# God must be bored



## habilis (Jul 11, 2003)

Creating the Universe is cool and everything but just imagine, it took around a billion years before the universe cooled down enough for hydrogen gasses to start coalescing into the first stars following the Big Bang. That would suck to have to wait that long just to see the first star, I mean what are you doing in the meantime, with a universe full of nothing but occasional pockets of  gas. Then, to add insult to injury, even after the planets themselves formed, you would have to wait 2 or 3 billion more years just to see a little single celled blob floating arounding in the primordial seas. 

If God is a supreme being, who consciously creates things, or makes _choices_, that would mean all other intellectual logic would apply to him as well, meaning he could get bored, especially over the timespan of 15 or 20 billion years, which is how old the known universe is. Also, if you're god, the creator of the universe, that means that you know everything, all the secrets about the universe, and everything in between. So if you know _everything_, what is the point of existing? I mean how incredibly boring would that be?


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## serpicolugnut (Jul 11, 2003)

God? Bored? Not!

Your suggestion presupposes that God is subject to linear time, just like we are. If God is truly an omnipotent being, than moving backward and forward through time would be no harder than moving from place to place....

But what do I know, I'm agnostic...


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## toast (Jul 11, 2003)

Wrong, serpico. If God wasn't lienar, he wouldn't have rested on the 7th day 

But what do I know ? I'm agnostic too...


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## habilis (Jul 11, 2003)

I'm agnostic 3, but what does it matter if you can travel through time. You're still going to be conscious in one form or another for billions and billions of years, which you would be bored to insanity and beyond.

BTW, if you believe in heaven, and eternal life after death, you're going to be facing the same boredom crisis.


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## toast (Jul 11, 2003)

Eating white fruits for eternity


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## Trip (Jul 11, 2003)

That's the fun of being a god though, you can't get bored. You can go create planets and watch the species of your choice slowly evolve into something great and then start killing themselves.

And then what? You do it again! C'mon, what could be funner than creating sounds never before heard/thought-of or creating colors we could never imagen being created.

Plus if you were god would you be sitting around all day? Heck: I'd come on down to earth and give the peeps down in Las Vegas something to holler about.


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## Sogni (Jul 11, 2003)

Uh, SimCity 4 and The Sims anyone? 
Me thinks: Same general idea. Especially the part about messing up their lives - that's always fun! heh


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## Vard (Jul 11, 2003)

I am agnostic 4...and here's my take...

Most people here seem to be speaking of God as if it were subjected to time.  What if it's not?  I mean, billions of years can be long for us, but what if it didn't matter at all....it just IS always....no time or distance involved

...or maybe it was just spending that time laughing to itself about all of us analyzing the hell out of it.

I know I would

Later,
Vard


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## serpicolugnut (Jul 11, 2003)

> Wrong, serpico. If God wasn't lienar, he wouldn't have rested on the 7th day



Don't get me going on paradoxes and space/time/continuum rules... 

Just because he chose to rest on the 7th day doesn't mean that he's limited to linear time... It just means we worked his arse off for 6 days, and when that was finished, he rested. On the 8th day he could have jumped forward to the 30th Century to see how things turned out, and if he didn't like them, he could have gone back to day 5 and tweaked a few things...

I think this probably isn't handled in the bible because the concept of time travel was as ridiculous as a round earth back then. Now, even though it's still totally Sci-Fi, it's at least a concept every body can grasp.

Of course, this is only relevant if you are subscribing to the Christian version of God. I'm not quite up on what the Islamists have God doing on that first week....


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## toast (Jul 12, 2003)

> _Originally posted by serpicolugnut _
> *I'm not quite up on what the Islamists have God doing on that first week....
> *



Well, this may be a surprise for many, but islam is also based on the old Testament, so Allah did just the same as Jehovah, he worked 6 and rested 1. All three religions of the Book (islam, christianity, judaism) believe in the Old Testament. It is said in the fifth surat that a Muslim who does not believe in the Old writings and in Abraham, father of all peoples, is not a true Muslim.

BTW, the Monty Pythons' version of God (Quest for the Holy Grail) seems *pretty* bored indeed !


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## TommyWillB (Jul 12, 2003)

I'm sure She simply takes a toke of that super-potent God Ganga... That makes things a lot more interesting and makes One quickly forget about being bored...


