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What you could do better than god

jimbob said:
Well any creator that made a universe with such suffering and with lifeforms with such poor design features either is incompetent or enjoys the suffering.
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Are you personally suffering that much? Or are you arguing on the behalf of someone else?
 
A god that has to meddle in its creation to 'fix' things that aren't perfect is not a perfect god. A perfect god would create a Universe so perfect that it didn't need to do anything more. From that time on there would be no reason for it to exist. The most perfect god is one which could create a Universe without even existing in the first place.

Since all evidence tells us that god doesn't exist, we must conclude that the Universe was indeed created by a non-existing god.

But if that is so then why is the Universe not perfect? I posit that it actually is perfect, and our perception of imperfection is simply due to our lack of understanding of what 'perfect' means. Ask any scientist and they will tell you the more we find out about how the Universe works, the more we can see the perfection in it.
 
The OP asks - what could you do better than God? If God created the Universe and everything in it then you are a part of His creation. So if you do anything 'better' that is actually His doing. You are simply a tool He used to do it.

As an analogy, let's say you wanted to design a better RF antenna. You could pull out your slide rule and start doing calculations, or make several antennas of different shapes and test them, or write a computer program using a genetic algorithm to do it for you. Do you then say "Oh no I didn't design that antenna, a computer did."? Of course not. And the program in the computer doesn't think "I could do a better job than the entity they say created me. Therefore there cannot be a creator!".
 
Roger Ramjets said:
The OP asks - what could you do better than God? If God created the Universe and everything in it then you are a part of His creation. So if you do anything 'better' that is actually His doing. You are simply a tool He used to do it.
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"When your only tool is death and replacement, every problem looks like a mortal sin."

In other words, you do have a point here. The ideal situation for plant life would be something like a layer of drought-resistant algae-like photosynthetic cells covering the otherwise bare rock ground. That would efficiently gather the same amount of solar energy as all the layers of a forest combined, without expending any of it growing vertical stems or trunks that make the plant vulnerable to wind, lightning, fire, and aging. (What the plants would do with that energy instead is an open question. Contemplate their existence, perhaps?) It's only because plants are constantly engaged in lethal competition with one another and with the rest of the biosphere, resulting in incessant death and replacement, that diverse biomes like forests and meadows exist.

Death and replacement is the only trick nature knows. Infectious disease organism disappearing because the host population has developed immunity? Death and replacement, until a new variant arises. Host population succumbing to the new variant? Death and replacement, until new immunity develops.

And the results of all this death are... unutterably beautiful. Neil Diamond writes:

While the sand
Would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus

But it makes no sense to call it perfect. It's not perfect for anyone. Not for any individual and not for any collective. It can't be. Anyone merely spectating from a position of perfection, no matter how wise or mighty, would be like the invulnerable algal slime on the ground. Perfectly impossible.
 
Myriad said:
But it makes no sense to call it perfect. It's not perfect for anyone. Not for any individual and not for any collective. It can't be. Anyone merely spectating from a position of perfection, no matter how wise or mighty, would be like the invulnerable algal slime on the ground. Perfectly impossible.
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From God's perspective it could be perfect - even if no individual organism thinks so.

So the question is, what gives us the right to decide what's perfect and what isn't? Our perception of perfection is obviously subjective, since it relates to what we think would be best for us. But true perfection isn't subjective. True perfection is the state of being complete and whole with no part missing, finished, and not able to be improved upon.

In science something is called 'perfect' when it follows some physical law or mathematical equation perfectly - eg. a perfect crystal, a perfect sphere. Our laws of physics are only approximations of the real laws governing the Universe, but imagine if we had a law of everything, where every particle and wave in the Universe was following that law perfectly. By following that law perfectly, the Universe itself is perfect.

An organism may complain that the Universe can't be perfect because its life isn't. But it is made of subatomic particles and waves that are behaving perfectly. Any deviation from that would be less than perfect, like 2+2 adding up to 5 instead of 4. So the organism's perception of imperfection is just the result of the Universe working perfectly.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
From God's perspective it could be perfect - even if no individual organism thinks so.

