As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.
Man - how I hate that on almost every post that shows some vulnerability and shares their belief we have lemmys trying to convince people about it not making sense.
Be respectful guys. Thank you to all the upvoters of the actual content - I see you.
Everytime I’ve shared on Lemmy that I’m a Christian I’ve been met with nothing but huge negativity.
Everything from accusing me of being a Trump supporter, to telling me I should abandon my belief system because bad people believe the same thing as me.
I’ll have a read through this thread, but it’s very unlikely I’ll reveal anything more about how Faith has changed my life.
I used to be a hardcore atheist who mocked all believers so I understand where it’s coming from. I’m not here to fight.
Given all of my unresolved prior trauma caused almost exclusively by my upbringing around those believing? No thanks. Fuck everyone that believes this shit. It too clearly self-selects the narcissist asshole who wants excuses to not have to answer for how shitty they are. They ram it into EVERYTHING and use it as a blanket for pure judgment amd shame of others. Fuck em all.
And don’t give me this religion vs spirituality bullshit. Very clearly the vast majority are affected by religion. It ain’t my job to sort through that when 99% are clearly bad apples.
I’m speaking from actual personal traumatic experiences from childhood home, multiple churches, multiple schools, and lots of extended family and family friends. Fuck. Them. All.
Upvoting the actual answers here, as some who were not the target audience and haven’t read the question have answered.
Agree.
OP wants to hear opinions from people agreeing with statement X, not those who disagree.
I disagree with the notion of the universe being a probability game, but that’s not asked.
Thumbs up from me too. I’m always eager to hear/read from people who aren’t shy but rather open and reasonable about their beliefs, whatever those may be.
Alright, now that you mention it, the universe is ‘a big ball of yarn’. You can’t see the fabric, because we use the fabric to see. Planets and stars shrink and/or grow, all of them have solid surfaces, thunder isn’t always a local planetary phenomena, but often an exchange between two large bodies, usually between the host star and planet. ‘Neutron stars’ and ‘black holes’ are regular stars completely misinterpreted and dark matter and dark emergy are stop gaps in broken theories.
In some sort of greater being yes, in any kind of church or following no.
I find I have my own belief in some unknown cosmic entitys, something along the lines of energy is always in a state of flow, life and death, rocks to dust, consciousness to the sprawling reaches of the universe a bit of new age spirituality stuff,
That’s kind of where I am with it. Anything human led is suspect and I think any resemblance to “Jesus church” is long gone. I want to believe but I struggle with God being “just” but also allowing so much injustice.
If I had to put myself somewhere I believe in God but my faith for the rest of it is dwindling.
I wish I had a not so cynical view but the moment I see any human infont of any amount of others reading from a “holy text” or any interpretation of one I’m just like, your in a cult, your after power, there’s something you want, you want to judge others or some other underlying reasons.
Yer it’s hard to believe in anything when everywhere you look it’s just shit.
Makes me feel more assured and will reduce my suffering until I die. After my death, regardless of if I am right or wrong, the net positive of having had the soothing idea of a larger meaning can’t and won’t be retroactively undone. So why the hell not?
Because religion can be and has been used to convince people to do terrible things. The fewer false beliefs people hold the fewer things can be used to manipulate them in this way.
water can and has drowned people. i fail to see your point.
Yes, and that’s why we don’t allow people to flood school, hospitals and homes with water. It is controlled and diverted.
we also don’t refuse to allow people to have small amounts of it accessible to them at all times or call it absolutely bad outright just because when used in a malicious way or left to be uncontrollable in particular situations it can be dangerous. shrug.
That’s because water is necessary to life.
When doing risk analysis something that is required to keep people alive gets a few extra points towards being accessible for, hopefully, obvious reasons.
If even something that is necessary for life is controlled due to the danger it poses, you can imagine why people would seek to restrict dangerous things that people can live without.
I think most people think like this at their core regardless of class, status, label.
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From my perspective they are not lies.
In the hope of civil discussion, it is not helpful for you to frame it that way IMO.
What is truth and how do you know that?
There’s no way to know the truth on something like this, but you should always seek it. There are ways to know certain things aren’t true though. For example, the Judeo-Christian faith must be wrong, at least to an extent, because it’s self-contradictory. Also, most religions are mutually exclusive, so how do you go about seeking the correct one if striving for truth is valuable?
There is no way to know the truth
Is this true? Because if so it is a contradiction.
There are ways to know certain things aren’t true
This is just another way of making a truth claim even though you can’t know the truth.
…you should always seek it
How do you go about seeking the correct one if striving for truth is valuable?
Who says seeking truth is something we ought to do? Particularly if knowing the truth is an impossibility. These are all assertions as to what we should do without any justification as to why we should do them.
I’m being slightly annoying to shine your own standards on yourself. Not meant to be combative.
There is no way to know the truth
Is this true? Because if so it is a contradiction.
Knowledge and truth are two different things, although I should have written it better. There’s no way to know the truth on this particular subject. (Well, there is a way to know theoretically, if a god exists. There isn’t a way to know if one doesn’t exist though. You can’t prove that something that doesn’t exist doesn’t exist. You can only prove that something exists.)
This is just another way of making a truth claim even though you can’t know the truth.
No, you can use logic to prove certain things can’t exist. If there’s a contradiction, it can’t be correct, for example.
Who says seeking truth is something we ought to do? Particularly if knowing the truth is an impossibility. These are all assertions as to what we should do without any justification as to why we should do them.
I’m not making a universal statement. I’m making the statement that someone who values truth should seek truth. That seems self-evident.
Assuming you’re a skeptic…
There’s no way to know the truth on this particular subject. [i.e. God]
Arguments for God’s existence (such as classical theistic arguments) are not merely isolated truth claims—they function at the paradigmatic level, offering a foundation for knowledge itself.
If you deny God’s existence, you must account for the reliability of reason, logic, and abstract universals like mathematics. If these are simply “self-evident,” then you’re assuming the very thing your worldview has no means to justify.
No, you can use logic to prove certain things can’t exist. If there’s a contradiction, it can’t be correct, for example.
Only if you can justify the validity of logic in your worldview. But without a transcendent source of rationality, why assume logic is binding or that it applies universally? You’re using a tool (logic) without explaining why it ought to work or why it’s trustworthy in a purely materialistic or skeptical framework.
I’m not making a universal statement. I’m making the statement that someone who values truth should seek truth. That seems self-evident.
Okay well this is just an opinion then. My main point here is that you can’t propose any “oughts” without a justification.
Again. I’m being nit-picky but I feel like this thread is meant to invite some apologetic banter.
If you deny God’s existence, you must account for the reliability of reason, logic, and abstract universals like mathematics. If these are simply “self-evident,” then you’re assuming the very thing your worldview has no means to justify.
All of those are based on axioms. They’re true if the axioms are true, but not otherwise. They are useful, but not self-evident. The axioms seem to hold though.
Only if you can justify the validity of logic in your worldview. But without a transcendent source of rationality, why assume logic is binding or that it applies universally? You’re using a tool (logic) without explaining why it ought to work or why it’s trustworthy in a purely materialistic or skeptical framework.
