What if *you* were God?

[Guy Threepwood]

You know I like to throw curve balls and make you use your imagination, and I’m sure half of you will show my question invalid, but I would enjoy a thread called “What if *you* were God?” Feel free to say whatever you want, be creative, and use whatever definition of “God” you want.

For instance, what would you ask/demand of your people and what would you give them?

I think the closest we come to this is the life we already create in our own image- our children. So I think most of us would view this responsibility the same way.

We'd want to provide everything they needed to get established, we'd love our creations, and hope they would love us too- and this would mean not granting every whim and removing every challenge, but granting the gift of self determination, discovery, growth- we would demand certain boundaries and limitations on behavior- no matter how unfair they may seem at times, and hope they would grow to understand and adopt them voluntarily in time.

 

[Kirran]

Woah. I'm not sure how I feel about posting in the Atheism DIR.

On balance, I'm gonna stop posting.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

These assumptions are sort of ridiculous. If I enjoy the company of my loved ones (which I sincerely do) throughout my entire life, and only want more - wish I had more time, that I could tell each one of them "yes" to anything they desired from my time, why would I not continue to do so for eternity? What would make having all of the good of life forever such a bad thing?

On a related note - isn't your heaven supposed to be that way? Are you saying heaven, for you, would be reduced to a loss of caring, empathy, no cherishing of loved ones because they are around us forever, etc.? I bet you aren't saying that. In fact I bet you're just prone to not think before you speak.

exactly.... you are thinking it through. If you are God, how do you create a state of eternal love, joy, happiness exclusively,- when these things are all relative terms- defined by their opposites?

The opposites must first be known, experienced, overcome. Good must be freely chosen over evil, not granted or it has no meaning - how else could it possibly work?

 

[LuisDantas]

You know I like to throw curve balls and make you use your imagination, and I’m sure half of you will show my question invalid, but I would enjoy a thread called “What if *you* were God?” Feel free to say whatever you want, be creative, and use whatever definition of “God” you want.

For instance, what would you ask/demand of your people and what would you give them?

Wisdom, hopefully.

 

[Quetzal]

So no need for caring, empathy, compassion we can get rid of those redundant qualities, no need to cherish loved ones- they will be around for ever, no need to manage, share, cooperate on resources- just use and move on- and we are all practice perfect health practices, so no pizza, beer, ice cream, no temptations and/or free will to indulge in them..

The idea is that this form of existence would be so far beyond what we can currently comprehend. That is, we cannot understand unrestricted bliss because we have never experienced it before.

 

[Flankerl]

I'd throw people in Volcanoes or the Ocean.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

exactly.... you are thinking it through. If you are God, how do you create a state of eternal love, joy, happiness exclusively,- when these things are all relative terms- defined by their opposites?

The opposites must first be known, experienced, overcome. Good must be freely chosen over evil, not granted or it has no meaning - how else could it possibly work?

I think the idea that you have to have the opposite force of something in order to understand the force itself is flawed. It isn't necessarily logic - it's bred out of an inability to experience anything else, and a desire to explain why there "needs" to be suffering.

If you experienced nothing but the good and better moments life has to offer, and that is all you knew as life, do you believe you would be dissatisfied? Do you believe you would "miss" wrong, or evil? That experiencing only good would somehow be boring without "bad"? I don't think it would be. Saying you need unhappiness in order to be happy is sort of ridiculous.

Think of it this way - you have a piglet raised in a factory farm - it knows nothing but pain and suffering its entire life as it has it's balls squished out of its scrotum by the unforgiving hands of a human, it's teeth are pulled, ears clipped and it is raised in a crate within which it has no mobility until it is large enough to be slaughtered. If it were to be set free after it's incarceration, of course it would appreciate the freedom as a better state of being.

Now consider a piglet who knows nothing but the comfort of its mother's breast, and it, by some miracle, stays in an infantile state and is able to simply be warm, and suckle for eternity. Would it wish for a taste of the factory farm conditions in order to be able to truly appreciate the comfort it experiences from day to day? Absolutely not.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Thank you, I read the whole essay and will search for this in the upcoming movie “Pixels.” (just for the heck of it). Great answer. That really broke it down.
The essay is at If You Were God. Want me summarize?