So the question is, what gives us the right to decide what's perfect and what isn't? Our perception of perfection is obviously subjective, since it relates to what we think would be best for us. But true perfection isn't subjective. True perfection is the state of being complete and whole with no part missing, finished, and not able to be improved upon.

In science something is called 'perfect' when it follows some physical law or mathematical equation perfectly - eg. a perfect crystal, a perfect sphere. Our laws of physics are only approximations of the real laws governing the Universe, but imagine if we had a law of everything, where every particle and wave in the Universe was following that law perfectly. By following that law perfectly, the Universe itself is perfect.

An organism may complain that the Universe can't be perfect because its life isn't. But it is made of subatomic particles and waves that are behaving perfectly. Any deviation from that would be less than perfect, like 2+2 adding up to 5 instead of 4. So the organism's perception of imperfection is just the result of the Universe working perfectly.
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That description of perfection gives it no moral import. Sure, a perfect guillotine is one that neatly decapitates the victim every time. But you can't use such perfection as a justification for the necessity of the guillotine's existence, nor as an argument for any supposed superior standing of its designer. When we hear about poverty and repression in North Korea we describe the situation as unfortunate for North Korea's captive citizens, not as being admirably close to perfection for Kim Jong Un. What gives us the right to decide that? I'd say, compassion and the ability to think.
 
"Perfect" merely means "complete". The Universe is necessarily perfect because nothing can be added to a set which already includes everything.
 
Myriad said:
When we hear about poverty and repression in North Korea we describe the situation as unfortunate for North Korea's captive citizens, not as being admirably close to perfection for Kim Jong Un. What gives us the right to decide that? I'd say, compassion and the ability to think.
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Ah yes, the 635,000 tons of 'compassionate' bombs (including 32,557 tons of napalm) that the US dropped on North Korea, making it one of the most heavily-bombed countries in history.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
A god that has to meddle in its creation to 'fix' things that aren't perfect is not a perfect god. A perfect god would create a Universe so perfect that it didn't need to do anything more. From that time on there would be no reason for it to exist. The most perfect god is one which could create a Universe without even existing in the first place.

Since all evidence tells us that god doesn't exist, we must conclude that the Universe was indeed created by a non-existing god.

But if that is so then why is the Universe not perfect? I posit that it actually is perfect, and our perception of imperfection is simply due to our lack of understanding of what 'perfect' means. Ask any scientist and they will tell you the more we find out about how the Universe works, the more we can see the perfection in it.
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You're wrong.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
From God's perspective it could be perfect - even if no individual organism thinks so.

So the question is, what gives us the right to decide what's perfect and what isn't? Our perception of perfection is obviously subjective, since it relates to what we think would be best for us. But true perfection isn't subjective. True perfection is the state of being complete and whole with no part missing, finished, and not able to be improved upon.

In science something is called 'perfect' when it follows some physical law or mathematical equation perfectly - eg. a perfect crystal, a perfect sphere. Our laws of physics are only approximations of the real laws governing the Universe, but imagine if we had a law of everything, where every particle and wave in the Universe was following that law perfectly. By following that law perfectly, the Universe itself is perfect.

An organism may complain that the Universe can't be perfect because its life isn't. But it is made of subatomic particles and waves that are behaving perfectly. Any deviation from that would be less than perfect, like 2+2 adding up to 5 instead of 4. So the organism's perception of imperfection is just the result of the Universe working perfectly.
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That seems to founded on the idea that there is only one way the "universe" can be perfect.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Ah yes, the 635,000 tons of 'compassionate' bombs (including 32,557 tons of napalm) that the US dropped on North Korea, making it one of the most heavily-bombed countries in history.
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What about the 635,000 tons of 'compassionate' bombs? Weren't they just another small perfect part of this perfect universe?

And what does that have to do with the question of how to weigh the present near-perfection of a dictator's life against the present suffering of his millions of subjects?
 
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ynot said:
"What you could do better than god"

Communicate.
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For sure. I mean, in the US antebellum south there were Christians who had no problem owning slaves (supported by the Bible) and at times even being terribly cruel to them (not supported by the Bible,) and others who where strongly opposed to slavery, were working abolish it, and help escaped slaves make their way to freedom. Where was God to let them know where he stood on the issue?
 
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