Why do we need a transcendent source of rationality? We only need to build upon foundations of solid axioms.
Okay well this is just an opinion then. My main point here is that you can’t propose any “oughts” without a justification.
Do I need to spell out why someone who values truth should seek it? It’s not really an opinion, but a statement. I guess it isn’t a complete statement. I guess a more complete statement would be “someone who values truth, and wants to find what they value, should seek truth.” Is that better? I don’t think that middle portion is required to spell out, but whatever.
Why do you think truth matters so much? Don’t disagree, but why is it humans will forego a more beneficial situation if it’s proven to be “untrue” or “not real” etc?
More beneficial for whom? The truth is that pollution is bad. I can make myself feel better about how much energy I use by assuring myself that I’m chosen by God and deserve to consume resources and pollute. This harms other people though. The truth is non-opinionated, so actually useful. Believing something to make yourself feel better, and ignoring problems, is biased favoring yourself and against others.
Well I’m not that guy but I can speak from myself that every time I have been true to myself and others, I have felt more and more real and tangible myself. And it is a much better feeling than “fooling yourself” with the why not, using rational logic to just make a decision like that. I always say to my kids, nobody can know what happens when we die and if they say they do, they are making it up. But we can talk about some truths still, that are felt, and then communicated to you as just something that is comfirmed by experience, that is, you experienced something nobody else should know and then they did too, with synchronicity and other phenomenon which just makes us assume it’s true. But in the sense of scientific fact it can not be described because words and language kind of is not enough or it doesn’t kind of translate at all.
I think that’s a really healthy conversation to have with your kids, man! I totally agree with your sentiment, and being “authentic” feels right, but it’s odd when you think about it. Where does it come from? Humans self-deceive all the time, right? It’s almost a useful skill in certain situations (e.g. optimism bias), but there’s an overriding feeling that “real” is “better”. It just boggles my mind a bit tbh.
It was unlocked hugely by an insight I got long ago that is a deep truth that I always keep an eye on, which is that;
The more honest you are with others, the more honest you are with yourself.
It is one of the effects of “mirror neurons” phenomenon and the realisation that our subconscious, our “self” does not explicitly distinguish between you and other people the way your prefrontal cortex and conscious mind does. This is old research by now but to me it makes so much sense and I see the effects in people around me all the time.
In dream or deep meditation, “god experiences” (I forget the English name for it) or with psychedelics, this comes to the surface and provokes many “we are one” messages and compassionate teachings such as the golden rule and karma etc. But bottom line, most of our brain just doesn’t give exactly a fuck about who is who at any given time. Just the relationship between them.
Similarly, if you talk down on yourself, you are also more likely to feel like other people are not enough. We all mirror each other and react to subconscious signals every day. This is an cascading effect, that will become exponentially useful if you consciously choose and gradually adjust how to be towards others.
(I kind of go off on this tangent now, because I apparently like talking about it but feel free to ignore the rest if you aren’t into the specifics of my understanding of why it is like this)
Our bodies are talking to each other (subconscious to subconscious) with immense bandwidth, from smells and hormones, microexpressions, physical notes (leaving objects or others in some specific state). But most of it is discarded and not raised to system 1 (frontal lobe)
By learning other people’s predictions, our body can predict events and sometimes chains of several events between several people, and intuit how they came to be at a certain place at a certain time or why the car keys are in a new place, inferring other events, and all these predictions occurs in system 2, subconsciously and continually so that our focus can be on what’s at hand.
By being predictable we incur safety and signal affinity. Any deviation from normal will be evaluated by system 2 if it should warrant a notice to system 1 to investigate, and that will most often be a signal of discomfort, as unpredictability of any kind is an “expensive” metabolic operation.
A very dry explanation that perhaps gives a little insight into the crisscrossing neurological mechanics. It’s good to first understand that the body is continuously budgeting for any prediction error, and for instance meeting new people or interacting with someone that speaks differently than we expect, is draining from a pure metabolic standpoint. The body needs to have prepared glucose and other material and if it happens many times in a row with no rest period for the thoughts to settle, the stress can make you straight up ignore what others say and just answer your prediction to what they just said. It’s the cheapest mode of operation and most common during a day.
I digress a lot but it’s fun because I just pieced together a pretty solid understanding of the whole and previously I had just so many sporadic and isolated insights that lately has found each other into a cohesive model and it’s kind of cathartic to just share it blatantly. It’s a tiny bit probable that my ADHD medication makes me ramble a bit and I hope I didn’t overwhelm ya. Cheers!
The truth has value in decision making, while comforting lies have value in stress reduction. Choosing ‘truth’ over ‘comfort’ is a long-termist strategy. Being satisfied by a simple answer will make you feel better now, increasing survivability in the short term, but finding a better model of the world to operate by, a.k.a. learning, lets you make better decisions for the rest of your life.
my choosing to engage with something that might not be true isn’t hurting anyone. i’m a solo practitioner of a non christian faith. :p of course the truth matters, but when staring at it makes you actively suicidal and feel like everything lacks meaning, why not make use of the circuitry our brains evolved with, and let a little bit of What If light the path forward?
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I went to a Romanian Holy Unction service and it was beautiful.
I saw something fitting a common description for God (in meditation). Yes, a total mystic vision.
(The creator of reality. A star (that also looks like a jewel) that emits poetry energy. And then I react to that energy by dreaming this dream that I call reality. Like contriving lyrics for an instrumental song.)
No intelligence or personhood as far as I can tell. Just a vast brainless mystico-cosmological gusher of energy.
Same. Just a big ol gusher. But it has consciousness when you interact with it because it’s how we can speak to things. It has time and space for us. It has whatever we need so we can interpret it. It doesn’t care to assume some specific form or signal. But I’m my experience, it can answer if you ask stuff. You answer yourself through it though so it might be the people that reflect in it’s glory
In short, yes because you lose nothing by trying to emulate Jesus.
That said, the church be crazy af
I may not believe in God, but I can definitely respect the man. ✊
If emulating jesus was what the christian church was about I would have less scrupules
Define “Christian Church”. This almost invariably comes from former evangelicals in my experience.
People who say they belive in jesus, would be my definition.
You have to believe in the trinity to be a Christian. Regardless you aren’t going to find any group of people who are perfect. Christianity is all about how people are sinful and must commit daily to emulating Christ even though they will continuously fail. Regardless it sounds like you are opening yourself up for massive disappointment by casting such a wide net. There are many “Christian churches” which are just jokes if not outright scams. Christians can’t control who calls themselves a Christian. I encourage you to investigate the Eastern Orthodox church which has a rich tradition and clear direction for how the Orthodox should live their lives. It is Ancient Christianity that holds in high esteem prayer, fasting and alms giving. There is real spiritual meat on the bone.
Consciousness exists. This implies that either consciousness is some emergent property of sufficiently complex interconnected systems, or it’s some universal force that complex interconnected systems “channel”.
If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, would develop consciousness. That universal consciousness might as well be called “God”. If it’s a universal force, it might as well be called “God”. Anyway you slice it, a universal consciousness seems inevitable from a sober metaphysical analysis.