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## Androo (Jul 12, 2003)

> _Originally posted by habilis _
> *Creating the Universe is cool and everything but just imagine, it took around a billion years before the universe cooled down enough for hydrogen gasses to start coalescing into the first stars following the Big Bang. That would suck to have to wait that long just to see the first star, I mean what are you doing in the meantime, with a universe full of nothing but occasional pockets of  gas. Then, to add insult to injury, even after the planets themselves formed, you would have to wait 2 or 3 billion more years just to see a little single celled blob floating arounding in the primordial seas.
> 
> If God is a supreme being, who consciously creates things, or makes choices, that would mean all other intellectual logic would apply to him as well, meaning he could get bored, especially over the timespan of 15 or 20 billion years, which is how old the known universe is. Also, if you're god, the creator of the universe, that means that you know everything, all the secrets about the universe, and everything in between. So if you know everything, what is the point of existing? I mean how incredibly boring would that be? *



God is in charge of all time. He is in charge of everything sort of... he made all matter, or made things easy for us to make our own things. If He is in charge of time, then He can look at what happened 30 years ago, as if it was the present. He brought destruction to the dinosaurs since they killed each other and just brought chaos upon the world, so He brought in asteroids and meteors to kill them. Perhaps our fate is being stored for us, since He knows when things will occur. I am surprised we are all still alive, since we aren't much different from the dinosaurs. There are killings, kidnappings, rapes, theft, and many more horrible things, which are refered to as sins. There are wars! Millions of people being murdered, over one tiny stupid thing.
And boredom is caused when we dont have our things to do.... like our macs. We'd be bored if all things were taken away from us, because they'd be taken away. But God didn't have possetions. He made it though. He made the universe, so He had something to do. He couldn't go on his playstation 2, that would be foolish, it just can't happen.
Well, there's my longest post, read it, i think it makes sense.


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## Androo (Jul 12, 2003)

I have some things to add. About the whole knowledge and choices. Since God is all-knowing, He already knows the right decision. It's not like it would take time to think it over. It would be decided in something faster than time. God is not a human, remember that. Why do you think He is prayed to? We don't find our friend Nick, and start praying to him! God only made us as something in his image. You know the story with Adam and Eve. Adam was created as something that was similar to God. It said in something i read.
Hey, you know how you said He got bored? While waiting for things to form. What did He do all that time He wasn't making things. He couldn't have been created, because He IS the creator of all things. He was just always around. It makes your mind feel strange, because we were always tought that everything has a start and a finish. Not everything!

?


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## Androo (Jul 12, 2003)

> _Originally posted by toast _
> *Wrong, serpico. If God wasn't lienar, he wouldn't have rested on the 7th day
> 
> But what do I know ? I'm agnostic too...  *



He was working for 6 days STRAIGHT then He stopped on the 7th day. He started his eternal rest. Though His eternal rest became more and more uneasy......Look at what we've become! We are all lazy, and we eat. We steal (we as in humans). We discriminate. We put people down. It started with Adam eating that one apple. He disobeyed the rules!

We get an eternal rest too though. Though it is not after 6 days. Once we are old enough, we die. Then we rest until the end of time....... and once again, i want to add that some things don't end. TIME!


EDIT: lol just to add on AGAIN....... i find this world like macosx.com. Scott made the forum, then we joined. We interact with eachother. We sometimes disobey the set rules, like giving links to software or swearing. And  eventually, we will leave, or the forum will just go away.


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## Darkshadow (Jul 13, 2003)

Time will end, Androo.  Time is closely linked to space (spatial distances, not outer space).

At some point, all the mass in the universe will disappear, which will pretty much negate space - when that happens, time will disappear too.


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## chevy (Jul 13, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Darkshadow _
> *Time will end, Androo.  Time is closely linked to space (spatial distances, not outer space).
> 
> At some point, all the mass in the universe will disappear, which will pretty much negate space - when that happens, time will disappear too. *



At least one guy who understood his physics lectures... good.


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## habilis (Jul 13, 2003)

Actually, there's another theory about the end of space and time, it's called the Big Crunch. Basically what happens is all the gravitational forces from dark matter will start massing galaxies together in to superclusters until there is a gravitational force so strong in the universe that it will collapse in on itself like one gigantic black hole. There is already evidence for this in the fact that the universe isn't expanding as fast as it used to be, it's slowing down due to increasing gravity that pulls it back in towards the center. When it fianlly stops expanding alltogether, it will slowly begin to fall back in on itself.

