# God is some kind of intelligent force in the universe? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 20, 2013, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860 "2013-02-20T04:10:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/81 "2013-02-23T01:50:14Z")
Well I didn’t say I’d keep on believing in a god forever… so I might give up belief in a god again. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/82 "2013-02-23T06:51:21Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > What about the other people who the house was perfect for who didn’t get it? Is the fact they didn’t get it a sign to them that there is no god? I’m looking at building a house at the moment but the perfect house is far more expensive than I can afford. Does that mean there is no god? Is god only interested in you? Is it your god but not mine? Why do lots of good people have bad shit happen to them? Why are you special that you got the perfect house but some other person got killed in a motorcycle accident last month? > > I know it is very hard for some people to accept, but stuff happens all the time. Some times the stuff that happens has an effect on people. Sometimes the effect is good sometimes it is bad. Just because something happened to someone does not mean that a god is controlling events, all it means is that stuff is happening. > > P.S. I’m using “god” as a substitute for your “intelligent force” as they are effectively the same thing. I think that where religion falls down is that they are always talking about a “personal” god that makes stuff happen to us, and knows the future, which means that they have to believe that their god kills millions of people in horrible ways and also wants bad stuff to happen to people. I can believe in a “life force” or “god” that created everything, but I don’t know that “he” cares about me, as if he did, he really doesn’t like me or my family much. However, for those that say “god” doesn’t exist, what do they think caused the “big bang”, or what caused the stuff that caused the stuff that caused the “big bang”? For that matter, how did “god” come to exist? Thinking about stuff like that is probably insolvable, as there isn’t a single person alive that “knows” as opposed to “believing”. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/83 "2013-02-23T07:02:49Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > …However, for those that say “god” doesn’t exist, what do they think caused the “big bang”, or what caused the stuff that caused the stuff that caused the “big bang”?.. I haven’t read it, but check out Lawrence M. Krauss - A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing > **[A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing: Krauss,...](https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X)** > > Buy A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders > [@](#): > > For that matter, how did “god” come to exist? He’s meant to be eternal and unchanging… ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/84 "2013-02-23T07:23:20Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > However, for those that say “god” doesn’t exist, what do they think caused the “big bang”, or what caused the stuff that caused the stuff that caused the “big bang”? There’s various theories, no one knows as yet. > [@Doggo](#): > > For that matter, how did “god” come to exist? Some ancestor of the Jews made the idea up, naturally. As opposed to the gods and whatnot that were made up by other people. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/85 "2013-02-23T13:22:57Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > In the case of Buddhism they usually believe that there is something there besides physical reality… e.g. some believe in reincarnation. I don’t know much about Buddhism though. > [@JohnClay](#): > > Now that I think about it, what about Buddhism? I think they believe in an intelligent force but not any gods…? Though I did promise to believe in “god”. What Buddhists believe about the nature of reality totally depends. Buddha himself wasn’t very interested in this question, and essentially felt that asking it was missing the point. What matters is the here and now and how we deal with that. But there are many strains of Buddhism that have mixed with local beliefs of various cultures and involve a belief in gods or non-corporeal beings of some sort. And there are plenty who believe in reincarnation, I think owing to the influence of the Hindu tradition, but there are others who feel the concept of reincarnation logically conflicts with the idea of equanimity. I am an agnostic with atheist leanings and I don’t believe in reincarnation for the reason stated above. I just don’t think you can assume what any given Buddhist believes about the existence of god or intelligent life forces. I don’t think you can easily generalize, either. > [@JohnClay](#): > > What if I were to accept that “life is suffering” (one of the “noble truths”) and from there tried to work out how to deal with it… that would be pretty “personally satisfying” to me. I was basically satisfied with the universe as well before I learned about the house. Funny you mention life satisfaction. A better translation of the first noble truth would be something like, ‘‘Life is dissatisfaction.’’ It’s not the same thing as suffering, but more of a continuous internal sense of things not being exactly how you want them to be. Personally I think pain is an inevitable part of life that cannot be avoided. I believe we do have a certain degree of control, however, over the extent we suffer - the extent we are psychologically resistant to life’s pain. But I think it is impossible for anyone to completely end their suffering because that is the human condition. Not to get all meta but I think of enlightenment as the state where you accept that not only dissatisfaction, not only pain, but suffering also is an inevitable part of life. > [@Doggo](#): > > Thinking about stuff like that is probably insolvable, as there isn’t a single person alive that “knows” as opposed to “believing”. My opinion as well. It still drives me nuts though. I know plenty of people who have drawn the same conclusion and accepted it, but I really struggle to accept that we don’t and can’t know if there is a point to all this and what, specifically, that point is. **Richard Pearse** I am loving your posts in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/86 "2013-02-24T21:39:43Z")