Lots of people have ascribed lots of culturally specific attributes to the universal consciousness which are obviously quite silly. The core statement that “I am that ‘I am’” is really the only meaningful attribute we can identify.
If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, wouldn’t develop consciousness.
I was, no shit, just thinking about this on my break about an hour ago. God or whatever you wanna call them. If there was a way to develop more consciousness by adding more information to the universe. If consciousness emerges to solve complex problems then maybe if we populate/terraform planets then we will have a deeper understanding.
It makes sense. But why would adding more complexity and information necessarily lead to consciousness? I think there is an assumption that if this much complexity is a consciousness, then more complexity must also be consciousness. I don’t think it has to be the same thing or the same universal consciousness has to exist due to emergence? It can emerge from certain properties, like mushrooms appear in conditions. And then if there is too much of heat or water, it stops emerging. In fact, our planet and existence is on the very edge of a pointy specific and unlikely set of properties tuned just so. It should be said I kind of believe in a universal consciousness anyway but I wanted to discuss this awesome topic
That’s a good point about it emerging from certain properties and not just and idea of more complexity. I forgot where I first heard about the complexity being tied to consciousness, but it could be a simple property that we are overlooking. It might be a simple process that we are just not aware of. I do agree there is a sweet spot where a lot of these interactions could happen, but if it’s too hot or too cold then nothing.
Maybe our consciousness wasn’t actually “supposed to” happen. We might just be an accidental by-product of what the universe is actually working towards.
I am now basking in the profundity of us as the accidental exhaust of cosmic flatulence
If it’s emergent, it seems less presumptuous to assume that the most complex interconnected system of all, the universe itself, would develop consciousness.
Is the universe the most complex interconnected system? Complexity implies not random. It seems to be nearly perfectly random. Not understanding something is not the same thing as it being complex.
It seems to be nearly perfectly random
How so?
It forms structures, but it’s exactly what you’d expect from a random process. We expect some points of higher and lower density, not pure uniformity, in randomness. The structures we see are just the results of random processes. If you zoom out far enough it looks just like noise, as you’d expect from randomness.
We expect some points of higher and lower density, not pure uniformity
Which is precisely what we see. I’m not sure where you’re getting the impression that it’s totally random noise, every scientific and mathematical field is based on the universe having consistent, ordered rules of operation.
Which is precisely what we see.
Yes, that’s what I said. Pure randomness expects points of higher and lower density, not pure uniformity, as we see, which implies it’s pure randomness.
every scientific and mathematical field is based on the universe having consistent, ordered rules of operation.
This has nothing to do with being random noise or not. In fact, random noise requires consistent ordered rules. If that isn’t the case then you get something non-random where the rules change to achieve desired results, which isn’t what we observe.
I’m really not sure how you’re defining “randomness” then, or how that randomness precludes complexity and interconnectedness.
If you throw a handful of sand, there will be almost no pattern to it, but if you look closely there WI be some points with more sand and some with less. You could find interesting looking things in this. When you look at the whole thing though it obviously doesn’t have a pattern to it, except what our brain may find because it tries to find patterns, even when there aren’t any.
I wouldn’t call something that’s just noise complex. I guess it sort of is by definition, but not in a way that’s interesting. Normally when I think of “complex” it’s something that has a purpose to it, but we can’t identify easily, not something that’s easy to identify but has no purpose. It’s just a random distribution of matter with the rules of physics applied. It doesn’t create anything that seems to have any purpose.
Sort of, but it’s more a comforting theory rather then a true belief. I came up with it when I was younger, doing a lot of psychedelics, and meditating often on the nature of existence and reality.
My theory is that God is everything. The earth, the stars, our fellow beings. All of reality makes up a complex web that I loosely refer to as a “consciousness” for lack of a better word. The nature of this “consciousness” is incomprehensible to us. It does not activly intervene in our daily lives, and operates on a scale beyond our comprehension. Mostly, it simply is. It is the oblivion from which our consciousness was once plucked, and it is where we will one day return.
In essence, each of us is a tiny fragment of reality experiencing itself. The meaning of life is to experience it. All of it. Joy, pleasure, and suffering. It is all a part of the whole of existence. When we die and return to the infinite our individuality is lost, but maybe God learns something about itself.
Truth is proof - I can neither prove the number of gods is >0, nor prove it is =0.
Thus cautious agnosticism (since the evidence suggests, if there is at least one god, then they really hate us).
They may not hate us. They could be totally agnostic too. Like a rain drop that dropped in our pond, they may be passing by having no idea the ripple it left behind. That’s the wildness of all the options for GODS capacity. But hate requires human input from stimulus.
Personally I’m a huge fan of the Alcoholics Anonymous understanding of “god” and I think it applies more widely.
In AA it is supposed to be A-religious so as to accommodate as many people as possible. To them, god is whatever higher power you need to put your faith into to do better. An entity who you are striving to make proud or you are asking for guidance or help, etc.
This genericized god idea kinda gives up the game to me as an atheist, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact it’s made me believe in god as an idea.
There are plenty of studies on “manifesting” goals and how saying out loud to yourself or to someone at all substantially increases your chance of succeeding in your goal. This is just prayer or a magic spell or whatever else you wanna call it. I call it a ritual.
The fact that god is a made up idea has been uncontested in my mind for eons, however the psychological power of a belief in god is new to me and makes me appreciate the systems of religion more (doesn’t excuse a lot of their bullshit).
AA is a great program and is basically secularized Christianity. Two great religious books that talk about the program from a more explicitly religious perspective are “Breathing Underwater” (Catholic) and “Steps of a Transformation” (Orthodox). Even with your agnostic perspective I think you would find them enlightening.
Cos I’ve done drugs, and experienced heightened states of love, being, appreciation for nature and humanity, states that feel magical yet real, even if only temporarily.
The very fact those states of mind are achievable at all gives me a certain emotional grounding and inner certainty that reality has purpose, or at least meaning. As opposed to just being a happy accident of atoms and energy arranging themselves in this miraculous way to create life. That’s just a logical explanation of how, not why.
We’re almost all driven to look for meaning in life. Even if it’s just to “find your own purpose”, that journey presupposes you have one to begin with.
I guess I feel a belief in god without having much idea of what god is, or even what they want. But I don’t believe at all that logic, science, reason etc. are things you have to choose instead of religious belief. They’re things you have as well. You can’t square the two - the Rubik’s cube of logic doesn’t twist that way.
OK, our reality might have a purpose or meaning given by a god - but then what about that god’s purpose/meaning? Was it given by yet another one higher up? You can keep going up layers like this and finding meaning on each one, but eventually there has to be a final one, a reality that was not designed by anyone. But why does it exist?
Some people may say that there’s no proof that we actually exist. And maybe we don’t, but the fact that we can think and experience things means that even if our reality is somehow fake, there has to be one that isn’t. Because if nothing existed, there would be nothing at all. Not a void, just nothing, not even the possibility of existence. So something, at some level, must exist. But why?
