God versus the higher power - rational concept deluded
Offline Hi,
This is my first post to the forum. It's good to know that there is a place where I can go and confess my free thought because it was causing me so much pain and guilt. Just kidding.
I have been thinking about the concept of a higher power, what does it all mean, and why do humans tend to have these concepts.
After studying humans, myself and my brain I have concluded that the notion of some sort of higher power is an evolutionary concept. We ask "Why?" because we can now and we see our own death in front of us.
We feel vulnerable not knowing "Why?". We are looking for leadership.
So then religious elite steps in... filling the void and deluding our natural vision so they can control us.
There is no telling what is beyond the universe as we know it. Pure thought perhaps... nothingness maybe... who knows?
Perhaps we just need to realize that we have already achieved the status of the "higher power" as a collective whole. We are the universe asking itself "Why?"... who else?
To hurt others is to hurt ourselves and the ultimate goal of everything is love and self exploration (self being the universe as an entity) and death is.... merely an illusion. So why feel guilt and fear? Why cause pain and suffering? It is not logical.
In the end... what is "we" but a manifestation of our own "thought"?
Bear with me and take a minute to think about this. I'd like to hear some thoughts from you all.
Superhair
For the connoisseur, only the best will do.
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Of course death is an illusion. That's because life is an illusion.
Welcome to the forums!
Hey Superhair and welcome. Your opinions are exactly the same as what I think and feel. I like to think of humans and other life as just being the universe attempting to understand and manipulate itself. I understand that when we die we don't completly vanish from the universe; since our matter/engery will always be here in different forms, but the only thing that gets me is loosing our conscious mind. I'm one of those who think there was never really a state of nothingness because the Matter & Energy was always here/internal. Our universe may of had a beginning, but everything was always there.
I also believe religion was created for political reasons in order to controll people. It has worked and we're still trying to break away from it to this day.
Daniel Dennett wrote a book on this very subject called Breaking the Spell. It's actually in the Amazon book list on the left side of the site. I managed to make it about halfway through so far, as it is a somewhat complicated read for me. It is interesting to see so many atheists come to roughly the same conclusion on this subject on their own.
Your god's silence speaks loud and clear
It's much easier to follow than lead.
Combine that with our feeling of self-importance as a species, and it's easy to see how religion remains so strong.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
Welcome!
I think another aspect we have religion is it was used to explain things that seemed too vast too comprehend. The sunrise, lighting,floods-early people accredited them to gods because they couldn't come up with a scientific answer with their current knowledge. It's remained pretty popular.Just look at god of the gaps argument, fine tuning etc.
That and the controlling people idea.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
"higher power" is just a downplayed version of "supernatural" and is as much an utterance from ignorance.
To state the obvious, "gigantic masses of potential and kinetic energy" is fine. But to speculate beyond what we know by calling it "higher power" is merely an ignorant utterance instead of saying what one should say when they don't know, "I see this BIG THING, but I don't know everything behind it"
When you hit a gap in information simply do the right thing and say, "I don't know".
An exploding star has more energy than a weightlifter lifting 500lbs but we don't call that a "higher power". We call it an exploding star.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Brian37,
My point of using the phrase "Higher Power" is no different than saying "Big Thing". It is merely a symbol to use so that our brains can label the "bigger picture".
Instead of seeing ourselves as these autonomous entities, we are the entity, we are "The Big Thing". Therefor there is no logical reason to hurt others or be divided... do you have a better way to explain it?
If you want to understand reality then you shouldn't be so literal minded and use your skills of abstraction or else you are going to walk around in frustration for the rest of your life.
For the connoisseur, only the best will do.
Gee, if your idea of the ultimate goal is love and self-exploration, then my number is 1-...
I'm confused, though, because I'm just as literal minded as Brian, there. If I were to hurt someone else, I'm pretty sure it would hurt them more than it would hurt me. I've tried this experiment, and it's actually true. Also, death is pretty final. So I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence