Supreme being?

[paigetheoracle]

I'm playing the Devil's advocate here.

 

What if the Lord of Creation as the Creationists see him*/ it are true? Could God be playing tricks with our mind by altering reality as in The Matrix? Could the Supreme Being alter what we take to be fixed reality, so that we gain the illusion that this world was created millions of years ago, instead f five minutes ago, under our very feet and away from our sight? (Bishop Berkeley's point about the quad not being there, if we aren't here to witness it). Like Star Trek, the original series or CGI, where things are constantly being created before our eyes - could the American Indian idea of a Trickster God, play into this as one who deliberately confuses and creates havoc in the minds of Men, for his own amusement? (Men as God's play things or an intellectually superior mind, that can alter matter at will, messing with men's minds)

 

 

 

*Note, I don't say 'she'.

[JMJones0424]

Yes, it is absolutely possible, and of course entirely untestable by definition. But follow that line of reasoning to its conclusion...

 

At some point you have to fall back on Descartes. I think therefor I am.

[Boerseun]

If I was a Supreme Being with Ultimate Superpowers and all the fantastic abilities as ascribed to me by humankind, and I was immortal and have created this universe (and many others in my spare time), I would think it rather inevitable that my eventual True Enemy will not be that spiky-tailed bastard, the Devil - no, my ultimate foe will be boredom.

 

And because I am suffering from eternal boredom, not having any challenge at all (I can't die, I can't get hurt, I am omniscient and know of everything that's gonna happen to me, etc.), I will turn to f*cking with the Mind of Man.

 

Yes - I will bury dinosaur bones in rock that I have made 6,000 years ago to look like it was made 60 million years ago. Matter of fact, I have made that rock this morning to look like it was made 60 million years ago, and got you to think it must be 6,000. Damn, I'm good. Hur hur hur...

 

Yes - I will get fanatics to blow themselves up. Man, that cracks me up every time! The idiots! In all of the universe, I have never seen such idiocy! Whaaahahahaha!!!!!

 

I will get an old guy to kill his son and tell people I told him to do it. The idiot! I'll never, for the rest of eternity, forget the look on his face when I told him to chop the little fella up! Damn, that was priceless!!!

 

I will put an old fart in a building in Rome and get him to tell everybody that I have decided that they cannot have recreational sex, and they are not allowed to use birth control in any form. What a blast! I give mankind penises and vaginas, and get an old sod to tell them they can't use it! What a scream!!!

 

Etc., etc., etc.

 

So, to cut a long story short, to answer your question, not only do I think its possible, I think if there is a God answering to the definitions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, not only is it perfectly possible that He's screwing with your mind, I think its inevitable.

[sanctus]

Borseun your argumentation does not hold. Because iy you are omniscient and you know what is going to happen to you, you say that you get really bored. So far I agree, but then doing what you describe later is boring too, since you know it all already.

[paigetheoracle]

Borseun your argumentation does not hold. Because iy you are omniscient and you know what is going to happen to you, you say that you get really bored. So far I agree, but then doing what you describe later is boring too, since you know it all already.

 

I don't think you get the Sacred Cow's point (not the horns!). You have to create 'unconsciousness' in yourself to have a game plan that works because as you say, if you're omniscient, you already know what is coming. So God has to be detached but the Devil doesn't - this is why he is red with anger - he is totally unconscious of the Supreme Beings motives and activities, whereas God is like somebody who has had the Corpus Callosum cut in half; one side of him consciously does something and the other half countermands it (Up goes the zip, then down again): Actually we're all schizoid like that aren't we? Nearer my God to thee and then ten minutes later, further away (Even the Devil is just the unconscious messing up the conscious minds order. There lies one half of the answer - lies and there stands the other on its own merits - truth, strewth!). 'God only knows what I'd be without you!' Beached Bouys.

[paigetheoracle]

Yes, it is absolutely possible, and of course entirely untestable by definition. But follow that line of reasoning to its conclusion...

 

At some point you have to fall back on Descartes. I think therefor I am.

:phones:

 

You think that you think? Is that what you're falling back on? Who put those thoughts in your head - you think it was really you? Prove it's you doing it. It's like claiming the station goods yard is the home of all the products that reach it, instead of the temporary holding ground. I must say that I fell back on Descartes once too - flattened him because of my weight (Must go on an existential diet). ;)

 

By the way, dig the digging devil beside this thread - who put that on it or is that the hand of coincidence/ God again?:shrug:

[paigetheoracle]

I don't believe it - it's gone!

[REASON]

What ifs. Gotta love 'em.

 

When my son was four and interested in Hotwheels he once asked me, "Hey Dad, what if everything was made of cars?" We actually pondered that one for a minute or two. :phones: It took him just as much time to realize how absurd the idea was. What he didn't realize was how amazing it was that he could even perceive such a thing. It's what sets us apart from all other forms of life.

 

I guess I would concede that your what if, paige, could be possible however improbable. But to me it's kinda like what I think about the idea of reincarnation - what good is it if we can't remember who we were in previous lives.

[JMJones0424]

:phones:

 

You think that you think? Is that what you're falling back on? Who put those thoughts in your head - you think it was really you? Prove it's you doing it

 

Perhaps I was too vague, or perhaps you missed the first part of my original reply. I thought it was obvious. You propose a scenario were one can not know what is actually real and what is illusion. In that worldview, one can never know what, if anything, truly exists. Even if you could prove something exists "now", you can not prove that anything you remember existing a second ago actually existed, or was in fact just placed into your mind as a false memory to deceive you into thinking it existed a moment ago. This is a logical dead end. At some point you must make a fundamental assumption. I think the safest assumption that can be made is that in order for me to ponder my existence, I must exist. Of course, I can't prove that I "truly exist", but I choose to reject any line of thought that calls into question my existence as meaningless and pointless blather, as most of philosophy tends to be.