“Because God created us” is not good enough for me, because it doesn’t answer anything. If we exist because a god created us, that still means that a god existed before us. Why does this god exists then?
We’ll never find out. Any answer we find will only open things up for new questions. And just like a child that is just starting to experience things, we’ll never run out of questions.
I think it’s the book of Job, God says something like “you could not possibly fathom the purpose or meaning to the world, even if someone tells you”. I think in much the same way a Turing Machine simply cannot process certain tasks or achieve particular ends, our brains are limited to a certain subset of understanding. Still mightily impressive what we can imagine/devise/understand IMO. In Islam, this is more readily accepted dogma: you can’t even imagine or picture God, so even attempting it is doomed to failure (or delusion)
If there is a god or something like a god, it has to be the sun. The sun makes all life possible and has near infinite energy, I can not think of anything more deserving to be god. Will it save us or help us as individuals, i don’t think so, its a god we are insignificant in comparison and will burn when staying in its presence for two long. Also its real.
Another idea I had was from Einsteins quote: “to believe in god you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.” So by that logic you better believe in all gods for maximum gain. There are a bunch more suns aswell ;)
I don’t believe in the Christian god because there are too many contradictions and I don’t think the divine truth is corruptable. Anything so corrupt it doesn’t even agree with itself cannot be divine truth.
contradictions
Like what
I see a fair amount of Christian-related posts in your post history so I’m gonna go ahead and suggest that this is probably a conversation you don’t want to have. I’m trying not to be an asshole here, but I am very well read on the subject of Christianity, so suffice to say that contradictions exist, they are widely known, and I find Christian apologia on the subject wholly unconvincing.
That said, if I’m really the person you would like to go on this journey of discovery about your religion with then I will take you, but I can’t say that you are very likely to enjoy the results.
As a Christian I would like you to try to rock my world.
You are welcome to read the thread below, I’ve laid out my issues here, but it looks like we might get a proper conversation going if you want to keep reading.
I’m an Orthodox Christian our theology (which is that of the first thousand years) is likely different from anything you take issue with from Catholic or Protestant traditions in regard to soteriology, ecclesiology, sanctification etc
It’s great that you have interest in Christianity but Orthodoxy leans on 2000 years of scholarship and tradition. With all due respect you’re not going to ask any new questions or bring up any novel points. I don’t claim to be an expert but have Orthodox resources I can draw from.
Fair point. I am not very familiar with Orthodox Christianity at all, save a little of the very early history. You also sound fairly well-educated on the subject, which makes you twice over not the usual kind of person who responds to my comments about religion.
So, first, let me apologize for making assumptions; the usual kind of person I get is an American evangelical protestant who hasn’t read most of his or her own bible and is of the opinion that anything important for them to know would be whispered on the wind directly into their ear by god himself, so they have a pretty dim view of learning in general, but also of learning about their religion in specific. That’s clearly not you. My bad.
Second, it’s my understanding that Orthodoxy (probably not the right word, my bad) uses fundamentally the same scriptures as Catholicism and Protestantism, with some additions to the Old Testament. My issues come from the bible’s descriptions of god, events, and people, so I’m going to assume there’s enough common ground that my these translate to Orthodoxy as well as the others. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I have 3 core issues with Christianity:
- Original sin: imposing the consequences of one person’s actions on others is called collective punishment and it’s a war crime, and needless to say baking a metaphysical war crime into the very heart of a religion - its origin story - is just not ever going to fly with me. It certainly doesn’t help that this is further complicated by #2.
- Omniscience/free will: either god is omniscient (lit: all knowledge, which includes perfect knowledge about the future) and free will is impossible so we can’t choose to love god, or he isn’t omniscient. His claims about moral authority are held together by this linchpin, and honestly either way it falls doesn’t look great. If we can’t choose to love god then punishing us for ‘choosing’ otherwise is effectively god punishing others for his own crimes since he made us unable to choose otherwise, so we’re right back on the war crimes train. If he’s not omniscient then he doesn’t have a plan, can’t judge sin in the hearts of men, etc. Is he even still a god at that point? Also that would make him a liar, which again is not a great foundation upon which to build a claim to moral authority.
- Vengeful/loving god: the Old Testament is full of examples of god as an angry, petty, vengeful tyrant, only for him to change his ways or something in the New Testament and be all about love. There are exceptions in both, obviously, so I’m referring to general trends. I think Jesus had some great ideas (best summed up by Bill & Ted as, ‘Be excellent to each other’), but the rest reads like infantile revenge-porn. And I’m not buying that ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ thing either (that’s probably an evangelical thing), because god sure wasn’t raining fire and brimstone and calling for the wholesale slaughter of the sins, that was inflicted upon the sinners. And their sin mostly seems to boil down to not believing in god.
These, to me, seem like unsolvable, unavoidable paradoxes. I see two paths when faced with them:
- I’m forced to admit that the ‘perfect eternal Divine Truth’ is neither perfect nor eternal (re:god’s nature purportedly changing) and therefore also not true.
- What is being passed off as divine truth was either created or corrupted (which doesn’t necessarily imply malicious intent; simple error will suffice) by flawed humans and thus is also not true.
I don’t begrudge people who believe or find comfort in it, mind you, but it’s not for me. I’m searching for Truth, not a search for ‘it’s probably not true but I guess it’s a nice idea?’
First of all “Orthodoxy” is accepted as a shorthand referent to Orthodox Christianity so no issues there.
Secondly no worries on the assumptions I also anticipate Protestant hand waving when it comes to certain topics such as canonicity.
Now for your core issues…
- Original Sin - This is where Orthodoxy is different from everyone else. The Orthodox perspective is that the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin is theirs alone. The consequence of their sin, death, is inherited however. This factors into the sotieriology (e.g. salvation doctrine) of the Church. The nature of man entered a state of fallenness due to the sin of Adam and Eve. Since God cannot be in the presence of sin Adam and Eve had to be expelled from the garden. This expulsion brought with it struggles such as the pain of childbirth, toil, hunger, sickness etc. This is, however, a mercy because despite entering a fallen state humanity has an opportunity to sanctify itself in this life and rejoin with God in death. This is a unique feature to humanity. Heavenly beings are in a static state. It is why Satan is jealous of humanity because the state of his soul cannot be changed and he will be eternally damned. The human soul can no longer change its spiritual state when this life ends. Human beings for all the struggles they have on earth can persevere in their faith and enter the Kingdom when they repose.
- Omniscience/Free Will - This is a false dichotomy and is highly dependent on what you mean by free will. Just because God knows all things doesn’t mean he orchestrates all things (e.g. foreknowledge ≠ predestination). God is incomprehensible and operates outside of time. This is part of what makes God a transcendent all powerful being. Furthermore because the Orthodox don’t believe in Original Sin the theological allowance for how man moves and works in the world is different. Man can live in the world and freely choose between Good and Evil. Salvation is achieved through a process of working together with the Holy Spirit in all aspects of life. This process is called Theosis.
Orthodoxy doesn’t conceive of God’s knowledge as something that competes with human will. Because God is not bound by time, His knowledge isn’t predictive—it’s participatory. We remain free precisely because God allows our freedom to unfold within His omniscient love. This is the mystery of synergy with the Holy Spirit.
