Suppose we are in a lab and lets call it Heaven. And suppose I have a cage with rats in it as well as an ecosystem to sustain the rats as well as the power to do anything I can conceive of with these rats. Perhaps out of curiosity, I want to give the rats reason and free will, but also a conscience to discourage them from eating each other (I suppose it might be argued that they already possess this). Now we have some reasoning rats and we can observe to see what they might do. They ought to be reasonably blissful, ignorant but curious about their world. Perhaps a little fitful, wanting to understand their place. Gradually realizing their ignorance. It's my goal to see what they'll do, so I don't want to be involved. After all, if they figure out that I gave them the ability to reason they would rightly be in awe, and that knowledge would surely change them. It's okay though, I gave them reasoning so they should inevitably be able to see me when they're ready to confirm suspicions. There are billions more people like myself who don't know or care about my little experiment, but there will probably be a few who stumble upon it. They don't know or don't care that I just want the rats unmolested, so they might do something mighty and see if the rats will do a song and dance for them. Perhaps give them some instructions about how to treat each other, with good faith or with bad... you can't be sure with us humans. Where before there was a blissful curiosity, it is replaced by a conflict between skepticism and certainty. With a higher authority, the certain can now put aside their conscience in the pursuit of a divine right. The skeptical rats go first, and then the remaining rats turn on each other breaking down their certain scrolls into certain scraps of fought-over papers until the last rat remains, bleeding and starving to death. Now my experiment is ruined! What has this stranger done? He created religion. Well, for all I know, the rats might have created religion themselves given enough time. Not that the results would seem any different. Maybe I just oversimplified the fate of man. I don't even have to claim this story is true, because I'm sure the religious will accept it when I say that it cannot be proven to be false.
I enjoy reading your topics and I always feel compelled to contribute, though I rarely do. Often your views correspond with my own to such a degree that my only response could be "I agree." Well, either that or a useless post such as this one. Keep on posting hahaha
I like this post alot. Religion, if it should exist, should be made and established by a God. However, religion in our world is manmade. Religion will always be the plight of man.
Fuck the rats, to be fair. You created a shitty heaven and then discussed the obvious. If you didnt provide a alternative food supply they would have to turn on eachother. lol thats a dum ass experiment
Of course I'm a skeptic. And I supposed we are all in the lab, essentially that our entire world is the lab in question. I conceded that I was oversimplifying. Implied in the ecosystem is a way for these rats to feed themselves without turning to cannibalism. It might seem as if it was a really bad idea, and that this "heaven" I describe isn't all that great, but it doesn't change the fact that we don't know that "heaven" is better than what I described. In fact, a suggestion that the supernatural isn't necessarily what we tell ourselves it is is just another part of the point. If a person is inclined to believe in the afterlife, then how can one imagining of it be superior to others? Maybe heaven isn't so great. Maybe the greater truth that people seek isn't all that great.
How should I know whats going on? I'm only human. I embrace reason as a way to disprove false claims. I fail to see it prove anything other than the fact that it exists.
I know what you mean, just being difficult. Just that Human reasoning is a bit vague if everyone has their own opinions of :whats going on" or not.
LMAO let go of the past man no matter what you do its never going to change and you fucked up. Deal with it. And its all your fault. But since you won't accept responsibility you are going to pay for your consequences for your whole entire life time. Muahahahahaha only if you let go. This is what I require. This is not a post on Grasscity.com. This is not a dream. This is your reality
lol, my reality is fine, and its actually your reality if I choose to not take on board your opinion. Now your just standing there with your dick in your hand.
If I'm understanding the analogy correctly, you (the narrator) is God, and the rats are humanity. What I don't understand is how other people coming along and corrupting the rats "translates", so to speak. Being that religion is a man made concept, to remain true to our situation on Earth, the rats themselves would be the ones influencing other rats, and not other beings like yourself in the laboratory tampering with the experiment. The way you are explaining it, to me it sounds like other deities are the ones that invented religion. By that, I mean a scenario in which there are multiple gods, and some take an active role in humanity and others do not. Maybe I'm misunderstanding though; it wouldn't be the first time.
I hope you understand this train of thought can be infinity compelled. The real question to your beliefs is whether or not you can have enough faith in humans to think we were capable for something more than an experiment and to think afterward there would be a little more then life in some proverbial "heaven."
I was just being the devil's advocate. If you can't prove anything with reason, then how do you disprove false claims? Is it that time of the month? No, you're doing fine. The polytheistic suggestion is part of it. Hell, I would pack everything I could imagine in if it wouldn't be nine million pages long, but it only takes a few stretches to get the ball rolling. I'm a skeptic granting a lot of premise from the faithful, but I have chosen to twist the premise to make it as challenging as it ought to look to the non-religion-impaired. I can only hope it translates as simple as I've made it. You seem to have got the main point, that religion causes problems. It doesn't really matter if someone came along and disrupted my experiment (if I didn't witness, that would probably be my first suspicion), and it's possible that we made the whole thing up without any help at all, but I don't see what difference it would make. I have not heard any good reasoning to explain its value, and I believe I have some good reasoning to explain why we shouldn't trust it to tell us that value. Why should I even ask? If any of that stuff is true, my fate is already sealed and so is the fate of everyone else whether they choose to accept it or not. I actually think it's better not to ask, and avoid the risk of making your only life into a prison of slavery. One simple thought always comes to me when the topic of the afterlife is discussed... The choices are: Slavery in this life, or slavery in some other life that might not exist.