lack of imagination...

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Now although this is a personal view and i’m not sure i can construct a good argument on the basis of it i’d still like to ask some people on their opinions.

I’ve heard alot of people saying that because nature and the world is so “perfect” it must be desigend…

But I for some reason think god (if he existed) would lack the imagination to create anything close to this. Not only that but we can see alot of ugliness everyday: filth, dissease, fecies, etc… (sorry for the language).

Now why on earth would god create such ugly things ??

Moreover our lives are filled with meaningless redundant activities which make us bored at least 20% of the time.

But ultimately i believe that god would lack the imagination to create this particular world ex nihilo.
Because art tells us that to create something you need inspiration almost all the time from an outside source… still got doesn’t have an outside source to inspire him and make him create this world this particular way…

Thoughts/ideeas anyone ?

2

Just because you can’t understand why ugly/evil things exist in the world… … well no actually I’ll tell you why they exist - so we can appreciate the good. I’m reminded of a quote from the matrix which I’ll now paraphrase,

“The first matrix was a utopia, a human dream but it did not appear to function properly. It seems you humans need all this pain and violence…you revel in it. So the Matrix was corrected, to what some would call the height pinnacle of human potential – the despair you see before you now.”

This is not to say we cannot live in a utopia, but for our diachotomy based psychological systems this may be a long time coming. We’re not built to be ‘happy’ all the time, it’s just not in us at this point. Sitting in a cubicle all day and being ‘happy’ is not natural and so we need coffee, anti-depressants the the like.

So yeah, basically evil exists, whether that is because we’re not smart enough to realize God’s design, or, perhaps worse, we’re not smart enough to comprehend that nature or a faceless god alone -could- produce something so complex, but also something so…unconscious.

3

Have you really ever stopped and looked at the world around you?

If you cant look at all this in amazement, you better know how everything works right down to the nucleotide level buddy.

And when your done with that… take a peek at space.

We truly are a small part of this massive universe and if you cant appreciate that, you are only covering your eyes.

It is readily apparent that the Imagination of God has far surpassed any notion any human has ever come up with!

How many people do you know that can look at the sunset and think it wonderful?

How many people see a wonderful garden and feel slpendor with all its beauty?

How many people spy out into space and feel the vastness of a creation we can barely fathom?

How many people feel the awe of witnessing new life and the pain of death?

How many people feel emotion and understand them all?

And until unto death do we get a peek of that which is even farther beyond!

4

For me thats an argument agaisnt god… sorry.

Now Gobbo… i really liked your post.
Still… eternal happiness is “promised” to us in the “afterlife”… if even here we are dependant of not living in a perfect world… how would our existance be when we know everything and we’ve done everything and so on…

Isn’t that complete and utter emptiness of the human consciousness (i would have used “soul” but i’m affraid it will be missunderstood) ?

Do we want to go on after death living forever without cares and problems ? with no obstacles and no new heights to reach ?

I think at some level that alone might show that our existance is indeed meaningless and that we’re an accident which probably happens quite often in the universe.

That i think is the problem which we need to contamplate before we postulate god as the giver of eternal happiness.

Do you see where i’m going with this ? if not i’ll try to explain more.

5

Astral,

While I appreciate the beauty of the universe and the feelings I get from being a part of it, I don’t think this particular claim holds any real weight.

You are presupposing God because we cannot ‘fathom’ how the universe can operate. This is not the best argument for God in that of course we can’t know, we are within the system.

For instance, the most sentient computer program may regard his consciousness and digital world with a similar inquisitiveness, albiet in a wholly different paradigm, concluding whoever made it must be Gods. It’s not that they (we) are, it’s just that we reside outside the system.

Who’s to say there isn’t some dipshit alien as the creator of our universe? Beauty lies in ignorance, the universe isn’t inherently beautiful, it merely appears that way, like a painter with a reputation who throws some of his own shit on a peice of paper and sells it.

6

Carpathian,

If one looks closely, the universe is made up of opposites. If it were not, there would be no way to ‘sense’ or comprehend anything. Consider: There can only be something because there is not something. A “thing” can only exist because of the lack of “thing” surrounding it. You see a red beach ball only because of the empty space around it. The ball only exists because of the ‘not-ball’ space around it. The ball and not-ball are interdependant. Neither can exist without the other. Light-darkness, warm-cold, sound-silence… all exist because of their opposite. We listen to musical tones, but music is formed by the spaces and intervals between tones. The tone and the interval together makes what we call music. There is nothing you can think of that fails this understanding. We live in mutally dependent opposites - always.

7

If I said that the universe was amazing and vast, or if I said that the entire universe was ugly, small and pathetic, – each comment would be opinion. Opinion is not truth.

Things are the way that they are, and no human needs to add opinion or belief to any square inch of reality.

The opinion that the universe is beautiful & desirable – is actually a form of lust – and if you could, you would take all of it. Imperialistic assimilation, that’s often the desire and driving force behind the concept of beauty. You want the universe, thus you say it is desirable/good.

Both the universe and the creator of the universe are very similar.
Each is “inanimate” and autocratic.

~

The sooner you admit that you are a limited, automated, biological, preprogrammed machine, the sooner you may partially cure yourself from your own useful insanity/belief.

Humans are controlled by belief, and also they use their belief to try to control the world around them.

~

Gobbo, the “reason” why humans would “need” what kills and ruins them???
This is actually the opposite of the definition of “need”.
BUT… if a system/machine/program was only meant to deal with a certain form of situation, it would try to re-create that situation when that situation did not exist.

The human system is built for scarcity. Capitalism is built for scarcity.
Greed and agression are meant to compinsate for scarcity.
Humanity no-longer has scarcity. Humanity, as a whole, has everything that they need in order to have a perfect and wonderful life, but their preprogrammed and 1-dimensional instinct/direction cause them to act in disunity, overpopulate, hoard, imbalance, etc., causing a synthetic scarcity and man-made problems.

Cannibalistic economics.

[starts to rant at humanity]

Fucking… awsome. That’s great!
Hahaha. Come and understand me god. You’re so smart for creating this all. Dumb ass, evolution isn’t true? Lol. God is a Jew, right, a human Jew at that. Who the fuck says?
Lol.

Fucking… shit!

…

But I made a mistake. I expected humans to be what they think that they are. This mistake, I will overcome.

8

lol… you’re not making any sense mate :smiley:

thats the worst jibberish i’ve heard in a while here :smiley:

9

Astral, your arguments rely on aesthetic judgements, and are weak as a result. Moreover, you are presupposing the existence of God and then attributing everything you see to him. How can you know intelligent design is needed for what you see? The creations of man is not analogous to the creation of the universe, as we have no knowledge of such creation.
Also, the universe is an extremely hostile place, so if God, as I assume you suppose, is omnipotent, surely a kinder enviroment could have been created???

10

New here ? :smiley: i only see 2 posts; trust me is not as easy as that, there are many religious people here unvortunately who know close to nothing about philosophy. :cry:

11

Carpathian,

Jibberish? It is so plain, so simple, I can’t believe you cannot comprehend. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Scratch me off your list.

12

Granted that intelligent design is stupid, (very), all I can say is maybe God created ugliness because he has a subconcious.