God

Why couldn't God have created the Big Bang that scientists theorize started everything? Maybe God has a sense of wonder, and decided to see how things would turn out? Who are WE to say, as mere mortals?

One quick correction - it's not a "theory". In fact, scientists have been able to recreate the state of the universe billionths of a second after the big bang using particle colliders.

I'm promoting part of a comment to the front page to philosophize a bit..

The reason why I picked that particular comment is because they wrote "Why couldn't"... and not "Why did".

It is the uncertain nature and relative ambiguity that makes no sense to me. Sure - it's quite possible that "God" snapped his metaphorical fingers and *bam*; the universe burst into existence through the big bang. It is quite possible that an omnipotent being set down rules, like Einstein writing equations, that govern everything, down to the smallest sub-atomic particle.

God may have set those equations in motion some 14 billion years ago, and has just been casually watching ever since. It's improvable.

I happen to think that in the universe, all things are not only possible, but all things exist; therefore - what we perceive is our universe and our existence was statistically unavoidable. That's really just my hypothesis, and it's as irrelevant as anybody else’s.

Still - human beings have a tendency to cast everything else in the universe into our own frame of reference. That's why when you see pictures of Jesus now, he looks like a hippie from the 60's. I'm rather surprised the Republican's haven't started altering Jesus' looks by giving him a hair cut.

Human beings have cast God as an empathetic and benign creator - a George Burns, but with super powers. It is human nature to do that. That's why racism exists - because the other race looks different. Why is it that simplistic to the religious, so obvious and taken for granted? Why is God almost always referenced as male? Again - humans projecting human traits on to a deity. That's why God has an ego in virtually every religion, because it's another human trait and God must have our traits.

God obviously has no ego, nor sense of good and evil, nor right and wrong. It is pure neutrality that allows the equations to play out. That's why a tsunami kills hundreds of thousands. A butterfly flapped it's wings, and the "chaos theory" dictated disaster.

When you really stop and think about it - the whole thing is silly, isn't it?

I touched on it yesterday, but religious people would have you think that morals come from written text, either the Bible or Koran or whatever.. I think that is patently false. The old testament has the 10 commandments. Are those commandments not part of simple human nature anyway? Would we all hate our mother and father unless instructed to respect them by the bible?

What exists in any religious document that is not simple human nature to begin with?

So my question remains unchanged; Why religion?

I've deconstructed God - improvable; traits indeterministic
I've deconstructed religion - irrelevant to standard human nature

I'm left again, back at my point from yesterday - it's a desire to live, even in death - heaven. God and religion assuage our fear. The congregation satisfies the need to socialize. The sermon, the affirmation that we're "good" people.

Why is it important? Technology. Right wingers like to think they can stop the terrorists. They like to think they can keep us safe. That is impossible. There will come a day when it will be easy to kill many thousands of people by simple means. The only way to be "safe" is to remove the reason "they" want to kill "us".

And why do they want to kill us? Religion. Why do we kill them? Fear of them killing us. Thus, religion is why we kill them.

So my argument is - as long as religion exists, mankind will be on the brink of extinction. There will come a time when a religious zealot can get his hands on a doomsday weapon. He will use it, and there is not a possibility in the world that he can be discovered before the deed. There will be a retaliation, and worse.

The simple survival of the human species is dependant on the destruction of the "God" and "prophet" concept. I don't think diametrically opposed religions can co-exist.

And in this new world, what would we have? We would have "us". Not "us" and "them".

We are simply an end result of an inevitability. We have a conscience simply because we could have one. We owe nothing to God for it. After all, we may have had choice from the moment we were born, but we had no choice in being at all. Why are we simply "mere mortals"? We are just as we are, but less a God because we cannot create a universe? But we can create. In the end, our power is limitless, perhaps some day to destroy the entire universe and stuff it back into the vacuum from which it sprang. It is the same concept as original sin. We are born with sin? We are born as mere mortals?

I think not.