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Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
#1
Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
This morning I am trying to sleep. My cat is making a bunch of noise.

I open my eyes to look at what she is doing and it appears she has discovered something that crawled in here, possibly a lizard.

I ignore that she is causing harm to another living thing, because it is in her cat nature to hunt. I do not try to stop her from doing what she is doing.

As I close my eyes to lay back down to go back to sleep, it occurs to me that in the above scenario what if I am god and my cat is a human harming another human?

Perhaps god does not intervene to stop human on human violence because he simply does not care about what is happening with us, perhaps god views it as our nature as human beings to act as we do and finds it pointless to intervene in any way. He is nothing more than a sometimes spectator of the lives far removed from his own nature, much in the way a typical human is uninterested in the lives of ants.

If god is real, which I still doubt, this is a more credible understanding of god's unknowable nature than that of the theistic point of view.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#2
Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
(July 14, 2017 at 7:55 am)Lutrinae Wrote: This morning I am trying to sleep. My cat is making a bunch of noise.

I open my eyes to look at what she is doing and it appears she has discovered something that crawled in here, possibly a lizard.

I ignore that she is causing harm to another living thing, because it is in her cat nature to hunt. I do not try to stop her from doing what she is doing.

As I close my eyes to lay back down to go back to sleep, it occurs to me that in the above scenario what if I am god and my cat is a human harming another human?

Perhaps god does not intervene to stop human on human violence because he simply does not care about what is happening with us, perhaps god views it as our nature as human beings to act as we do and finds it pointless to intervene in any way. He is nothing more than a sometimes spectator of the lives far removed from his own nature, much in the way a typical human is uninterested in the lives of ants.

If god is real, which I still doubt, this is a more credible understanding of god's unknowable nature than that of the theistic point of view.

How can one understanding of something unknowable be more credible than another? It's unknowable.
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#3
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
(July 14, 2017 at 7:58 am)Valyza1 Wrote:
(July 14, 2017 at 7:55 am)Lutrinae Wrote: This morning I am trying to sleep.  My cat is making a bunch of noise.

I open my eyes to look at what she is doing and it appears she has discovered something that crawled in here, possibly a lizard.

I ignore that she is causing harm to another living thing, because it is in her cat nature to hunt.  I do not try to stop her from doing what she is doing.

As I close my eyes to lay back down to go back to sleep, it occurs to me that in the above scenario what if I am god and my cat is a human harming another human?

Perhaps god does not intervene to stop human on human violence because he simply does not care about what is happening with us, perhaps god views it as our nature as human beings to act as we do and finds it pointless to intervene in any way.  He is nothing more than a sometimes spectator of the lives far removed from his own nature, much in the way a typical human is uninterested in the lives of ants.

If god is real, which I still doubt, this is a more credible understanding of god's unknowable nature than that of the theistic point of view.

How can one understanding of something unknowable be more credible than another? It's unknowable.

I agree.  Which is why I believe that all religions are equally false (though some are more obviously false than others).
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
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#4
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
(July 14, 2017 at 7:58 am)Valyza1 Wrote: How can one understanding of something unknowable be more credible than another? It's unknowable.

Unknowable in my OP is in italics due to the fact that even though something may be considered unknowable from a human standpoint, it does not prevent the curiosity of the human mind from attempting to understand that which, through process of reason, seems to not exist.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#5
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
(July 14, 2017 at 7:55 am)Lutrinae Wrote: This morning I am trying to sleep.  My cat is making a bunch of noise.

I open my eyes to look at what she is doing and it appears she has discovered something that crawled in here, possibly a lizard.

I ignore that she is causing harm to another living thing, because it is in her cat nature to hunt.  I do not try to stop her from doing what she is doing.

As I close my eyes to lay back down to go back to sleep, it occurs to me that in the above scenario what if I am god and my cat is a human harming another human?

Perhaps god does not intervene to stop human on human violence because he simply does not care about what is happening with us, perhaps god views it as our nature as human beings to act as we do and finds it pointless to intervene in any way.  He is nothing more than a sometimes spectator of the lives far removed from his own nature, much in the way a typical human is uninterested in the lives of ants.

If god is real, which I still doubt, this is a more credible understanding of god's unknowable nature than that of the theistic point of view.

"He" is nothing more than the male in our species evolutionary narcissism, but not just in modern monotheism, but in all of antiquity. Our species evolved without a modern understanding of evolutionary biology. "He" is simply a presumption in comic book form stemming from the false notion of antiquity that brawn was a better attribute than nurture. While polytheism did incorporate more female figures, you still have in polytheism the top deities being male and most of the deities being male. 

What you are doing here is attempting to avoid the standard monotheism by watering that "he" down to deism. The idea that a male figure god started everything but didn't do anything afterwords. Deism isn't new, it has been an idea that has existed for centuries. 

I do not see deism as anymore credible than specific monotheism. I held this position myself for a while leaving the Christian monotheism for years, but eventually saw this as being simply a watered down version attempting to avoid the pratfalls of popular mythology. 

It is really simple to me. If one can accept that the God's of Abraham who do get involved according to the followers, are made up, and you can accept there is a natural cause to lightening not needing Thor as the cognition, and you can accept Hurricanes are not started by Poseidon, then I also don't see a "cosmic lab boss" as any less of a gap answer. 

There is no need for a super cognition as a starting point. We are an outcome of of natural processes, not ants in an ant farm. Even the idea of a guy who got the ball rolling but did nothing after would still suffer the problem of infinite regress as much as a specific god claim, and Ocham's razor would kill even a generic concept.

Stephen Hawking in any case, "A God is not required".
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#6
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
At least if most people were deists it wouldn't affect anything about their everyday lives. It's because they go that step further and project their own desired attributes on their deity that it becomes a problem. The inevitable conflict it creates because of its own inconsistency and impossibility just hurts their cognition and prevents them from seeing reason.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?

---

There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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#7
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
(July 14, 2017 at 7:55 am)Lutrinae Wrote: This morning I am trying to sleep.  My cat is making a bunch of noise.

I open my eyes to look at what she is doing and it appears she has discovered something that crawled in here, possibly a lizard.

I ignore that she is causing harm to another living thing, because it is in her cat nature to hunt.  I do not try to stop her from doing what she is doing.

As I close my eyes to lay back down to go back to sleep, it occurs to me that in the above scenario what if I am god and my cat is a human harming another human?

Perhaps god does not intervene to stop human on human violence because he simply does not care about what is happening with us, perhaps god views it as our nature as human beings to act as we do and finds it pointless to intervene in any way.  He is nothing more than a sometimes spectator of the lives far removed from his own nature, much in the way a typical human is uninterested in the lives of ants.

If god is real, which I still doubt, this is a more credible understanding of god's unknowable nature than that of the theistic point of view.


When your kids are no longer kids but adults you got to let them do in the good or the bad whether you like it or not.
Can we say that you do not care?
What a stupid question!  Doh  

A pointless thread. Rolleyes
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#8
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
Much like a certain troll's entire existence. A certain troll I was under the impression would have been gone by now.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?

---

There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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#9
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
(July 14, 2017 at 11:12 am)Astonished Wrote: Much like a certain troll's entire existence. A certain troll I was under the impression would have been gone by now.

Some trolls last longer than others.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#10
RE: Watching my cat, thinking about god and human nature
As a real ankle biter I feel cats to be very annoying. But having adopted two, I reluctantly admit they are very cool animals.

I still derive simple pleasure from the fact that god is dog backwards.

I have no fucking idea what a YEWHAY is though!!
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