If You Were God

Well....first he posits we encounter an island of bickering parties which we need to fix...

Seems the big guy got to start from.scratch?

Then he says under first and foremost restriction.."Under no circumstances are the natives of this island to be aware of your presence.". What? Really, again the big guy poked his nose in and made the minions well awarenif his doings, multiple times, within each religion...

So imagine you are god....except without omniscients, omnipotence, and with one allegorical hand tied behind your back.
 
It is an interesting exercise though I have a big problem with one of the requirements. Hate to take this grand exercise and demolish it with one sentence. But there is a problem I cannot get around. Which is this. The article postulates that 'supposedly' You Were God. It then goes on to introduce all sorts of restrictions on your Goddhood. Well are you God or aren't you? God is not restricted. It is the fundamental point of the God concept.

Everything else in the supposition fails because of this prohibition. Thoughts?
 
  • Like
Reactions: RJM
I should have mentioned in the original post that the article is aimed at people who believe in G-d. It was not written for confirmed atheists who take every oppportunity to attack religion.

I keep forgetting to take into account the level of intelligence of some of the posters here.
 
Confirmed atheists?

Exactly nobody had that issue. The issue is with the fact that...pretend you are G!d...except without being G!d.


It is like "Oh yeah, you try to do what Superman does, except without strength, xray vision or the ability to fly."
 
  • Like
Reactions: RJM
I should have mentioned in the original post that the article is aimed at people who believe in G-d. It was not written for confirmed atheists who take every oppportunity to attack religion.

I keep forgetting to take into account the level of intelligence of some of the posters here.
Who has confirmed that they are atheists?
 
I'm not sure where Tea stands - Wil and I are not atheists. And what difference does that make anyway. Is my question not a valid one? If one wants to postulate a mental exercise where one is God and then make restrictions on what God can and can not do - is that not invalidating the exercise? I am not being snarky here. It is a genuine question.
 
I liked the part of the essay cited in the first post of the thread by Dan that goes..

"We are taught, however, that an overabundance of light does not rectify the vessels, but shatters them."

There's where you have the verse "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear." John 16:12

and

'Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it.'

~ Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 268
 
If one wants to postulate a mental exercise where one is God and then make restrictions on what God can and can not do - is that not invalidating the exercise? I am not being snarky here. It is a genuine question.
It's a valid point.

Anyone remember the sci-fi series Lexx?

I found 'The 10 Laws of Lexx' and my favourites are Nos 1 and 4:
1: There shall be no rubber-faced aliens.

And No4, which is relevant:
4: There are no life forms more intelligent than humans, unless and until such a life form does the requisite script writing.
 
I think this article has an interesting perspective:

If You Were God
We often question God's ways. But given the chance, how would we do things differently?
by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
http://www.aish.com/print/?contentID=48970646&section=/jl/p/g

I would try to establish a Kingdom where I would be living with my creations (those with or without intelligence and freewill). It would be a place everyone would feel comfortable to live eternally since I am supposed to be a god of eternity.

The special measure will have to be take to tackle with those with intelligence and freewill. Since I am a god who is completely sin incompatible, I have to set up rules for them to abide by. I will be extremely uncomfortable if they choose to sin. That is I have to define clearly that you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that or else I will be sick and vomit all the times. My likes and dislikes thus will become the Law of God such that only those qualified will be brought to this eternal realm.

After the Law is set, I will be giving both the angels and humans a specific place and time for them to show up openly and freely as the qualified or the disqualified and to bring the qualified to heaven.

The first thing to be dealt with is that the most intelligent angels would like to screw up this plan. Satan successfully made the first human Adam sinned. So by God's Law, Adam should be driven out of God's current realm. Adam was disqualified to enter the future eternal realm too. Satan's deed seems to be a great success, as once Adam was living outside God's realm, he and his offspring will no longer have the ability to abide by God's Law completely. Once outside God's realm, Satan the capable angel's influence dominates, among both the fallen angels and fallen men. Adam's offspring have no hope to be qualified the future heaven. It means that humans will be absent in the future heaven.

But not yet, in order to re-qualify humans legitimately, God has to either change His standard which is the Law of God, or to find an alternative to re-justify the situation. God keeps the Law unchanged, his son nominated himself as God's self sacrifice in order to justify the situation. With his son's blood drawn, now God can establish a series of covenants with the different scope of humans (Jews and gentiles) in different periods of time. Since the main trend is that humans will go further away from God as time goes by. Different terms and conditions will have to be specified to suit for humans of different eras. In a nutshell, more grace will have to be granted to much later generations of humans...
 
If I were God? Hmmm.

First, dealing with multiple tribes is troublesome, as you are juggling competing interests. I'd make tall mountains splitting the island into zones while I individually worked on them.

I would make use of complex subliminal dream technology. Rather than telling them what to do or what to think, I'd send VR type lucid dream scenarios, each of which demonstrated the consequences of their actions. If they behaved like brutes in the dream, the land would dry up. If they worked hard, and worked together, the land would be super-fertile. Basically, teach them the Nash game theory.

Next, I would work on implanting a beauty ideal that was common to all islanders, and then selectively breed the islanders based on preference to evolve them physically from big dumb brutes to metrosexual men and equally slim women (a sort of Asian unisex ideal). I'd also do genetic manipulation to make some of the tribes have an excess of females, and some have an excess of males. I'd implant another idea, taking advantage of their exploitative nature on how "exotic" these foreign men and women were, and have them slowly mix (any attempt of violence or rape, however, gets rewarded by lightning from above) until enough of them have family alliances, and violence becomes a costly mess.

I'd teach how to perform trade for uncommon goods. And slowly, I'd introduce concepts of medicine and agriculture, leaving them out of the loop on advanced warfare. They might still learn, but guiding them towards this direction, would help them live in peace.

The unfortunate thing is this is a world without much free will, so I'd probably get bored eventually and reveal myself, invalidating all my progress.
 
If I were God? Hmmm.

First, dealing with multiple tribes is troublesome, as you are juggling competing interests. I'd make tall mountains splitting the island into zones while I individually worked on them.

I would make use of complex subliminal dream technology. Rather than telling them what to do or what to think, I'd send VR type lucid dream scenarios, each of which demonstrated the consequences of their actions. If they behaved like brutes in the dream, the land would dry up. If they worked hard, and worked together, the land would be super-fertile. Basically, teach them the Nash game theory.

Next, I would work on implanting a beauty ideal that was common to all islanders, and then selectively breed the islanders based on preference to evolve them physically from big dumb brutes to metrosexual men and equally slim women (a sort of Asian unisex ideal). I'd also do genetic manipulation to make some of the tribes have an excess of females, and some have an excess of males. I'd implant another idea, taking advantage of their exploitative nature on how "exotic" these foreign men and women were, and have them slowly mix (any attempt of violence or rape, however, gets rewarded by lightning from above) until enough of them have family alliances, and violence becomes a costly mess.

I'd teach how to perform trade for uncommon goods. And slowly, I'd introduce concepts of medicine and agriculture, leaving them out of the loop on advanced warfare. They might still learn, but guiding them towards this direction, would help them live in peace.

The unfortunate thing is this is a world without much free will, so I'd probably get bored eventually and reveal myself, invalidating all my progress.
This was fun! The first post I've seen on this board commenting on religion through a gaming perspective.
 
Only if I can be taller ... 3 inches would do it ...
 
Back
Top