What many people think, including myself, will happen when the universe finally does collapse, is that it will explode again into another Big Bang, creating a bran new universe. This process is cyclical, like all things natural, and makes the most sense to me. a good question is what started this cycle? To me, whatever started this incredible cycle is "God".

Everything in the universe has a beginning and an end, so then the same logic must apply to evrything within it, including the universe itself.


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## toast (Jul 13, 2003)

He speaks like Hubert Reeves.


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## Androo (Jul 13, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Darkshadow _
> *Time will end, Androo.  Time is closely linked to space (spatial distances, not outer space).
> 
> At some point, all the mass in the universe will disappear, which will pretty much negate space - when that happens, time will disappear too. *



But God will still be alive, since He can't die! He's not like us, we're only human. Before He created space, He was still there. Then He started building and didn't stop. He split the water, and a sky was made! To him time was running. Not seconds and minutes,  but He was doing things, which requires time.
Meh, just the way I see things  yours makes sense too! Who says anything could be true?
There were dinosaurs. How come no one ever mentioned that  in the stories when the world was being created? It said God just created the world, and suddenly animals and the 2 humans were made! The Dinosaurs were never mentioned.


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## Androo (Jul 13, 2003)

Habillis.... this reminds me of something.
The end of the world... It was said that it would have fire like hell, destruction. All matter will burn to the ground. Perhaps  the theory that you mentioned will be the end... the stars would come toward earth, the planets along with them. All the stars will burn all planets, all the systems, and worst of all - EARTH! No more macs 
i hope all  our macs go to heaven


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## habilis (Jul 13, 2003)

The "End"

Remember in the original Star Wars movie when the Death Star fired that powerful energy beam at that planet and destroyed it completely, and at that moment, Obi Wan said "I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if a thousand voices all cried out at once, then were silent". I was just reminded of that. 

But actually the end of the universe will come about quite slowly, as in taking billions of years. the closer in towards the core of the Universe you are, the greater the gravitational pull you would feel, there, at the core there would be cataclysmic events like planets colliding, but for the rest of the universe, our demise would be slow; for example, the sun and planets would start to be gently pulled out of their normal orbits, and our planet would either start to get very very cold or very very hot depending on which way our planet got pulled in relation to the sun. Over the course of a hundred years, the Earth might get so hot that all recognizable life would become extinct, the atmosphere would evaporate into the vacume of space, and the seas would evaporate. Then over the next hundred years, the temperature plunges to -200f, killing of any bacteria that still existed. Our planet would turn into a barren rock devoid of all life, looking much like mars, slowly plunging toward the core of the universe. 

That would be our fate. And here we are now, killing each other over religion.


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## habilis (Jul 13, 2003)

Of course by the time the Big Crunch comes, mankind will no longer exist in the form we live in now. By then we will have genetically engineered our bodies and minds to suit our new environments, and figured out how to bend and fold space and time.






"What me worry?"


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## Androo (Jul 13, 2003)

hehehehe
i like star wars, it's gotta be the greatest space movie (well, movies, plural, there's been so many already).
But that just shows how modern technology could create so much destruction. Possibly that will happen to us - technology will be so advanced that Iraq may blow earth up, while trying to blow up america. (just an example).
"What happened down there?" asked Saddam jr. "Oops! i accidentally blew up earth..." said Boohad


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## habilis (Jul 14, 2003)

You're right Androo, our genes are our worst enemy. Our nature, which is often violent and selfish, and leads us into wars, is what will prevent us from evolving. We may very well destroy ourselves before humanity sees another 10,000 years. An anti-matter bomb is theoretically possible to build. Say, in the year 11,258 AD, an individual, genetically enhanced by the military for intelligence, figures out how to build one. It's easily powerful enough to destroy our entire solar system.  I don't doubt that the reason why we don't hear much chatter in the radio telescopes is because a good percentage of intelligent civilizations end up destroying themselves. Kind of a downer.


