Are We Living In God's "Matrix"?

[dissily mordentroge]

I still think "god" encompasses all of that :p Breaking out of your comfort zone is good.

To make any word's definition so universally vast is to risk destroying it's meaning.

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I'm curious what types of evidence would be necessary to influence your 100% certainty there is no intelligence to the design of reality? I mean, simply the fact that intelligent life exists seems to imply we are experiencing more than just random, chaotic matter flying around in space. But that's just my opinion...

You have exactly one data point for "intelligence" and that would be humanity. A species that can't feed its young, can't protect the only environment is has for survival, is constantly at war, is burning through finite resources at an unsustainable rate, and has armed itself to the point of being able to destroy its own civilization in a single day. We are a species of unending violence, ignorant enough to deny the the observations of our own eyes if it conflicts with our "religion" and quite willing to exterminate anyone who disagrees with us. We are arrogant, self-righteous, greedy, mean, and petty.

So your suggestion that there must be an intelligent designer somewhere because "we" are intelligent is pure hubris. Insisting that only a superior intelligence of some kind, a deity or designer, could explain our being in the cosmos is even more hubris. Indeed, one might just as easily infer that having creatures like humanity on the loose is a pretty good indication that there is no intelligent design behind the cosmos.

Anyway, for all you know this is exactly what happens with a complex enough concentration of biological chemical / electrical energy in a natural environment. At the heart of all religion / gods is this belief that "we" are "special" and so "something intelligent must be involved". In my opinion that is nothing but egomania.

By and large well said but you miss one possibility ignored by most of the religious. That is, God, or whatever you want to call it/she/him could be in and of itself sado masochistic. The crucifixion if accepted as portrayed in Cristian theology, especially the trinitarian kind, would tend to reinforce such a suspicion. Or if you place any credence in so called Holy Books Genesis Ch:1.V:27 should scare the pants off you.
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;male and female created he them".
Taking this further we might ask those Christians who think of homosexaulity as a sin why the Creator placed the male prostate gland, a major G-spot, just inside the male anus. Something worth discussing at their next bible class?