> [@Lightnin](#): > > Isn’t that exactly the same thing as saying, “God exists, but he lies to us?” There’s all this evidence that the universe is a lot older than six thousand years, and that it didn’t need a god to come into existence… so if God exists, he’s the ultimate con artist. Or the people who wrote the Old Testament are. It’s not like God wrote Genesis, after all… ---
**Author:** ![duchessofdork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@duchessofdork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duchessofdork)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/87 "2013-02-25T07:31:24Z")
Wait. Aren’t you the poster who said he’d thought about having sexual contact with a baby? Please, please don’t have kids. > [@JohnClay](#): > > Like I mentioned, maybe a truth is “life is suffering”… I think Buddhists believe that there is an intelligent force in the universe. It doesn’t mean that this intelligence has to be against suffering… well if you use their principles you can help deal with the reality of suffering. > The house makes it possible for us to have kids with a fairly good standard of living… maybe there are some things that “should happen” given the right circumstances… BTW if the four of us couldn’t live together we’d be paying a lot more rent per couple (nearly 50% more) and each have less room per couple. > > BTW I just remembered what Jesus said to the devil when he tested him “Do not put the Lord to the test”. I think he was quoting the Old Testament. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/88 "2013-02-25T15:44:15Z")
All human beings are characters being played by their souls in heaven. Everyone has an angel as their game, er, life-master in direct contact with god. God is the physics engine that runs the whole thing. Characters are rolled up on the biggest random charts you’ve ever seen. I think I may I have posted this here before somewhere… ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/89 "2013-02-26T20:49:07Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > All human beings are characters being played by their souls in heaven. Everyone has an angel as their game, er, life-master in direct contact with god. God is the physics engine that runs the whole thing. Characters are rolled up on the biggest random charts you’ve ever seen. > > I think I may I have posted this here before somewhere… And you know, and cprove this..or is it just your belief? ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/90 "2013-02-26T21:36:49Z")
> [@duchessofdork](#): > > Wait. Aren’t you the poster who said he’d thought about having sexual contact with a baby? > > Please, please don’t have kids. QFT ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/91 "2013-02-27T02:22:21Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > All human beings are characters being played by their souls in heaven. Everyone has an angel as their game, er, life-master in direct contact with god. God is the physics engine that runs the whole thing. Characters are rolled up on the biggest random charts you’ve ever seen. And the forces of Hell are goldsellers, gankers and creepy roleplayers. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/92 "2015-08-04T09:27:35Z")
Yesterday I was working on a local version of a PHP/jQuery site. I was testing it in different browsers. In Chrome it would stop working for minutes at a time then start working again. It seemed like changing the source code made it stop working but I couldn’t find the pattern properly. Anyway when I got home I was worried about it. My wife asked me what I was worried about and then offered to pray for me. She prayed out loud for me and asked if she wanted her brother to pray too and he did (not in my presence). Anyway the next day the problem disappeared and I tested it for a couple of hours. I let my wife and her brother know that the problem disappeared but they haven’t been insisting that it was supernatural. BTW I try to avoid having things prayed for - though I’m an agnostic I have a theory that it is better to only pray for things that are really important rather than overuse it. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/93 "2015-08-04T15:56:20Z")
I don’t know what you mean by “intelligent force in the galaxy”. Humanity is one of these, is humanity God? Are you talking about an individual being, a species, or what? What would distinguish God from any random alien intelligent species or individual? What powers would an alien God have to have to make it different than other alien that just happens to have some better technology than we do? ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/94 "2015-08-04T16:03:29Z")
For those responding now, please notice that this is a two-year-old thread that JohnClay bumped to report on God as a Miracle Code Debugger. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/95 "2015-08-04T16:16:20Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > Anyway the next day the problem disappeared and I tested it for a couple of hours. That happens to me all the time, and no one has ever prayed over my code. Sacrificed a few mice, sure, but no prayers. Perhaps you should invest in a better debugger? ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/96 "2015-08-04T16:28:17Z")
God cleared your cache. Have a pleasant day. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/97 "2015-08-04T18:32:17Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > That happens to me all the time, and no one has ever prayed over my code. Sacrificed a few mice, sure, but no prayers. Perhaps you should invest in a better debugger? Elevating the problem to Tier II support (God) requires two people praying. Who knew? ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/98 "2015-08-04T18:45:11Z")
Some people believe that’s God’s son is a Zombie. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/99 "2015-08-04T18:48:24Z")
> [@Dag\_Otto](#): > > Elevating the problem to Tier II support (God) requires two people praying. Who knew? Your prayer is important to me, please wait for the next available angel. YOu are currently 5,782,397,843 in queue. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860/100 "2015-08-04T19:14:47Z")
Have you tried turning it off and having another Big Bang? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-is-some-kind-of-intelligent-force-in-the-universe/650860.md?page=6)