But do you see the mental gymnastics which are required to account for all those other (lesser) gods than God? When you start with metaphors, you cannot separate God from other gods.
Life itself was created by pure bio-chemical interaction. No intent was required, just left handed amino acids and right handed sugars! This excellent lecture by Robert Hazen explains the emerge of living things from pure bio-chemical formation of self replicating polymers. Start at 25:15
Even the devil is a creation of God, right? No other gods can exist without one God, right? You are a spirit, but your essence is God, right?
As long as nature works mathematically at the physical level, intent is not required. Without intent the metaphor of God is merely a pseudo-intelligent probabilistic mathematical function which does not require worship or prayer or religion. This does not make it any less awesome.
I disagree, in the absence of proofs the word God and its many interpretations has been responsible for the greatest and cruelest wars in history. The Devil lies in the details of God.
Mathematics is inevitable with any physical thing . But life , the formation and the manifestation of life takes the ingredients it is given in the enviroment and make these ingredients more than the sum of its parts . Life gives intelligence . Life is from a Being . A Universal Being , that is everywhere and in everything .
Agreed. But everyone is trying to reach the same goal. If they understood that God is always with them--and the other guy--there would be no need for wars. The devil is the idea that you are separate from God, when in truth he has always been with you, but you have to remember he is with the other guy, too.
The inventors of religion projected human behavior onto their invented gods, plus a little dose of supernatural The separation point is the supernatural Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
As descriptions of God go, this one is likely the most defensible, but only if you acknowledge that this god is the embodiment of the whole ball of wax, the good, the bad and the ugly. This implies that at times God loves cute little puppies, but also loves to watch them be devoured by snapping turtles. And that God loved Hitler, but also loved to watch his minions torture and kill Jews.
In the perfect universe, would we live forever, would there be no pain, would the sun shine every day? I make no excuses for what we do to each other, only that if we realized who we are, there would be no need for war.
If you’re going to accept that God is everything, then you have to accept that this conception of god has chosen not to reveal its preference as to the present or future disposition of humanity. To such a god, human affairs may rate the importance of the position of a grain of sand on a beach, it may care less whether or not we savage ourselves in warfare.
Human behaviour is not outside the bounds of reality and the religious con artist put plain vanilla human behaviour onto their gods PLUS supernatural aspects , of which, no human possessed "In the perfect universe" - god couldn't make it perfect right out of the box???? "would we live forever" - I thought that is the reward for good behaviour here "would there be no pain, would the sun shine every day?" - I get the impression from the religious con artist the answer to both would be yes "only that if we realized who we are, there would be no need for war" - I very much doubt that Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You use the term "supernatural" as though something exists outside the reality we know. Nothing is hidden from view.