Vestigial Mote, I eat that stuff up.

 

[Tumah]

Thank you, I read the whole essay and will search for this in the upcoming movie “Pixels.” (just for the heck of it). Great answer. That really broke it down.
The essay is at If You Were God. Want me summarize?

Vestigial Mote, I eat that stuff up.

I'm not really sure if you are being sarcastic or not. But I was really just posting a pic of a book with the same title as this thread.

 

[Quetzal]

I think the idea that you have to have the opposite force of something in order to understand the force itself is flawed. It isn't necessarily logic - it's bred out of an inability to experience anything else, and a desire to explain why there "needs" to be suffering.

If you experienced nothing but the good and better moments life has to offer, and that is all you knew as life, do you believe you would be dissatisfied? Do you believe you would "miss" wrong, or evil? That experiencing only good would somehow be boring without "bad"? I don't think it would be. Saying you need unhappiness in order to be happy is sort of ridiculous.

Think of it this way - you have a piglet raised in a factory farm - it knows nothing but pain and suffering its entire life as it has it's balls squished out of its scrotum by the unforgiving hands of a human, it's teeth are pulled, ears clipped and it is raised in a crate within which it has no mobility until it is large enough to be slaughtered. If it were to be set free after it's incarceration, of course it would appreciate the freedom as a better state of being.

Now consider a piglet who knows nothing but the comfort of its mother's breast, and it, by some miracle, stays in an infantile state and is able to simply be warm, and suckle for eternity. Would it wish for a taste of the factory farm conditions in order to be able to truly appreciate the comfort it experiences from day to day? Absolutely not.

By the same token, would the blissful piglet even know what suffering is? It cannot be expected to understand something if it never experienced it to begin with.

 

[robocop (actually)]

I'm not really sure if you are being sarcastic or not. But I was really just posting a pic of a book with the same title as this thread.

Well you were an orthodox jew and I have read a few Aryeh Kaplan books and sarcasm is hard to identify on the internet. I thought it was thorough like a lot of his books. I've read "Sepher Yetzirah" and "Why the Torah begins with the letter beit." They may not be perfect but they are all really good.

I would recommend that essay to anyone on this page who has 30 minutes or whatever. If You Were God

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I think the idea that you have to have the opposite force of something in order to understand the force itself is flawed. It isn't necessarily logic - it's bred out of an inability to experience anything else, and a desire to explain why there "needs" to be suffering.

If you experienced nothing but the good and better moments life has to offer, and that is all you knew as life, do you believe you would be dissatisfied? Do you believe you would "miss" wrong, or evil? That experiencing only good would somehow be boring without "bad"? I don't think it would be. Saying you need unhappiness in order to be happy is sort of ridiculous.

Think of it this way - you have a piglet raised in a factory farm - it knows nothing but pain and suffering its entire life as it has it's balls squished out of its scrotum by the unforgiving hands of a human, it's teeth are pulled, ears clipped and it is raised in a crate within which it has no mobility until it is large enough to be slaughtered. If it were to be set free after it's incarceration, of course it would appreciate the freedom as a better state of being.

Now consider a piglet who knows nothing but the comfort of its mother's breast, and it, by some miracle, stays in an infantile state and is able to simply be warm, and suckle for eternity. Would it wish for a taste of the factory farm conditions in order to be able to truly appreciate the comfort it experiences from day to day? Absolutely not.

you can't have 'good' without 'bad' as a concept anymore than you can have left without right- they literally define each other.

If we experienced nothing but good and better? Well the closest we can observe is a teenage rock star who has all the health, wealth, fame, fortune, love and adoration from the opposite sex and a brand new Lamborghini- not a care in the world- are they the happiest people on Earth, or do they tend to commit suicide before they turn 21?

You don't think the piglet would appreciate his comfort far more than he ever did before the factory farm?