What we perceive as logical already presupposes the existence of God, because logic itself depends on the existence of objective truth. If God is bound by created laws, He ceases to be God; He is the source of all order, not subject to it.
- Vengeful/loving god - This is primarily a postmodern critique of scripture by people like Richard Dawkins although ancient Marcionites and Gnostics love this critique as well. The Orthodox wholly reject this critique as a shallow reading of scripture that does not take into account the context of passages in and of themselves or scripture in its entirety. While God does render punishment in the Old Testament he is also endlessly loving despite being heartbroken by the wayward sins of his people who repeatedly abandon him for other Gods that can’t save them. There is love and wrath in both the OT and the NT. (e.g. OT - Jonah, God saving Nineveh when they repent; NT - Jesus over-turning tables of Money Changers) This is more of a squishy critique than the other two so I’m not sure what else to add.
Two paths forward…
I’m forced to admit that the ‘perfect eternal Divine Truth’ is neither perfect nor eternal (re:god’s nature purportedly changing) and therefore also not true.
The revelation of God is one that compounds on the past. Creation, Expulsion, Punishment, Enrichment, Liberation, Exile etc until you reach God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ who uses the history of human failures to illustrate the grace of God and the establishment of a new covenant that saves all people. This is a logical progression.
What is being passed off as divine truth was either created or corrupted (which doesn’t necessarily imply malicious intent; simple error will suffice) by flawed humans and thus is also not true.
I haven’t seen a compelling case that divine truth has been fundamentally corrupted. It seems more a result of your sentiment than a critical analysis.
I recognize you may disagree with the points I adequately communicated or have questions about ones I failed to describe well. I am a fallible human after all 😂. You may find that many of the contradictions you’re grappling with don’t exist in Orthodox thought in the same way they might in some Western traditions. I’d encourage looking into Orthodox apologia for a perspective not burdened by the theological inheritances of later Western heresies like penal substitution or strict determinism…
An aside about “war crimes” – I will not expound on this too much because it’s a whole separate topic but be wary of using a modern lens when assessing the ancient. You’re smuggling in a moral framework to critique a metaphysical one. It’s easy to forget that secular ethical ideas such as “war crimes” typically find their origin in Christian morality to begin with (at least in the West). What is the epistemic justification for Good and Bad in a world where everything is relative? Philosophically it is an arbitrary critique without grounding.
Re:Orthodoxy - fair enough.
Original Sin
The Orthodox perspective is that the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin is theirs alone. The consequence of their sin, death, is inherited however.
Ok, that’s an interesting take. If man is not guilty of the sin of Adam then why does he bear the consequences of the act? Why punish someone for something you don’t believe they did?
Since God cannot be in the presence of sin Adam and Eve had to be expelled from the garden.
Yeah but then he followed them around? Adam praises god on the birth of his sons, they give offerings to god and even talk to him, etc. And if Adam’s sin is transmitted to all mankind then Cain and Abel were sinful too, so it kinda seems like god didn’t have a problem being in the presence of sin?
This is, however, a mercy because despite entering a fallen state humanity has an opportunity to sanctify itself in this life
This doesn’t fly with me, because god created Adam and Eve as they were and they (assuming omniscience) couldn’t choose to do otherwise. So not only is god punishing them for a sin of his own making, he’s punishing everyone else despite, in the Orthodox version, them not being guilty of that sin. And then to call pain and suffering a mercy because it gives us the ‘opportunity’ to ‘earn’ back what you took? Nah, I’ll take a hard pass on that one. Sin but not guilt is kind of worse actually. It’s like telling your kid, ‘I know your brother was the one who took the cookie, but I’m going to spank you for it too.’ See also: pettiness and tyranny.
Heavenly beings are in a static state … the state of [Satan’s] soul cannot be changed
If it was static, how did it change from ‘angelic’ to ‘damned’ or whatever after his act of rebellion? Was it the act itself that somehow changed the unchangeable, or did god decide to rewrite reality just this once? If that’s the case, rewriting someone’s soul just so you can eternally punish them for one mistake is kind of a dick move.
Free Will
This is a false dichotomy and is highly dependent on what you mean by free will.
I don’t think so, though I concede that there might be definitions of free will that render it thus, I’m using the pretty common definition of having the ability to make choices.
Just because God knows all things doesn’t mean he orchestrates all things … foreknowledge ≠ predestination
I whole-heartedly disagree, foreknowledge precisely equals predestination. He doesn’t have to orchestrate things; merely knowing ahead of time that I will turn left instead of right at the next intersection means that it is definitionally impossible for me to turn right. If I was able to turn right anyway that would definitionally preclude foreknowledge: you can’t know that I turned left if I turned right.
God is incomprehensible and operates outside of time.
Even if I grant this for the sake of argument, humans do not operate outside of time so foreknowledge of human futures, again definitionally, must necessarily be knowledge about the future of the time that humans operate in. But even if that wasn’t true, if god exists outside of time then he also definitionally exists outside of causality and cannot influence or be influenced by human choices within time, which precludes foreknowledge of human futures.
Furthermore because the Orthodox don’t believe in Original Sin the theological allowance for how man moves and works in the world is different. Man can live in the world and freely choose between Good and Evil. Salvation is achieved through a process of working together with the Holy Spirit in all aspects of life. This process is called Theosis.
Ok, I’ll take your word for it, but according to the most widely-accepted definitions if man is free to choose then god cannot have forenkowledge of those choices.
Because God is not bound by time, His knowledge isn’t predictive—it’s participatory. … We remain free precisely because God allows our freedom to unfold within His omniscient love.
If he’s not outside of causality (as implied by the participatory element here) then he’s not outside of time, because those two things mean effectively the same thing. You say he allows it out of love, I say he allows it out of lack of foreknowledge, because that’s the only thing that is logically consistent.
What we perceive as logical already presupposes the existence of God, because logic itself depends on the existence of objective truth.
Logic doesn’t presuppose god, it merely presupposes consistency. Objective truth can arise from the structure of reality itself without requiring a divine source. We have mountains of evidence that logic is internally self-consistent; that’s not the case for pretty much any holy book I’ve read.
Vengeful/loving God
This is primarily a postmodern critique of scripture by people like Richard Dawkins
That doesn’t render it invalid. Also: primarily, but not uniquely as you point out; I was personally puzzling over this stuff back in the 80s before anyone but the editors of a few science journals had ever heard of Richard Dawkins.
The Orthodox wholly reject this critique as a shallow reading of scripture that does not take into account the context of passages in and of themselves or scripture in its entirety.
I don’t dispute that he is also loving, I dispute that he is exclusively loving as of the New Testament. He just goes on and on about how vengeful and angry he is in the OT, and there’s some of that in the NT too, though I think it’s all said by others since (IIRC, it’s been a while) god doesn’t really have a speaking part in much of the NT. Also I don’t think you get to send your PR team out to call you a ‘loving god’ after slaughtering innocents and children (and advocating the same) over and over again.
