The Problem with God

The Problem with God [+ favourites]

I recently debated with a religous friend of mine, who studies the Bible in college. Something she said, though, struck me as odd. She said "God is perfect.". I thought about it, and that is the only thing that doesn't exist in reality. Perfection. Then I thought to myself, what if perfection did exist in this reality? Would we slowly make everything perfect? I couldn't imagine a reality with perfection, there was something wrong about it. It later occurred to me that perfection, or lack thereof, is the only thing keeping us alive. If there is nothing we can perfect, then there is always work to be done, always more to do.

I thought it interesting to imagine a place where everything is perfect. I imagined a reality where all of my dreams came true and it was beautiful, for a while. In order to have everything perfect though, you have to live in artificiality. I thought that once all of my dreams were fulfilled, there would be no reason to go on living, nothing to work toward.

I think Christianity has it right though, that when you die, you live with God forever and he is perfect. But I have another name for God, his name is nothing. Nothing is perfect. When I die, I go into nothingness and all of my dreams are fulfilled, because I realize when I die, that my mind in life was simply a pocket of nothing, a little taste of the afterlife, and when you die all of your thoughts become as vivid as reality. So I lived out my dreams of this life, I couldn't believe everything had turned out as I hoped. I mean, I thought I died but I must not have. But like all dreams, there comes a time when you realize that everything you see is something you thought up. You later realize that you are God and that you can do whatever it is that you please when you're nothing. So you do whatever it is that you please, time is not an issue. But when the time comes that you grow bored of playing the hero, playing the villian, of knowing all of life's greatest mysteries and greatest pleasures, you decide to forget once again. And so you are born in a random time, to fulfill a random event, however petty it may be. Beautiful.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

Sounds good to me... although "Christianity has it right" is a scary sentence. When Christians say God is perfect, they clearly segregate themselves from God. This creates a sense of inferiority... which is totally different than what you are saying. So although her sentence communicated to you a train of thought that may be totally accurate, your thought patterns have nothing to do with why she said it.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

I think they are right in what they say but they are incapable of thinking about what it insinuates. It's like they don't want to know what their dreams of what God are. Like a child who is asked what they want for Christmas but would rather leave it a surprise. I hope when they open their present, they won't be disappointed. If God is perfect then God is just a place where you live out all of your dreams. This is what being nothing is though, at least it's how I theorize it. I believe Jesus was a great man with a great plan, not the son of God. He thought about what could never be disproven, what everyone strives to achieve but what can never exist and then tied being good to achieving it. And then of course, to make it legit, he died for it. It was genius. He probably saved the human race at least 1000 years of bullshitting to reach the same outcome.

"So although her sentence communicated to you a train of thought that may be totally accurate, your thought patterns have nothing to do with why she said it."

But I think she's so close to where I am but on the opposite end. I'm looking at things purely scientifically, and she, purely religously. We are at the same ends, but my end doesn't limit the dream of perfection. Everyone's perfection is different. Also, it just occured to me that people that are so mislead through life, if they died and I was correct with my theory of death, they would have a great deal of after thought to go through because their dreams weren't thought out. So they would achieve what they thought they wanted, realized it was crap and would slowly come closer to what they really wanted. I bet a lot of irony would come out of this, haha.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

I suppose the unfathomable nature of what "god" is could be similar to the Buddhist and Christian minds, but anything past that and everything before it is entirely different.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

ChrisD: do you consider "God" to be sentient?

"A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past."

I don't believe in "God" but if you are talking about the Christian "God" then yah, I consider him (or her) sentient. The way the Bible talks about him and the very fact that he has words in the Bible leads me to believe that the Christian God is sentient.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

^^Isn't it suprising that both you and the christians understand the same thing, yet you're still contemplating on whether you're right or wrong.....?....I mean you are going to come to an argument at some point in a conversation where differences occur, but isn't it just a little bit suprising to know and understand and still search to find, yet not BE?

"Being is not knowing!"

I don't believe a lot of Christians know much of what I do though. The very existence of faith allows them to skip any research that could be done. I am not afraid of getting my hands dirty and putting in the work that is required. Why should I accept something as true when I haven't fully explored the other side of it? This is my main beef with many Christians or any other practitioners of faith. They just seem lazy to me.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

I like this discussion. I really do.

Perfection wouldnt need to think now would it? It would just do.

""No words""

Well said, perfection just does. Who is the decider of perfection? I think that is left up to the individual. Couldn't we all be perfect if we stopped comparing ourselves to other things? If what you say is true, that perfection just does and what I say is true, that perfection is left up to the individual, then absolute happiness would be to just be. I firmly believe that this reality is heaven and hell. It is exactly what you make it.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

^^^send me you e-mail address, and i'll send you my book....I like that post^^^

"Being is not knowing!"

Thank you, my email is chris.greentown@gmail.com. I can't say I'll read your book right away. I have a lot of work to do in college at the moment, it's the end of the semester.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

interseting stuff, you say you can conceive of perfection? is it greater to exist or not to exist? Since your mind can conceive of a perfect being and it is greater to exist than not to exist by your own statements God must exist. Of course this appies to the greatest possible being only/

if god is real, then who created god?? how did he become anything??and how did he create such a complex world that we are living in??

""every advance in knowledge faces us with the mystery of our own being""

The more I try to understand the sciences the closer I come to God. Perfection I think is a hard thing to conceive of, but I suppose when you look at the bigger picture, at the very start (or creation) of the universe, that must have been a pretty perfect event, to have all the stuff of life to come from it.
I always used to think that the universe was not perfect but rather chaotic and random, but now I think that it must be impossible for life and consciousness to just be random elements thrown together in a big bang and just happening to come up with galaxies and solar systems and planets and life, it all seems pretty well ordered and well perfect! Especially when I look at the human genome or DNA in general. Its like some big old computer program waiting to run its course!
OK this is getting way deep.

Anyway the universe, its beginnings, the soul, the spirit of God, this is all beyond our ultimate understanding, we are so tiny and young in comparison to the whole of the cosmos so how can we think we have it all figured out.

I know Decius doesn't believe in God and has a real thing against organised religion of any kind and that's his right, he knows his own mind and I respect that, but religious people are just like scientists or any other person, trying to figure out the big questions, why are we here? What was the mechanism at the beginning of time? That's assuming there is such a thing as time, of course. And of course we just come to the conclusion , well I do anyway that it had to be a purposeful, intelligent, well thought out plan that set the cosmos in order and then pushed it on its way. How far down the line we are in that plan is another matter entirely!

""Each child holds the world in an open hand to mould it into any shape they choose.""