[paigetheoracle]

What ifs. Gotta love 'em.

I guess I would concede that your what if, paige, could be possible however improbable. But to me it's kinda like what I think about the idea of reincarnation - what good is it if we can't remember who we were in previous lives.

 

In answer to that question, the good is that you're alive because of being reincarnated, not remembering, which is egotistical (I was Napolean in a past life!). It doesn't matter who you were, only who you are now and where you are now - everything else is history (besides see Beorsun's point about God and boredom: We all move, from mystery drawing us into engagement with something, to knowledge (biblical revelation - Hal E. Lujah!) and then boredom - being bored we move on, even if we're God [see also post by me on intellectual feast and famine, in weight room next door to this forum section]).

[paigetheoracle]

Perhaps I was too vague, or perhaps you missed the first part of my original reply. I thought it was obvious. You propose a scenario were one can not know what is actually real and what is illusion. In that worldview, one can never know what, if anything, truly exists. Even if you could prove something exists "now", you can not prove that anything you remember existing a second ago actually existed, or was in fact just placed into your mind as a false memory to deceive you into thinking it existed a moment ago. This is a logical dead end. At some point you must make a fundamental assumption. I think the safest assumption that can be made is that in order for me to ponder my existence, I must exist. Of course, I can't prove that I "truly exist", but I choose to reject any line of thought that calls into question my existence as meaningless and pointless blather, as most of philosophy tends to be.

 

Sorry, you're right. The real question is 'who is the me that exists and is perceiving right now?' What is proof but belief?

 

As for Western philosophy pointing out how meaningless everything is - this just shows that such people are very depressed as comes with the territory of deep thought (information) as opposed to light action (entertainment).

 

Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose in life? All these suppose that there is someone else that has the answers, who was here before (God) and that the answers are important, which they are not: Ask a kid playing in the snow or even mud - or even a starving man/ somebody who has stood on a landmine/ a mother who has just lost all her children. These are questions for the bored, by the bored, who've gone bu the board.

[REASON]

In answer to that question, the good is that you're alive because of being reincarnated, not remembering, which is egotistical (I was Napolean in a past life!).

 

Sure, that is good. But the point I was making is that without being able to remember, I have no way of knowing whether any reincarnation has occurred and whether it is even possible or just imaginary, similar to what you ponder in your OP.

 

What you're left with is the answer, which you gave me and which JMJones arrived at in a similar way:

It doesn't matter who you were, only who you are now and where you are now - everything else is history....

[sanctus]

You have to create 'unconsciousness' in yourself to have a game plan that works because as you say, if you're omniscient, you already know what is coming.

But this implies then that you are no more omniscient, because you trick yourself and then you find yourself not matching the definition of an all powerful god anymore. You are either omniscient or your are not, otherwise you just know much or little. But god is supposed to be omniscient...

[paigetheoracle]

But this implies then that you are no more omniscient, because you trick yourself and then you find yourself not matching the definition of an all powerful god anymore. You are either omniscient or your are not, otherwise you just know much or little. But god is supposed to be omniscient...

 

What God is supposed to be is his business:lol:

[sanctus]

Well no, since (I thought at least) Borseun was refferring to the christian god in the bible. So this god is described as something with given "talents", amongst others one is omniscient. So, from that viewpoint god is supposed to be "something".

 

But if you talk of a common (? :-) ) supreme being, then yes it is its own business.

[Boerseun]

You got me there, Sanctus.

 

An omniscient being will probably find no joy in screwing with humans, because he will already know the outcome. Matter of fact, I don't think an omniscient being will find any joy in anything at all, really.

 

The poor baby. It must really, really suck to be him.

[CraigD]

Could God be playing tricks with our mind by altering reality as in The Matrix? Could the Supreme Being alter what we take to be fixed reality, so that we gain the illusion that this world was created millions of years ago, instead f five minutes ago, under our very feet and away from our sight? (Bishop Berkeley's point about the quad not being there, if we aren't here to witness it). Like Star Trek, the original series or CGI, where things are constantly being created before our eyes - could the American Indian idea of a Trickster God, play into this as one who deliberately confuses and creates havoc in the minds of Men, for his own amusement? (Men as God's play things or an intellectually superior mind, that can alter matter at will, messing with men's minds)

This idea strikes me as very similar to some associated with some variants of the theological concept of the Demiurge. Many religions, notable various Gnostic ones, hold that all that we perceive – that is, all that is physical – is the creation of a lesser “craftsman” creative deity, formed, or in more modern, computer-y terms, emulated within, a much superior reality that was created by an ultimate creative deity – the “true God”. Some religions equate the Demiurge with the devil, and the physical universe with a instrument of deception and separation of the mundane from the divine.

 

In my own idiosyncratic view of theology, the Demiurge concept is a key feature of the preliminaries of Descartes’s theology. One of the first questions he considered was how we can be certain of our own existence, and the existence of the physical universe as revealed by our senses, if an omnipotent being wishes for its own possibly incomprehensible reasons to deceive us. He concludes, via some IMHO rather shaky arguments, to conclude that the ultimate omnipotent being must be kind, and that as we humans seem to be very, perhaps most, gratified by making progress in understanding reality, wouldn’t do such a thing, and that ultimate reality may eventually be understood via our perception of physical reality, and rational thought.

 

I think, therefore, that the theological and philosophical traditions epitomized and/or strongly influenced by Descartes and theological systems affirming the existence of a Demiurge are profoundly opposite.

 

The Matrix is, I believe, a recent, fictional expression of the concept of the Demiurge concept. In this case, the Demiurge is not a supernatural being, but a complicated computer system, but in essence, it’s the same idea.