God - a practical concept

[Frostbite]

What if God is really some guy that, a while ago, invented a time machine, discovered the secrets of immortality and how to travel from one dimension to another, and tapped an unlimited power source? Then he'd be able to do practically anything he'd want. Blow things up, genetically engineer new species, terraform planets, etc. That guy would appear to us as an omnipotent, omniscient being, but there would be however nothing metaphysical or mystical about him, just a great technological edge. I think this concept is more interesting.

[Franko]

I think that is a variation of "Omega Point Theory". The idea that nature is working to evolve a "Superbeing" (a "God") at some distant point (or perhaps not distant) in the future.

[evildave]

Which says there is no god now (unless it evolves and invents time travel for its self in the future).

And why would it be an 'omega' point. Wouldn't that be the alpha point, all of the previous universe's history being pre-alpha?

Naturally god needs an alpha stage, as well as a beta stage of testing. You don't want to set a god loose on an unsuspecting cosmos until you've got all the bugs worked out.

[stamenflicker]

Naturally god needs an alpha stage, as well as a beta stage of testing. You don't want to set a god loose on an unsuspecting cosmos until you've got all the bugs worked out.

Actually dave, the alpha and omego points would be identical. Time itself is the illusion. May I suggest TS Eliot's "Four Quartets"?

Flick

[evildave]

Maybe if I can recommend Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 'Good Omens'. "Have a nice doomsday."

It's a bit of a paradox. God's supposed to have made everything, but everything's here to make god. Then again, these are conflicting half-baked definitions of "god".

On one hand, god always existed and we refuse to assign it any attributes. Especially not the sort that can be critically examined.

On the other hand, god doesn't exist yet, and has no attributes to define, since these have not been evolved into it, yet.

[aerosolben]

I don't know how practical this god would be. The universe was apparently capable of creating the circumstances that led to him without intervention, so he's just a kid let loose in a giant cosmic candy shop. The most reasonable type of God to exist, I'd say, but probably not intellectually satisfying to atheists or theists.

[stamenflicker]

It's a bit of a paradox. God's supposed to have made everything, but everything's here to make god. Then again, these are conflicting half-baked definitions of "god".

I'm not sure how you being temporal could possibly determine the baking temperature of something un-temporal. Just because you don't understand it, doesn't make it any less of a possibility.

On one hand, god always existed and we refuse to assign it any attributes. Especially not the sort that can be critically examined.

Yes.

On the other hand, god doesn't exist yet, and has no attributes to define, since these have not been evolved into it, yet.

Yes and no. God has some attributes in the process of being defined-- to which we each play a part-- while God is in the state of temporal dissemination.

Flick

[evildave]

Well, if there's time travel involved, then the baking might go backwards.

Though "half baked" in the intended form means simply "half thought through" or "half invented".

Clearly God needs a lot more work to be a practical concept. It's not universally marketable, and suffers from having competing brands of God attempting to establish competing standards.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Frostbite
What if God is really some guy that, a while ago, invented a time machine, discovered the secrets of immortality and how to travel from one dimension to another, and tapped an unlimited power source? Then he'd be able to do practically anything he'd want. Blow things up, genetically engineer new species, terraform planets, etc. That guy would appear to us as an omnipotent, omniscient being, but there would be however nothing metaphysical or mystical about him, just a great technological edge. I think this concept is more interesting.

Hmmm... steal time machine and immortality gauntlent from Dr. Strange, go back in time, urinate in primordial sludge, find a better dimension, and sit on my ass forever drinking a can of infinite power while watching omnidimensional football. And if I get bored, I can blow stuff up just by pointing at it, or have it bring me some omnidimensional nachos.

[evildave]

No, I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

If you want to blow something up, you go to a point in time where there are some demolition charges sitting out in the open and "borrow them". There are a near infinite number of diminsions where this is the case, and many times in each dimension where there are boxes of it laying around.

Then you go to a point in time before they build the object, and bury the charge under a point where they will build a load bearing component of the object. Or bury the bomb at a place where a movable object will be. Set a timer for when you want the object to be destroyed, THEN you go to a point in time where it SHOULD blow up, and you can make a show of pointing at it, and having it blow up.

You have to start later with the shaping of species. You want breeding taking place. Then you can interfere selectively with the animals' development, backtracking and retrying to ensure the ones with the traits you want are more prominent. Set up a lab to breed creatures and selectively inpregnate (or replace eggs) of selected animals to introduce new variations that have the specific traits you are looking for. Keep it up for a few millions of years.