NT - Jesus over-turning tables of Money Changers
I wouldn’t count that as wrath, and I also wouldn’t attribute it to god. We know he’s capable of turning those tables over himself if he wanted to, but he didn’t. :P
This is more of a squishy critique than the other two
That’s fair, it’s definitely more of a vibe-check thing, I’m not sure there’s much space to discuss there.
(cont, TIL lemmy doesn’t have that high of a maximum post length.)
Two Paths
The revelation of God is one that compounds on the past. Creation, Expulsion, Punishment, Enrichment, Liberation, Exile etc until you reach God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ who uses the history of human failures to illustrate the grace of God and the establishment of a new covenant that saves all people. This is a logical progression.
Which is kind of my point. A logical progression of revelation implies change over time in god’s plan, actions, or relationship with humanity. But a truly perfect, eternal, unchanging truth wouldn’t require progression or revision. If the Divine Truth was perfect and eternal and true, why did it need changing? Evangelicals talk about the ‘new covenant’ all the time, but humanity isn’t any different now than it was then, why did we need a new one? Seems like either god changed or the truth wasn’t eternal.
I haven’t seen a compelling case that divine truth has been fundamentally corrupted.
Corrupted might not be the right word, but we have examples of, say, King James commissioning his own bible to support the divine right of kings. But aside from that, human fallibility plays a part in the transmission of this truth, and anyone who has played a game of telephone in grade school can tell you how that tends to go: you line up the whole class, whisper something into the first kid’s ear, they whisper into the next, and what started out as ‘Billy can’t come to school today because he’s sick’ comes out the other end as ‘little Billy died’ or whatever. Even if you assume each person in the chain intends to transmit it faithfully people make mistakes, there are disputes over word choice and changes to meaning over time in translation, there are newly-discovered ancient texts that cast new light on the ones we had, etc. I don’t know about fundamentally corrupted, but if the perfect eternal truth is all of those things then something else has to account for the paradoxes, and if we’re assuming the literal existence of god then that leaves only human fallibility.
I recognize you may disagree with the points I adequately communicated or have questions about ones I failed to describe well. I am a fallible human after all 😂.
Me too man, I’m just here to have an engaging conversation and learn a little something. All we can do is do our best to own mistakes and not be shy about admitting fault.
You may find that many of the contradictions you’re grappling with don’t exist in Orthodox thought in the same way they might in some Western traditions. I’d encourage looking into Orthodox apologia for a perspective not burdened by the theological inheritances of later Western heresies like penal substitution or strict determinism…
That doesn’t surprise me. What little I know of the early history of Orthodoxy is that there was an early, pretty severe schism over some fundamental stuff that sent the two churches in very different directions. I am curious to know more, though, so I hope you stay and keep the discussion going. I admit that (probably because the way I fell out of Christianity and then into a long but fortunately-ended period of atheism) that Orthodoxy was never really on my radar in my religious studies. But I am a more curious person than I once was with considerably more free time, so I’ll do some poking about and see what I can find. ;)
An aside about “war crimes” … be wary of using a modern lens when assessing the ancient.
That’s entirely fair. I don’t think I was intentionally doing it but there may have been some subconscious stuff going on there. My intent, and perhaps I should’ve chosen a better tool, was to use the terminology of modern ethics to convey the weight of my distaste for the idea of punishing one person for another’s crime in any context.
What is the epistemic justification for Good and Bad in a world where everything is relative? Philosophically it is an arbitrary critique without grounding.
I don’t think everything is relative, nor do I think god is the only source of morality. Even without modern utilitarian concepts like least-harm, it’s pretty clear that ancient human cultures had a concept of justice that depended on the simple and self-evident truth that causing intentional harm to others is bad. It may have been applied unevenly and inconsistently, but. And hell, even a toddler with barely a grasp on language, much less culture or philosophy, can tell the difference between getting bitten by the kid you bit and getting bitten by some kid because she thought you bit her. They’re unhappy at being bitten in either case, but - and I’ve seen this in my nieces and nephews - they get downright angry when they feel that sting of injustice, even if they can’t describe it.
If you’re serious, there are so many. Here’s one of the first results I found in a search, but you can find so much writing on it if you want to, which if you actually believe you’re following the “truth” you should look into.
One of the most common fundamental contradiction arguments is the Judeo-Christian god is defined as omniscient and omnipotent, all knowing and all powerful, as well as benevolent. If this is true, why is there evil in the world? He’s omnipotent so must have the power to make a world in which it doesn’t exist, and he must be aware of whatever will happen in the world he creates, since he’s omniscient, and must not want evil to exist since he’s benevolent.
These cannot all be true. If they were then he’d create a world that satisfies his goals that does not have evil, which he must be capable of doing if he’s omnipotent. If evil must exist to accomplish his goals then he isn’t omnipotent. If he can’t detect evil will exist then he isn’t omniscient. If he wants evil to exist then he isn’t benevolent.
I viewed your link and randomly selected 4-5 of the “contradictions” and basic knowledge of the bible and historicity dispelled them. I’m not going to go through all 50. Sorry you get out what you put in lol. But I’ve heard many of them before and highly recommend the “Whole Counsel of God” podcast which walks through scripture verse by verse and addresses the most common Catholic, Protestant and Post-Modern critiques of scriptural “contradictions” which are typically due to bad theology, poor historicity, translation errors, cultural ignorance etc etc It’s also a great way to learn scripture in a deeper way.
If God exist why bad thing happen
This is a meme in Christian apologetic circles because non-Christians always think it’s a big own when it is really just a demonstration of a lack of understanding of what Christianity is actually about – Redemption. The story of how the world enters a fallen state is explained in Genesis. The fact that the world is fallen is critical to Christian theology and the process of sanctification.
God does not play by your rules. The struggles we face on Earth (often of our own creation) are for our salvation. This is what the bible and church tradition teaches.
I have a more expanded response in this thread here for some other points – https://lemmy.ml/post/30390799/18750134
This is a meme in Christian apologetic circles because non-Christians always think it’s a big own when it is really just a demonstration of a lack of understanding of what Christianity is actually about – Redemption.
It being a meme doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for the argument. Redemption from what? Whatever it is, God had control over it happening. Why did it happen? He is trivially capable of creating a universe where there is no need to be redeemed. Why is one where redemption required the one he chose to create? Dismissing something as just being a meme does not actually answer the question.
God does not play by your rules. The struggles we face on Earth (often of our own creation) are for our salvation. This is what the bible and church tradition teaches.
The point is, God knew we would create the struggles. Is he omniscient? He knew it would happen. Is he omnipotent? He could have created a situation where it doesn’t happen. Is he benevolent? He wouldn’t want it to happen.
Yes, this is what the church teaches. I’m well aware. Does it make sense?
It being a meme doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for the argument.
I understand. I’m more commenting on how it’s usually framed as a gotcha as if Christians have never thought of this before.
Redemption from what? Whatever it is, God had control over it happening. Why did it happen? He is trivially capable of creating a universe where there is no need to be redeemed. Why is one where redemption required the one he chose to create? Dismissing something as just being a meme does not actually answer the question.
