Problem with Xtanity : The value system of God.
Offline I have a problem with various aspects of christianity but one that I don't think is discussed is how a god is supposed to share the same values as humans. I think this is one of the obvious indications that it is a human construct.
I will try to explain what I mean.
When I try to consider a being with unbounded abilities, knowledge and power my imagination gets stuck, so I scale it down a bit to make it easier to play with.
I use the idea that our universe has existed long enough for creatures such as us to have evolved three times over (or so I've heard).
This could mean for instance that a ecology that produced a creature of our intelligence in the first round would be as far ahead of us as we are beyond worms.
This is my mind experiment. Assume there is a being as far in advance of us as we are from worms.
Now consider a worms living experience compared with our own. The idea that a worms value system has anything but a ultra basic similarity with ours is laughable. Our ideas of love, justice (and countless others) have not even the neurological sophistication within a worm to be representable.
They are barely aware of a stick touching them without any idea of the two year old using it.
Now assume we are in the same boat with respect to a massively more complex being. There are no shared values nor basis for communication. There is no sense that such a being has concerns for us as individuals nor our continued existence in any form.
The best we could hope for is being on a worm farm or perhaps a scientific experiment.
That a being that advanced would bother with us at all is ridiculous. All this is in relation to a limited being more advanced than we are. When we start talking about ultimate beings the gulf is so great as to make the concept redundant.
That's my thought any way. What do you guys/gals think?Looking for the difference that makes a difference....
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The Christian God does not follow science. He is infinite, everpresent, etc. He created people in his image and that is why they have similar features to him. Gotta remember, religion doesn't often mesh with science.
Also, we are not superior to worms in my opinion. They evolved into their specific niche which as far as I know they have been in for A LOT longer time than we have been in ours. Sure, we are more complicated but we are not a worm's version of God in that sense. Just because something can interact with its environment in more complex way does not make it necessarily better.
Welcome to the forums.
I would hope that most human beings do not share the same value systems as the judeo/christian god. I don't believe that mankind needs an invisible man in the sky to make most of us behave and play nice. The god of the OT was always smiting and waging wrath on his creation. Many people who allegedly heard jesus preach thought that he was a savior from the vengeful god of the bible. I guess it just isn't people 2000 years later noticing that god changed somewhere between the OT and NT.
Moral relativism is often called the greatest threat to religion today. For example, slavery was sanctioned and regulated through out the bible, yet today almost every country in the world has outlawed the practice. If slavery by god's standards is ok 3,000 years ago what makes it wrong today? I believe in many aspects of humanity we have actually become more moral when compared to the god of the bible's value systems.
A being that is all-knowing and all-powerful really doesn't have much need for emotion and many of the anthropomorphic attributes men have placed on it. How can god be angry or sad if it knows everything that is going to happen? I guess it might even be kind of boring if you knew everything.
I have sat in churches and thought to myself, why would god need to be constantly told how good he is and how worthy he is to be praised. Then, I realized that this is what human beings want and need. We all want someone to tell us how great and how worthy we are. I just don't believe an infinitely perfect being would want or need such non-sense. It all makes sense now, "god created man in his own image and in gratitude mankind returned the favor." I can't remember who said that, but didn't want to take credit for such a wise quote. Peace.
"Always seek out the truth, but avoid at all costs those that claim to have found it" ANONYMOUS
I think your analysis is bang-on. A super alien that is simply too advanced for us to comprehend is still not God, according to the definitions given us by the main religions. The commonly understood God is omnipotent, which is a logical and practical impossibillity and therefore fantasy only.
A super alien, while certainly possible or even probable, gives us no reason to feel confident that we can understand anything about its motives much less invest our complete trust in it. Should a worm worship a human? What good would it do the worm? Isn't a human equally in the dark about what the worm thinks and feels, and is therefore unable to understand that the worm is worshipping him? Isn't the logical reaction of a worm to flee from a human out of fear of being carelessly stepped on? Therefore, if God is just a super alien, wouldn't our correct reaction be fear and avoidance?
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
The whole thing is somewhat misleading, actually. The concept of value is something that requires enough sentience to make abstract comparisons, something a worm cannot do.
A worm does not have value systems because it cannot comprehend them. Humans, however, can comprehend value. A super-being would also have passed the threshold of understanding value, though it is unlikely that it would find the same kinds of things valuable as humans.
The analogy fails on another level, for it presumes the existence of a value system that is incomprehensible to humans. "Incomprehensible" is one of those catch-words that theists often use to justify god, but it's really meaningless for such conversations. If something is incomprehensible, how does anyone say anything about it? It's another one of those omnimax traps.
It might be correct to say that a super-being wouldn't give a shit about whether humans masturbate or not, but who knows? Humans give a shit about whether viruses mutate, do they not? Maybe such a being would be raising humans as some kind of a culture for a giant intergalactic experiment. Who's to know?
The point is that this line of reasoning will not work with a Christian because it gives them an out -- the very one I just took. It's true that gods have always reflected human values, and that is evidence that we have invented them. However, it is not valid to postulate something indescribable to counter the argument that a god's values are above ours. In a very real way, that's granting more to the other side than their argument deserves.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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