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## Satcomer (Jul 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by habilis _
> *You're right Androo, our genes are our worst enemy. Our nature, which is often violent and selfish, and leads us into wars, is what will prevent us from evolving. We may very well destroy ourselves before humanity sees another 10,000 years. An anti-matter bomb is theoretically possible to build. Say, in the year 11,258 AD, an individual, genetically enhanced by the military for intelligence, figures out how to build one. It's easily powerful enough to destroy our entire solar system.  I don't doubt that the reason why we don't hear much chatter in the radio telescopes is because a good percentage of intelligent civilizations end up destroying themselves. Kind of a downer. *



I disagree with your not evolving premise. I was under the understanding that conflict and war has spurned mankind on in evolving. Think about all the technology you use today. One, the internet was created so the US government had a reliable way to communicate in case of a nuclear war. Fiber Optic modems (a product of the Cold War). The computer (do the europeans forget it was a european war in which the British [they were clever during WW2] was developed to break codes. The spawn of real flying machines that worked. The list goes on.

Now I DO NOT think wars are good. With todays technology war is not regional anymore. However, the history proves wars (in the past) have forced mankind to evolve or die. I am a firm believer an animal (man too) will not evolve unless it encounters a problem to over come or an environmental change. For mankind it has been no different.


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## habilis (Jul 14, 2003)

satcomer: You're right, plenty of good inventions came out of war, but probably a greater portion of destructive devices comes from it. And even if the worlds greatest peaceful invention comes from war technology, something like cold fusion or weather control systems, we won't be around to enjoy our technological evolutions if we end up destroying humanity with the megaweapons we discovered in concert with them.

Not to mention, in a timeframe of a few thousand years, eventually these weapons are sure to fall into the wrong hands.


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## Androo (Jul 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Darkshadow _
> *Time will end, Androo.  Time is closely linked to space (spatial distances, not outer space).
> 
> At some point, all the mass in the universe will disappear, which will pretty much negate space - when that happens, time will disappear too. *


yeah my brain is just going crazy.... imagining a non-time universe. There won't be anything. Try to picture in your head a nothing. No color. It won't be like a white room, it will be nothing. If you try to look down from heaven, you will see a nothing.
But what if there is no heaven? that would suck.


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## kalantna (Jul 14, 2003)

I say that the entity that most refer to as God has gotten bored.

Look at the Platypus


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 14, 2003)

Well, I noticed that the thread changed focus from "God must be bored" to "Human evolution, war, and technology".

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Humans will continue to wage war against one another for several reasons: politics, religious beliefs, economic injustices, social beliefs, racial differences.  Why?

Every organism in nature competes in the environment for resources.  Humans compete in the same arena but have included a much more complicated environment, whether it is for energy (oil), economic and political might (power), cultural dominance (less differences, less conflict, less war), education (the more educated people are, the more power they have and the more likely they can recognize we all have more in common than differences).

2.  Right now the planet Earth has too many cultural, social, political, and economic gradients.  Wealth, technological prowess, and power of many nations and governments differ significantly such that the differences themselves are the cause for conflict.  Remember, organisms in nature find a niche in the environment and use their "tools" to their advantage.  Same goes for humans.  This is why many corporate executives are outsourcing A LOT of high tech jobs to India, China, Taiwan, etc... because those companies can reap the PROFITS from lower paid workers.  In effect, one nation is taking advantage of another nation's population to do the "grunt work" of certain industries.  Very short-sighted in my opinion; CNN has an articles about this here: 

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/07/14/moves.offshore.ap/index.html

3.  As long as these gradients exist, there will be conflict.  When the human race begins to coalesce and become more homogenious, then these differences will become less apparent, and less conflict will lead to less conflict and war.

4. The first equilibrium that we are experiencing will be in economics.  Jobs and labor are shifting all over the world.  When the labor costs equilibrate, hence, there will no longer be cheaper or cheapest labor market, then economic differences will dissapate.  After that happens, the cultural and technological prowess too will equilibrate.  Everyone will more or less be "even" on the economic, cultural, and social scales.  There may be slight differrences still, but we will all tolerate one another much better.

5. There will always be some perceived gradient of injustice in the population, i.e., "the haves" and "the have nots".  And I believe that eventually this will be due to psychological (genetic) differences in the population.  There exist people who are full of energy and motivation, and others who are slower.  This is likely a matter of genetics or circumstance (traumatic injury) and cannot be helped, but that's life, we all have certain talents and gifts, it's up to us to find out what they are and live the lives we're intended to live.

As for God being bored with his/her creation, I don't think so, s/he's having too much fun participating in everything in the universe.


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## habilis (Jul 14, 2003)

Einstein once said "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Right on Al, you tell em!