The real answer to what is essentially the Epicurean “Problem of Evil” lies in Freedom and Love. God created human beings with genuine freedom, because only freely chosen love is real love. This means that the possibility of rejecting the good (e.g. evil) is not a flaw in creation but a necessary precondition for freedom.
The point is, God knew we would create the struggles. Is he omniscient? He knew it would happen. Is he omnipotent? He could have created a situation where it doesn’t happen. Is he benevolent? He wouldn’t want it to happen.
Yes. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good. But benevolence doesn’t mean preventing every possibility of suffering. In the Orthodox view, God’s goodness is shown not in preventing freedom, but in enduring suffering with us, and transforming it into life and healing. God knew the risk of creation, yet chose to create and then chose to redeem through suffering love. That’s not negligence—that’s the Cross.
Yes, this is what the church teaches. I’m well aware. Does it make sense?
Not in a tidy, rationalistic way—and Orthodoxy is okay with that. There’s a deep apophatic element to the theology: the idea that not everything about God can be explained in human terms. But what does make sense in experience is the way the Church helps us encounter God through prayer, sacraments, and love. Evil isn’t ignored—it’s faced head-on, and transformed in Christ.
I understand. I’m more commenting on how it’s usually framed as a gotcha as if Christians have never thought of this before.
I think the questioning of it originally comes from Christians, so obviously that isn’t the case, nor is it what I’m saying.
The real answer to what is essentially the Epicurean “Problem of Evil” lies in Freedom and Love. God created human beings with genuine freedom, because only freely chosen love is real love. This means that the possibility of rejecting the good (e.g. evil) is not a flaw in creation but a necessary precondition for freedom.
The flaw here is he’s all powerful. If you believe the Adam and Eve story (and even if not it makes a good small case argument) he created the garden, created the tree and fruit, created the serpent, knew they’d eat the fruit, knew he’d damn them for it and they’d suffer for it, and chose to do this anyway. He trivially could also have created a world where they chose not to. Even when given the freedom of choice, he knows what choice will be made (since time is not relevant to him) and can set things up to create any outcome.
God knew the risk of creation, yet chose to create and then chose to redeem through suffering love. That’s not negligence—that’s the Cross.
It’s not a risk. He knew what would happen. He created something where this specific thing is what would come to be with fill awareness and decided that’s what he wanted, if it’s true. It’s not negligence, it’s indifference to suffering. There is no other option for it than that, since he could choose to have made something where it didn’t exist. Maybe we can’t imagine what that would be, but that’s what it means to be omnipotent.
But what does make sense in experience is the way the Church helps us encounter God through prayer, sacraments, and love.
Yeah, that’s fine if it helps you. However, every religion has this claim, so it isn’t evidence that it’s correct. That’s fine. Faith is by definition belief without evidence.
The flaw here is he’s all powerful. If you believe the Adam and Eve story (and even if not it makes a good small case argument) he created the garden, created the tree and fruit, created the serpent, knew they’d eat the fruit, knew he’d damn them for it and they’d suffer for it, and chose to do this anyway. He trivially could also have created a world where they chose not to. Even when given the freedom of choice, he knows what choice will be made (since time is not relevant to him) and can set things up to create any outcome.
You’re right to point out that God knew what would happen. In Orthodox theology, this is acknowledged—but it’s essential to distinguish foreknowledge from predetermination. God’s knows the outcome of free choices but doesn’t coerce them. His foreknowledge does not violate our freedom.
More importantly, God is not only omnipotent but all-good. And since God is the source of all goodness, the possibility of choosing anything other than God is the possibility of choosing evil—which is, by definition, a lack or distortion of the good. If we are to love God freely, we must be free to reject Him.
Therefore yes, God could have created a world where Adam and Eve never fell—but that would not be a world of genuinely free persons. It would be a world of perfectly programmed beings, and Orthodoxy insists that freedom is essential to personhood. Without it, love isn’t possible.
Also, it’s important to clarify: Orthodoxy does not teach that God “damned” humanity for the Fall. The consequence of sin is death and corruption, not divine vengeance. God’s response was not punishment but a rescue mission—the Incarnation. The “Tree of Life” returns in the Cross.
It’s not a risk. He knew what would happen. He created something where this specific thing is what would come to be with fill awareness and decided that’s what he wanted, if it’s true. It’s not negligence, it’s indifference to suffering. There is no other option for it than that, since he could choose to have made something where it didn’t exist. Maybe we can’t imagine what that would be, but that’s what it means to be omnipotent.
From our human perspective, it may seem this way. But God did not create evil or suffering—He permitted it as the cost of freedom, because only through freedom can there be love, growth, and communion. What matters is not just that suffering exists, but how God responds to it.
And His response is not indifference, but sacrificial love. In Christ, God enters our suffering, takes it upon Himself, and opens a path to life. The Cross is not God watching suffering from a distance—it’s God partaking and being the example for all of man for our sake.
Yeah, that’s fine if it helps you. However, every religion has this claim, so it isn’t evidence that it’s correct. That’s fine. Faith is by definition belief without evidence.
While it may not mean much to you I would be remiss not to defend Orthodoxy here. Faith isn’t blind belief or wishful thinking; it’s trust grounded in revelation, history, and experience. The resurrection of Christ, the lives of the saints, the enduring wisdom of the Church—these are not “proofs” in a modern empirical sense, but they are reasons for belief.
Furthermore I don’t know what your standards for evidence are but I encourage you to look at arguments like the Transcendental Argument for God. It argues that universals like logic, reason, and math are only justified if God exists. (e.g. X (God) is necessary for Y (logic, math etc). Y therefore X.)
If you deny God’s existence, you must account for the reliability of reason, logic, and abstract universals like mathematics. If these are simply “self-evident,” then you’re assuming the very thing your worldview has no means to justify. Furthermore without a transcendent source of rationality, why assume logic is binding or that it applies universally?
Believing in God is foundation to a worldview that relies on universals the alternative is arbitrarily granting yourself self-evident axioms.
You cannot have a painting without an artist. A sculpture without a sculpture. A tool will never use itself, it takes a user.
Imagine a blank and static universe. Someone had to add or move something to start the initial reaction even if they never play a part in the events after.
In some sense there is a creator. I just don’t know in what capacity.
Why someone? Why not something? Physics say a monopole magnet is mathematically possible, something like that would absolutely cause a disturbance because it doesn’t conform to the laws of physics we have defined like every action has an equal and opposite reaction… I think you’re right, something happened but I don’t know why it would be someone and not simply probability and the natural world conforming to that probability
Nothing in physics say that time has a beginning or end. It says in fact that it doesn’t have that.
It does not say anything about time starting, ending, or anything. It is just a set of rules that approximately reproduce results we observe. It is not the rules of the universe. The rules we use in physics actually do not have a direction for time. It works the same in both directions, though clearly time does have a direction. It does not make predictions on if time started or if it will end, only what is the case for what we can observe right here right now.
