On Godliness

[Doug Pensinger]

Max wrote:

Hi Max, welcome to the list.

>
> Well, anything can be a "possibility".  So yes, I consider it a
> possibility.  But on the other hand, have we any evidence of higher life
> forms?  No.  So I still don't believe in them either, be they
> man-become-god or your average spaghetti-dinner-become-FSM.
>

There was a quiz at an atheist website that someone here (I think) posted a
link to and one of the questions had something to do with believing in the
Loch Ness monster, the assumption being something to the effect that if you
were smart enough to realize that there was not a monster in the loch, you
should be smart enough to realize that there wasn't a god.  Hold on, thinks
me, we've had the loch surrounded for centuries, is that really a valid
conclusion?

If you were to shrink the a solar system  with one planet full of
(ostensibly) intelligent beings to the size of an atom and place it in some
isolated spot on the earth.  What conclusions do we think that that species
could draw from their perspective?

I realize that the analogy isn't perfect, but I believe that the point is
salient;  they wouldn't know sh** about the earth and we don't know sh**
about the universe.

 And my point is that any conclusion that we are unique in the unimaginable
vastness that is the universe for lack of evidence overestimates the utility
of our perspective.


>
> I do find interesting the idea of "gods in futurity"...  of working to
> become, in some way, gods ourselves and so I think there is a lot of
> good things to learn from the mistakes of the various deities that are
> worshipped today.  Hopefully we aren't doomed to repeat those mistakes.
>  (That's the plot of Zelazny's Lord of Light, among others.)
>

Sheesh,  we can't even remember lessons learned from a  war a few decades
ago and we're going to perfect godhood? 8^)

Doug