Seriously though, I'm now and have always been a subscriber to Spinoza's God. Read more about Einstein's view of God here: http://www.skeptic.com/archives50.html


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## Satcomer (Jul 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by habilis _
> *Einstein once said "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Right on Al, you tell em!
> 
> Seriously though, I'm now and have always been a subscriber to Spinoza's God. Read more about Einstein's view of God here: http://www.skeptic.com/archives50.html *



Do you think he knows the answer now?

(sorry if that sounded rude: it just I feel as human beings we are all wrong about God. I believe no one will ever be right. IMHO the religions of the world are not correct...only the one YOU believe in MAY be closer to the truth .. but I'll stick to my belief [religion] and you should be aloud to believe in what you want but do not force it upon others)


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## Perseus (Jul 14, 2003)

How will the religious people of this planet react if life (bacterial) whether fossilized or living is found elswhere?


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## habilis (Jul 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Satcomer _
> ...I feel as human beings we are all wrong about God. I believe no one will ever be right. IMHO the religions of the world are not correct...only the one YOU believe in MAY be closer to the truth .. but I'll stick to my belief [religion] and you should be aloud to believe in what you want but do not force it upon others



Amen Brother


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## habilis (Jul 14, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Perseus _
> How will the religious people of this planet react if life (bacterial) whether fossilized or living is found elswhere?


Easy. It will be dismissed as one of their Gods creations, just that it's existance was improperly translated in the holy documents pertaining to their religion. 

NASA already found microbes on a meteorite and the catholic church already dismissed it as such.

To think that we stupid immature homo sapiens are "it" in the entire universe is the ulimate expression of interstellar human earthnocentristic arrogance.

Don't be an egocentric earthnocentrist. Like that word? I just made it up.


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## Giaguara (Jul 14, 2003)

Of all the religious ... stuff that i had to study at school, only because my mother had decided so (the first thing i did the day i was 18 was go to the church registries and to un-sign me off there!) .. the thing that disturbed me the most, among all those 20000 gazillion questions i had as a kid and that the adult could not answer (they sounded like kids compared to me!) - is that nobody ever gave a satisfying answer: If god created the world and everything that exists, who created him/her or how did he/she begin?

"He always has existed" is not a satisfactory answer.


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## Arden (Jul 14, 2003)

Okay, time for the Jewish kid to insert the Jewish joke that explains everything.

Moishe had lived his life to the fullest, and finally his time came and he went to Heaven.  When he got there, he met God and God asked him if he had any questions.

Moishe said, "Well I've lived my life to the best it can be, but there are a few things I'd like to know.  What is the worth of a million dollars in Heaven?"

God said, "A single penny."

"And what is the worth of a million years in Heaven?"

God replied, "A single second."

Moishe then asked, "In that case, may I have a penny?"

And God said, "Would you wait a second?"


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## Androo (Jul 14, 2003)

lol
that means that we just all made a penny  for a second.
wait a second (lol), how was that a jewish joke (besides having the obviously jewish name of moishe)?????
meh, it was funny!

funny


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## habilis (Jul 15, 2003)

To live eternally, forever, in a paradise, and have whatever you want sounds like Hell to me.

There was a Twilight Zone episode about that one time. This gambler in Vegas started winning all his hands, every roll of the dice, every card game, he was winning them all, and reaping all the money, and then he had all the girls, and cars, and whatever he wanted, but alas, he soon realized that he was actually dead. A man in a suit appears and the gambler is all upset at him that heaven turned out so wierd, but in a callm soothing voice the man assures the gambler that "this isn't heaven sir, it's Hell."  

The sweet is sweeter with the sour, there can't be pleasure if there's no pain.

Heaven just needs a few updates, patches, mods, bug fixes, and tweeks and it would be really really cool. In fact it would look exactly like my life is now. What I mean is, this is heaven right now, the fact that you even came into existance and can think is astronomical, a 1 in a trillion chance. This is probably gonna be it boys and girls, enjoy it while you can. Woody Allen said it best when he said "We don't know if there's a God, but we do know there's women."


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 15, 2003)

habilis,

How do we know we're not in Heaven now?  As you said, we can't have pleasure without pain.

In fact I went to bed last night thinking about this thread.  If God created the universe, and God is all knowing, is the universe an extension of God's mind?  Are we (life forms) nothing more than complicated molecular programs running inside God's head?  An idea with a finite fleeting existence that fades away or is transformed into some other entity?


