As a minor note, I wouldn’t hate the postulated God and buzzing followers, but I’m sure I’d be irritated by them if I couldn’t shut them out. Hating them would be giving them more consideration than they deserve.
Oh, Earth’s taken over by Heaven, but that’s OK. You also know the name of this place.
Well, you said “a world”. If if isn’t Earth, I’ll just call it Earth and write off the old place as being infested by termites or something.
Ok, this seems to be the big problem. I mean, presumably this is shown without any kind of godly restraint, right? I mean, if an omnipotent being decided to push certain facts into my mind, i’m not entirely sure how I could resist being altered by them. I mean, being shown those things by a person isn’t a guarantee that I will think “Well, those might well be so, but that doesn’t mean they provided the best proof of it before now”, but being shown by an omnipotent being, and one which knows exactly what I am like and so how to tell me, is pretty much a lock. Really I guess I disagree with your characterisation of it as a “free full-knowledge” choice. If you have full knowledge, then what choice do you have?
I don’t understand what the “downside” of this selection is. I mean, so far as I can tell, you’re saying that you could change your mind at any time (otherwise the evangelizing is a pretty cruel punishment). Were I capable of a choice at this point, i’m not sure i’d want either. I mean, I would certainly worship God in terms of power, if not necessarily agreement. I don’t think I would necessarily be against God; but I don’t think i’d want to get a cheap leg-up in terms of understanding things, in a sense. It seems a bit unreasonable that my choices are, to analogise, being a full-time supporter, turning up for all the games, wearing my team’s colours and chanting, etc, or never watching football again. But honestly I would imagine if I had a choice, i’d go with the latter and then after some time convert to the former, as i’d guess everyone probably would do at some point.
I’ll break with my fellow atheists here. Given the evidence at hand, I’m pretty convinced that if the OT god exists, it’s a horrific being. However, I have no more evidence than the theists do at my disposal. I tell them that it’s absurd for them to pretend they’re absolutely right with no possibility of being incorrect. It’d be equally absurd for me to pretend likewise.
At ANY TIME, if God wants to make its case to me, I’ll listen. (Note that the first part of the case is convincing me that I’m actually listening to God, and this is a pretty high hurdle to overcome, given all the yahoos out there who are already claiming they’re a vessel for God’s voice; nonetheless, this hurdle should prove insignificant to an omnipotent being).
As I see it, some of those explanations are going to be very difficult to make persuasively. However, I’ll listen. And if God can make the case persuasively–including a case that God deserves to be worshiped–then I’m willing to keep an open mind.
FriarTed, may I likewise assume that if you die and find yourself in Valhalla, and Odin makes the case that we face serious threats from the giants, you’ll train yourself to use a battle-axe?
Not seeing a downside.
Anyone ever read a Sci Fi short story called “Prot”?
I would probably worship him out of respect if he actually built the universe - his house, his rules.
I burnt several Sims alive for my own amusement - if the other Sims got pissy at me I’d probably tell them it was my computer and they will just have to live with it.
Hey, bartender. Give me one of them “Believing in God while hating him” with a twist.
“MMMM! This is the athiest drink I’ve ever had!”
Boy, you have some imagination. So many what-if-this and what-if-that in the OP it’s making my head spin. None of it sounds appealing to me, though.
And this:
sounds like something O’Brien from 1984 would say if he got religion.
The OP is pretty much trying to find, at what point, you HAVE to worship God.
I mean, you might as well just remove free will at that point. You can choose to worship God, or you can worship God. None of this “Well, you can choose not to, but life’s going to be miserable for you, but no, no, there’s no punishment for not choosing to bask in His magnificence halo”
Either He doesn’t care or He’s not worth respecting, much less worshiping. That’s all there is to it.
Quite logical.
I see Der Trihs has made another of his trademark “God is evil, any signs of theism is bad” comments.
I take issue with this.
You can’t trademark the truth.
I have read your mythology, and I have found it lacking. I, as an examined person, am more moral and good in mind and will than your God, without his permission. Why would I want to change my natural constitution for your vengeance and lies?
The more you describe your hypothetical God (pardon the redundancy), the more I want to run like hell away from it. You are making a great argument for atheism.
What if the Cybermen took over Earth, and started upgrading everyone?
Would you volunteer to be turned into a Cyberman? After all, once you’re upgraded your emotion inhibitor chip will make you not care about being turned into a Cyberman. You’ll remember your old life, but you won’t care anymore, and you’ll obey orders unquestioningly. And if you ask any Cyberman whether they want their emotion inhibitor chip disabled, they’ll refuse. And since any Cyberman who has their emotional inhibitor chip disabled will be in agony and despair over what they have been transformed into, wouldn’t it be cruel to do so?
And since everyone on Earth will eventually be hunted down and forceably upgraded by the Cybermen, wouldn’t it be worth it to just volunteer and get it over with?
In other words, even if you hated the Cybermen, wouldn’t you convert to being a Cyberman because there’s no alternative?
So the options are now:
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Join the annoying brainwashed elite, who have been given various incidental perks like being able to have kids or go back in time and kill Jesus or whatever, but have their free will significantly hampered by a constant irresistible compultion to spend all your time praising god and annoying the misotheists instead of doing the fun things.
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Be annihilated.
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Be tortured by the death of a thousand papercuts, of the constant annoyances of a light shining in the windows when you’re trying to sleep or watch TV, an unrelenting drone of worship and praise distracting you from your daily activities, and frequent visits by annoying Jehovah’s witnesses when you’re trying to sleep in or have sex or go to the bathroom. Also, you can’t have kids and your creative and time-traveling abilities are arbitrarily limited, because god’s a vindictive asshole.
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After being papercutted for an “adequate time”, you get to go to heaven.
How long is an “adequate time”, again?
Whoa, wait a sec, I thought we had to stay in heaven for an “adequate time”, then we were free to go on our way on a world not too different from present-day Earth and be completely free of God and his followers, which sounds pretty good to me.
Are you responding to me? At the end there I called Earth 2.0 heaven because it basically is - it’s got major differences from our current earth. “There will be no shortage of anything you need, but you have to stay there & you have no choice about who else chooses to go there also. You all can discuss & argue & have sex & fight. There are limits to the pain you can cause each other but you still can cause some pain to each other. Same with pleasure.”
Obviously this depends on how bait-and-switchily you define “need”, but if it’s even slightly honest, you’re talking about a (magically) post-scarcity society. Remove individual scarcity and you’ve solved about 98% of society’s problems. Remove the ability to seriously cause pain and you remove the other 2% - though since one of my needs is to have the ability to be defended from threats, that’s already taken care of with the magical post-scarcity alone. The presence of other people on the planet is no problem because my needs include a way to create a space that is isolated and defended from uninvited people.
Earth 2.0 is heaven. Heaven 1.0 is hell - you’re either as slave or under torment by the slaves. I know where I’d rather be.