Um, yeah the interesting part is that while physics itself indicate time as a one dimensional infinite band, (with possibly branching multiverses but I digress) we as humans attribute a beginning and end, as all we know consists of such objects and entities. Our mind is terrible at grasping infinity, it has even broken many curious minds that try to understand it and are a bit too tenacious in their search. In any case that is my proposal here, that it is an unanswerable question how the universe started. We have facts up to big bang. It (as usual with these things) gives us just more questions than actual answers to how the universe came to exist. I argue that it always did and always will.
We have facts up to big bang. It (as usual with these things) gives us just more questions than actual answers to how the universe came to exist. I argue that it always did and always will.
I think this is faulty logic. How the universe came to exist is fine, and we don’t know, but that the universe “always existed” is a bit odd. You can’t have anything before space-time exists. In a sense that means yes, it “always” existed, because that’s the start of time, but in another sense it did not exist too, just time didn’t exist, if that makes sense. It obviously doesn’t really make sense because we’re unable to hold that concept in our mind, but time did come into existence.
Unless I have missed something huge, time didn’t ever not exist. If you refer to big bang, what evidence says time started then? Sounds really fascinating but I have never heard of it
How do you have time without space-time? The big bang is actually not the exact start of the universe. It’s pretty close, but not quite. It is the expansion of the universe. Before that it’s in a very dense high energy state, but it does exist. It explains how it went from this state to the current state, but not how it came into existence at all.
I don’t think it’s believed to have sat in this dense high energy state for infinite time before the big bang, so it must have come into existence, not just existed forever. If that’s the case that means space-time came into existence. You can’t have time without space-time, so there is no time before it exists. At some point space-time exists, and as such there is no before, since there is not time.
It seems odd to consider. How do things happen without space-time? We can’t really think about this concept, because we’re space-time beings. It doesn’t even make sense to consider. However, having an intelligence start things doesn’t help. It only then begs the question where they came from. Surely the universe just starting is more likely than an intelligence appearing for some reason, then it deciding to start the universe. That’s a vastly more complex set of circumstances.
I can’t answer every question especially pertaining to evolving science. I wouldn’t even try… I’m not religious either. To have something, someone or something had to create it that’s all I can muster on the subject. Can you create anything without touching, moving, manipulating by some outside force?
I don’t know how it happened, why, person or thing. All I can figure is if the universe was a blank sheet of paper, something had to add, kickstart, etc a reaction for things to unfold regardless of size, time or scale. I don’t really believe the universe at its utmost basic, blank canvas form voided form, simply has energy. It doesnt make sense. Energy requires input from some outside source.
Hmm. I think you can’t have those things without an observer. Art, beauty and utility are in the eye (or hand) of the beholder, and apt to appear anywhere.
I agree with this. Whether life is a series of evolving or constant simulation, whatever form it takes for which we cannot form answers for yet. Something cannot come from nothing. I again just don’t know, nor does anyone the answer to OPs question.
In fact, nature has some of the best art. And our art is almost as good. Does it mean we are almost god? Does beauty signify gods presence? It is very harsh to the less graceful people that have hearts of gold
Nature is the best art. Nothing a human could produce lasts a comparable scale of time, force, evolution, as nature. I think as a civilization we need to harness more of natures principles. Atleast until we can find another comparable medium that isn’t nature to process our problems. Which we have not done yet.
I agree. Except, compared to all other living beings, our art is special. Why is that? Why can Bob Ross teach how to capture it, not only on a visual level but on a visceral cathartic level, for painter and observer to intuit and interpret the signal of the majesty of nature, indeed often even framing a specific part of nature in a love letter that can riff on the concept and introduce fantastic concepts that may even refer to and provoke completely novel amalgamations of existing natural phenomenon and depict them fallably while ultimately even through text inspire a view of the majestic we couldn’t without the artist?
If you zoom out on the universe it’s almost pure noise. Does that resemble what you’d expect from a designer? I guess it could be designed, but there’s also no reason to indicate that if pure randomness is also expect to create the same things.
I am unsure of the capacity of a designer, constructor, what label you want to call an input. To have noise there must be an initial force to create it regardless of its structure, randomness, pattern, form. A big bang, literally anything we may never know. But if the universe was static and blank with no energy or anything just a black sand box. There would be no noise until a reaction happened.
I have never seen something come from nothing. I don’t think anyone has ever or this question wouldn’t have been asked or even be in our consciousness.
I have never seen something come from nothing. I don’t think anyone has ever or this question wouldn’t have been asked or even be in our consciousness.
Well, particle and anti-particle pairs come into existence from nothing all the time actually. They typically annihilate though.
But they don’t come into existence without an outside force. Those are first and second parties reacting. Who’s the 3rd, 4th, 5th, END/START? Edit: Who spurs them into existence? Even if these pairs form and the sum is zero once the +1 and - 1 clash and the game zero sums. Who started or what started the spark something cannot come from nothing, this just means science must not have discovered the root cause of your equation. That is/was my only point. If things in the beginning were static, no movement, no input or output, someone/something adding an object, or kick off to start all of the events after whether they were involved or not. Just speaking on the OPs creator terms and not digressing into free will vs destiny.
Who started or what started the spark something cannot come from nothing…
No, they happen in relation to other things happening, but nothing creates them, especially not a someone. They just pop into existence. Why is that so hard to believe? Is it any less believable than needing some supernatural force to cause it? What created them? That wouldn’t answer any questions anyway, so why would that be more believable.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production
If things in the beginning were static, no movement, no input or output…
Things weren’t static. They just weren’t in general. Before the universe started and space-time came into existence, there was no space or time. There is no before, and there’s no where to be static. At some point it just existed, not at any time, since time didn’t exist. It’s hard, or rather impossible, to really hold the concept in your mind because we can’t imagine a timelessness, but that seems to be the case.
Those were wild reads, not only that but further study of the entire subject. I spent the last day combing the internet and it is very heavy stuff.
I see and understand the process from nothing to something which I didn’t previously have using matter and anti matter alongside other energy. Using quantum energy and all it entails given current science. Allowing different particles and matter to seemingly pop in and out is interesting and has came a long way since I last got educated. Its constant.
That being said nothing science offers yet, gives an answer to my/or OPs creator question. Because regardless of theory and concepts and their are a ton! Science is all based on some form of pre existing structure, law, and or potential, and never absolutely nothing. We lack the models, proof, testing capabilities. The biggest models are string theory, and loop quantum gravity. Inside of the there are many concepts zero point energy, Tegmark, Loop Bounce, Vilenkin, Holographic origin, and on and on currently being evaluated.
That leaves us currently having no truth to your view or mine, a stalemate for now. Without a new paradigm it’s possibly unknowable.
Yeah, no matter what there’s no possible way to ever know how the universe came into existence. Since there is no time before it existed, nothing we can figure out really matters. It just exists for some reason.
That said, the creator solution doesn’t make sense to me. Its supposed to solve the question of how something came from nothing, but it doesn’t. It just pushes it back further. The existence of the creator must now be explained. Where did they come from? It seems much simpler that the universe popped into existence from nothing rather than an intelligence popped into existence from nothing, then decides to create the universe.
Can anyone make sense of this post? It looks like unintelligible symbols crammed together to me.