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## habilis (Jul 15, 2003)

Chem: yeah, kinda like the Universe within a Universe theory; if you look at space, everything follows a pattern, guided by the rules of physics. 

The moon orbits the Earth,
the Earth orbits the sun
the sun orbits our galactice core, the Milky Way
the Milky Way orbits a huge supercluster of other galaxies

It might follow that our universe itself is in the shape of a bubble and orbits something else. There may be many bubble universes outside our own bubble, all behaving like stars. Maybe all these bubbles mass together and orbit something huge that looks like a spiral galaxy. Maybe that's the way we'll eventally learn to escape the inevitable death of our universe, is by breaking through the walls of our "bubble" into the next one.

I don't neccessarily subscibe to this theory, but anything's possible.

But all that is, academic, because we're so busy on this little planet killing _each other_ in the name of fanciful deities that we don't have time to _waste_ thinking about these ideas, we're just too busy.


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## Androo (Jul 15, 2003)

My mom read a book about a psychic who saw heaven in her dreams.
The evil are separated from the good. There is no hell where you are eternally torutured, forever living in fire. Besides, that's just an image that a book once said about a demon named satan, the fallen angel.
And till the end of time, you read. You gain knowledge. And perhaps you eventually have a second life, back to earth.


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 15, 2003)

Androo,

What's the book title and author?  ISBN number?


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## habilis (Jul 21, 2003)

I just thought of another one this morning to oppose my original 'Heaven is Hell' theory; 
Ok, let's say there actually _is_ heaven, the kind all the religious people talk about where you get everything you want in a supernatural world of pure neverending happiness. Well, on second thought, that _could_ work. If you get everything you want, then all you have to do is _Want_ to not ever be bored, _Want_ to live the life of a mortal and not remember your past, _Want_ to sleep for 1000 years and wake up fully refreshed, _Want_ to see life on other planets, _Want_ to visit your dead friends, _Want_ to create your own universe, and eventually, after billions of years, _want_ to be God, and you could be, and you would be, wouldn't you?

please note I don't believe a word of that.


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## Cat (Jul 21, 2003)

That would be tricky. Imagine all the kind of wierd stuff people would try out as soon as they discover how it works ... several of the things I would try out at first would have excluded me from heaven if I had tried them on earth ...

Incidentally you might want to read the last chapter of "The history of the World in 10 and 1/2 chapters" by Julian Barnes (the chapter that begins with "I dreamt that I woke up, it's the oldest dream of all and I just had it." IIRC it was the last one.)

"The mind is its own place and in it can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven" (Satan's speech, from John Milton, Paradise Lost)


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## wiz (Jul 21, 2003)

> _Originally posted by habilis _
> *I just thought of another one this morning to oppose my original 'Heaven is Hell' theory;
> Ok, let's say there actually is heaven, the kind all the religious people talk about where you get everything you want in a supernatural world of pure neverending happiness. Well, on second thought, that could work. If you get everything you want, then all you have to do is Want to not ever be bored, Want to live the life of a mortal and not remember your past, Want to sleep for 1000 years and wake up fully refreshed, Want to see life on other planets, Want to visit your dead friends, Want to create your own universe, and eventually, after billions of years, want to be God, and you could be, and you would be, wouldn't you?
> 
> please note I don't believe a word of that. *



obviously u don't have a clue what heaven is all about. i can tell u one thing for sure: once ur in heaven, there's no need to want for anything.


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## habilis (Jul 21, 2003)

> _Originally posted by wiz _
> *obviously u don't have a clue what heaven is all about.*


And you do? of course I don't know what it's "all about", that's whole point here.  Please don't keep your extended knowledge of heaven and the secrets of the universe a secret from us any longer, please enlighten us as to what it's "all about".


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## Arden (Jul 27, 2003)

Wiz, please don't be so pretentious.  Unless you've actually been there and back (and that would be a nice trick), you have no idea what heaven is either.  Heaven is in the clouds, with a big gate through which people enter.  Heaven is a neverending party/disco/wedding reception/etc. that you never have to leave.  Heaven is being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Same with hell:  Hell is neverending fire.  Hell is being tortured for eternity.  Hell is being unable to do anything you want, no matter how badly.

The truth is, only those who are there know.  Don't preach that "Heaven is this way" and "Hell is this way" because those are simply stories that somebody made up one day, and thought would be the perfect *representation* of heaven or hell.  Habilis's theory sounds perfectly plausible, moreso than fluffy clouds, pearly gates, wings, and a harp (that all sounds rather hellish to me, actually).

