-floating sentiences that make up God.

coco

Too happy. The real god's a bastard.

Yup. Main reason I choose not to believe. Because if there *is* a god, he's one sick assed piece of shit motherfucker. To be nice about it

But he's my sick assed piece of shit motherfucker, so stop dissin' the O.G.

and you're welcome to the c*nt.

The eye of providence is really his anus. What, you didn't think an omnipotent being would really pass the opportunity to have a glowing butthole down, did you? The joke's on us, now it's on our currency.

*P.S., I know this because I am divinely inspired.

Well, there are these funny scientists (a couple of them: Bernard Haisch and Hal Puthoff) that took interesting potshots at what there might be beyond our current detection capabilities...

And the nthere's this other russian scientist who jumped the gun and declared that this thing they had found, that permeates everything and takes every single quantum decision in the universe, God.

And I call it Eris.