It's a lot of work, but it will keep you busy, and being immortal, you'll have a lot of time to kill.

In the many alternative futures you'll want to keep track of, will be futures where you've arranged to have an "infinite" supply of various drinks and foods. You still have to go get them. Perhaps part of your "plan" would be to generate acolytes and priests from some period(s) who run such errends for you, and manage some of the excessively repetitive tasks.

"Bob the Acolyte, fetch your god a beer! And get yourself one while you're at it."

[stamenflicker]

You have to start later with the shaping of species. You want breeding taking place. Then you can interfere selectively with the animals' development, backtracking and retrying to ensure the ones with the traits you want are more prominent. Set up a lab to breed creatures and selectively inpregnate (or replace eggs) of selected animals to introduce new variations that have the specific traits you are looking for. Keep it up for a few millions of years.

Dave, if in fact there are truly alternate futures, then all that would "count" in the end is the completed evolutionary state of a species capable of time manipulation... all other alternates [the lesser ones] immediately cease to exist. Did I miss something?

Flick

[evildave]

Originally posted by stamenflicker

Dave, if in fact there are truly alternate futures, then all that would "count" in the end is the completed evolutionary state of a species capable of time manipulation... all other alternates [the lesser ones] immediately cease to exist. Did I miss something?

Flick

Well, there's the other theories of "time travel" where you actually travel through alternate realities, rather than through a linear dimension. In this model, there are basically infinitely many realities you can go back and visit without affecting the reality that you came from. You go back in time, render your grandfather sterile, but you don't cease to exist because you altered a different reality.

Another model is where you are using time as a scratch pad. You can go back to a point in time where there is a firecracker, borrow it, and set it off. You can still go back in time one nanosecond earlier to borrow the same firecracker, and set it off, too. This replication seems "impossible", but the "inifinite realities" model solves this paradox nicely, even though it's not intuitive, and frankly seems as absurd as setting the same firecracker off as many times as I like. This might be a strong argument against time travel, in that it becomes like a perpetual motion machine. You can burn the same ounce of fuel billions of times by simply "borrowing" it a little before the last time you borrowed it.

But since we can go visit the patent office and not find a working time machine patent from the day the patent office first opened, we can conclude that nobody has invented a time machine in the future, or at least they haven't used it frivolously, or haven't used one to show up in the dimension that we are in.

Another model is where you have essentially removed an object from time and placed it or copied it into an earlier or later version of the universe. Whatever caused it to exist in the first place, now that it exists *here* and *now*, it's not really connected to events that came to cause it anymore. This is similar to the "single" universe model, where the time travellers move backwards and forwards and have effects, but not on themselves. In this model, you can save the dinosaurs from extinction and it doesn't matter (in the matter of your personal existence, anyway) because whatever happened before to cause you and the time machine to exist, you exist now. You can readily end up stranded on an Earth that never produced intelligent life at all. Of course, at times I may feel that maybe this IS that Earth.

Naturally, a little familiarity with cosmology and what is happening to a planet in a solar system in a galaxy, in a cluster of galaxies, in our little corner of the visible universe, and it becomes obvious that travelling usefully through time is travelling a long way through space as well. The sun's moving a million miles a day just within this galaxy. Go back ten years, and you have to move billions of miles to manage the displacement of where the world is NOW and where it was THEN. Talk about threading a needle. You still have to hit that tiny speck (relative to the distances involved) spiralling in the void, besides the point in time you wanted to visit.

In any event, if there are multiple realities, there's no reason to imagine they've all ceased to exist only because you're not personally in them. Certainly if one reality produced a time machine, that would not prevent other realities from doing the same thing. In the multiple universe model, there literally NEED to be an order of infinity of realities that make you and your time machine for it to happen at all.

[c4ts]

I thought that given existence in an infinite number of universes, the shortest distance between any two points would be 0. Therefore you would exist everywhere and would appear capable of doing anything. If you want to blow stuff up by pointing at it, you don't even have to point (since you already are pointing). It's already blown up omega times in omega different ways, therefore in the continual process of explosion, and at the same time ready to explode at your command.

[stamenflicker]

Well, there's the other theories of "time travel" where you actually travel through alternate realities, rather than through a linear dimension. In this model, there are basically infinitely many realities you can go back and visit without affecting the reality that you came from. You go back in time, render your grandfather sterile, but you don't cease to exist because you altered a different reality.

Sounds like these less than perfect realities-- the scratch pads of divine evolution might be dubbed... Hell?

:)

I might be serious.

Flick