But if you're so smart, then _please_ enlighten us as to what heaven is _all_ about.


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## Jason (Jul 27, 2003)

keep in mind guys, your personal belief is just that, a belief, not a fact, that goes for religious faith and scientific theories, so lets try to keep this all civilized and open minded


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## Ricky (Jul 28, 2003)

But imagine how much fun He must be having now, watching all the life-forms in the universe slowly grow and change...    I would hope it would be very entertaining.


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## Giaguara (Jul 28, 2003)

Interesting but untill the invention of the jewish religion, most existing religions by that time (like 6000 y ago or more) tended to have mostly female gods.


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## Ricky (Jul 28, 2003)

Alright, He or She.


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## Arden (Jul 28, 2003)

They were probably horny.  

I have no doubts that our God is perceived as male because of the strong matriarchal structure of the religion back at the time.  Even today, among the more religious Jewish circles (Orthodox, Hassidic, etc.), men and women have specific roles that they do not deviate from:  men conduct services, read from Torah, women take care of the home, raise the children; they even separate the genders during services in religious shuls.

Interestingly, there is no hell in the Jewish religion.  In my opinion, there is no heaven either, but I completely hope there is, because I can't imagine what not being alive would be like if there were nothing more.  Reincarnation would be interesting.


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## Darkshadow (Jul 28, 2003)

Hmm, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a hell in the early christian bible, either, Arden.  Added later to add incentive for people to not sin, I believe.  Can't prove that, of course, but it's inline with other stuff that has been added/removed/changed in the Bible over the years.

Personally, I believe that the afterlife (heaven, if you want) is what you make of it.  If you believe you'll go up to into the clouds, stand in front of some gate with St. Peter there, that's what'll happen.  Or if you believe that death is it, there's no more...that's what will happen.  Purely subjective.

As to hell, I don't really believe in a hell.  I do believe in a sort of...hmm...limbo, I suppose would be the best way to describe it.  The movie What Dreams May Come describes it pretty well - _"[Hell] is your life gone wrong"_.  It was put for suicides, but I believe it's for anyone that's done something they've felt is totally wrong.  I don't believe, however, that one would be stuck there for eternity.  I believe once one admits or accepts what they've done wrong, they'll move on, so to speak.  There's a short story by Clive Barker that illustrates what I believe pretty well, too, though I can't remember the name of it.  Basically, it's about a dream a guy keeps having, of a place.  In this place there's a lot of _places_ all mixed together.  The guy doesn't see anyone there at first, but after a while, he figures out that all of these places are murder scenes, and stuck in them are the people that have committed the murder(s) there.  At first glance he never noticed the people there, because they're pretty still most of the time.  At one point, he _does_ notice somebody moving.  He sees a man leave one of the places there, and go racing out into the desert (err, there's a desert surrounding all of the jumbled-up places).  The man drops some weapon (a knife, I think) as he's going, and suddenly he disappears in a flash of light...and the guy dreaming hears a baby's crying as he does.  So, pretty much, the place is a kind of purgatory, where the murderers are trapped until they come to terms with what they've done, after where they're reborn to try again.

BTW, Arden, reincarnation is a religious belief where you keep being born over and over again until you don't sin at all (pretty much).  I'm thinking you mean more of just being reborn over and over again, which isn't exactly what reincarnation is about.


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## wiz (Jul 28, 2003)

hey for me heaven is just the closest i can get to God. thats it!


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 28, 2003)

It seems that many people believe different things about death, and the after life.  Personally, I believe that when we die, most of us will probably "see our lives flash before our eyes" one final time, and quickly sink into a dream-like world until all those neurons stop firing away.  I think that at that moment, we will perceive eternity because as the neurons begin to die, they will be firing away that last "expereince" that we, in our mind, will experience.  Will it be heaven?  Of course it will.  Will it be hell?  It could be that too.  Our journey to the after life will probably depend on our belief system and whether or not we believe we lived a good life.  The reason I say that it will be dream-like is because of some recent reading of several postings on Slashdot that mention a Turing Machine, a machine that mimics reality.  No such machine can exist because the calculations to mimic reality would be infinite, this is why our dreams are so "whacked-out and strange", the mind does the best that it can to mimic reality in a dream.  I mention this because so many people are starting to introduce "beliefs, culture, the bible, education, environment, etc..." into the discussion.