Again Jellyfish experience no pain, grieving, worry, hate, fear- and hence no joy, love, glory, satisfaction either. Few would trade places

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

By the same token, would the blissful piglet even know what suffering is? It cannot be expected to understand something if it never experienced it to begin with.

Completely true. "Bad" would be when the milk tasted more like asparagus or something... there would be some varied degree of experience and interpretation of experience. But would be "bliss" for the being overall.

 

[Quetzal]

you can't have 'good' without 'bad' as a concept anymore than you can have left without right- they literally define each other.

We only experience this because we have experienced it before. The idea expressed in various interpretations of an afterlife is an existence where "bad" things have never occurred, only perceptual bliss. You and I can never comprehend such a place because we have experienced bad things and we can't really get rid of those experiences.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

you can't have 'good' without 'bad' as a concept anymore than you can have left without right- they literally define each other.

This is ridiculous. "Left" and "Right" are mutually exclusive, polar opposing ideas. "Good" and "Bad" are completely relative. In fact, Imagine a sliding scale where "cake" is on the end marked "good", a spanking is on the end marked "bad", and "standing still" appears in the middle of the two. If we take away the "bad" side, there are no more spankings, and you have only the mediocre state of "standing still" and receiving "cake". Now "bad" is "no cake". Done. "Bad" is gone, and there really isn't anything terrible about "standing still". There is no "good" defining "bad", there is only states of relative "good" in that frame of reference.

If we experienced nothing but good and better? Well the closest we can observe is a teenage rock star who has all the health, wealth, fame, fortune, love and adoration from the opposite sex and a brand new Lamborghini- not a care in the world- are they the happiest people on Earth, or do they tend to commit suicide before they turn 21?

One could argue that "fame", exceeding "wealth", less-than-sincere "adoration" and access to fast/luxury cars is not necessarily "good" - especially if a surfeit of said things ends in suicide of the person taking part (this seems sort of self evident, I would think - but maybe those are things you, yourself cherish above all others and believe to be "good"). I mentioned things like spending time doing things you love - spending time with family would be one for me, drawing, coding and doing art for my own, personal video-game projects, crafting archaic-looking objects like staffs, etc. etc. etc. I don't think I would ever tire of a life filled with these things - only the good.

You don't think the piglet would appreciate his comfort far more than he ever did before the factory farm?

Umm... I sort of said that it would in the instance of the piglet stuck in the factory farm. The other thing I meant was that the piglet who wasn't doesn't need to suffer a stint in the factory farm to appreciate his ongoing comfort.

Again Jellyfish experience no pain, grieving, worry, hate, fear- and hence no joy, love, glory, satisfaction either. Few would trade places

This has no bearing on what I am talking about. Again - living a life doing the things you enjoy EXCLUSIVELY. That is what I am talking about. There is no need to bash the jellyfish anymore.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

You know I like to throw curve balls and make you use your imagination, and I’m sure half of you will show my question invalid, but I would enjoy a thread called “What if *you* were God?” Feel free to say whatever you want, be creative, and use whatever definition of “God” you want.

For instance, what would you ask/demand of your people and what would you give them?

If I were God? Actually, I don't know what I would do. I have no qualms with any gods we talk about here. I don't even know what a God would look like or act like. If I am God, am I a spirit? Are you referring to the Abrahamic God? Pantheistic? Braham?

If I were God, I would not be above humans. I would no be below. I would see them eye to eye (which takes the definition out of being a God?). I would no be separate from creation. If I were an entity, Id be the "breathe of life" literally and metaphorically. Id have no super powers.

I admire people who can come from their foot stool and walk among us common folk. Any God who cannot do that, is not a God I would mirror.

So, I guess if I were God, I wouldnt be God in the common definition of the word.

 

[Koldo]

no thanks!

You don't have a say in the matter.

 

[Deidre]

There'd be no such thing as Monday.

 

[Bunyip]

If I were god, I would forgive.

 

[Aiviu]

If i were god, my spirit would be your matter.