Also, I think these books are relevant ot the discussion:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...3373789/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/103-2063648-5263837

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...3381166/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3/104-7777727-8324721

I started reading both, very VERY good books.  This is not light reading folks, this is rather deep material.  And the author does mention the after life in these books.


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## Giaguara (Jul 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by arden _
> *Interestingly, there is no hell in the Jewish religion.  In my opinion, there is no heaven either, but I completely hope there is, because I can't imagine what not being alive would be like if there were nothing more.  Reincarnation would be interesting. *



Well, Christians market that you get an "eternal life". As life in too many things suck, i'd rather just get a nirvana or illumination and that's it.

Reincarnation. .. i thikn there are some mentions about it in the jewish literature (sacred) - and there used to be too in Bible.  "_ Nowadays, there is little doubt that early Christians gave more credence to the concept of rebirth than was later  the case. The main figure responsible for this change was no churchman but an ambitious, worldly and powerful figure  Emperor Justinius. In the year 553, quite independently of the Pope, Justinius had the teachings of the church father  Origen (185-253) banned by a synod._"  (here) << not probably the most lightnening viewpoint to this thing but the first i could find fast. There are a lot of more stuff out there, just google for bible, reincarnation and emperor.  I think there's too much weird stuff in the life that can't be only conincidences.


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Giaguara _
> *I think there's too much weird stuff in the life that can't be only conincidences. *



Could you please provide some examples?


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## Giaguara (Jul 28, 2003)

Never needing the map in a city  you are the first time in as you already know where everything is ... understanding /speaking languaes that you have never studied and that are not close to any of the languages you know (like greek or japanese if you only know latin languages and english).. and all such simple things as why some things (places, cities, nations, persons, objects etc) are familiar and others dgisturb without you being able to give a rational reason why. And some places that you always _dreamed_ of and once found in the real life .. all the fears. People living close to sea that are afraid of water and never learn to swim. I have a fear of tunnels and rooms underground (the underground is ok, never had problems there though) like cellars .. and crowds. In a middle of a lot of people (e.g. concerts) make me feel uncomfrotable - and i'm not sure i can accuse the 'disturbance caused by unknown people stepping on my personal space without my allowance' or if all those things come from somewhere far far in time. I can be in an open space 300 feet in the air and watch down and want to go higher but being in a place that is 8 feet or over under ground makes me nervous (sometimes even if the place is not underground like and is nice). Or why do I feel so familiar in the deserts of Arizona if i've lived in tropics, mediterranean (not desert) and the lame northern europe & uk? Or read a book of something thousands of years ago (ancient indians, egypt, mesopotamia etc) and know that what you are reading is not true, that you _know_ something was far different from what you read. Or know letters and words of an alphabet you haven't ever studied ... are those enough examples?


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## chemistry_geek (Jul 28, 2003)

Excellent!


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## habilis (Jul 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by chemistry_geek _
> It seems that many people believe different things about death, and the after life.  Personally, I believe that when we die, most of us will probably "see our lives flash before our eyes" one final time, and quickly sink into a dream-like world until all those neurons stop firing away. I think that at that moment, we will perceive eternity because as the neurons begin to die, they will be firing away that last "expereince" that we, in our mind, will experience.


Yes, that sounds very much like what I've always thought death would be like unless you died suddenly and violently in a car accident, shotgun blast to the head, bullet through your cereberal cortex and hypothalamus, if that happened, there would be no gentle fading, and what happenes to those poor souls? I've wondered about that before.

All I can really say about death is, I'm afraid of dying, but not at all afraid of death, I know it will feel good.


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## Arden (Jul 28, 2003)

And I want neither, but I know it must come some day.

I don't think there is a hell because no one wants to go there.  Who goes to hell?  The evil people, the bad people.  But who determines which people fall into this category?  Despite what the clergies of the world would like you to believe, no one, actually.  Nobody can classify any other person as evil because we all have some good in us, and some bad.  Evil is only in relation to he who calls the name.  To the mosquito, you swatting them is an act of evil and you should go to hell for murder, but to you you are merely ridding the world of a pest.  Therefore, we all go to our own version of heaven, yes even Hitler, Stalin, Brutus, and eventually Saddam Hussein, because the rest of humanity can not condemn you to rot in hell.


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## habilis (Jul 28, 2003)

Yep, evil is relative.


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