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What you could do better than god

Smite. When was the last time you saw the clouds open, a big pointed finger appear and a bolt of lightning take out a sinner?
I would vapourise people for looking at me in the wrong way, serving celery, playing the Beatles.... That would just be the start of my terror.
 
If you're talking about the Abrahamic deity or some other omniscient entity, then...

Learn stuff. I learn stuff every day. An omniscient being can't learn nothin'.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Menstruation is an evolved trait. That alone suggests it has some benefit. Take it away and you could be making things worse. Would you do it, not knowing the possible consequences?
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We're not as much at odds as you seem to think. Yes, it serves a purpose. It achieves a function. But that doesn't mean it's automatically the best implementation. Nature doesn't do perfect design, it does whatever mutation gets the job done well enough.

Trivial example: your lungs do the job, right? Does it mean it's the best way to do it. No, and nature already produced a better implementation elsewhere. Bird lungs are more efficient than mammalian lungs.

At any rate, there you have it: nature evolved two different implementations of the same function, with different degrees of efficiency. You can't automatically assume that either is the best imaginable just because nature evolved it.

Also trivial example: the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve going all the way down to around the aorta, and then back up to the larynx, instead of just going straight to it. When that route first evolved in fish, it was ok, since the heart was right behind the head anyway. By the time you get to humans, that's already almost a foot worth of detour to go down and then back up. In giraffes, it resulted in a FIVE METER nerve to go all the way down to the chest and all the way back to the larynx. It gets even worse. Sauropod Dinosaurs may have had a 28-meter-long nerve.

Could I or you do a better design if either of us was God? Quite obviously yes.

Because nature doesn't roll back and re-evolve something from scratch. It just piles up hacks on top of old hacks. If that nerve went that way in fish, that's the way it will always go. But if you were to actually be God and design it, you could achieve the same function with a lot less nerve.

That's what I'm proposing for menstruation too: that, understanding the function it's doing, if I were God and could program cells any way I want them to behave, I could achieve the same functionality with a lot less discomfort.
 
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novaphile said:
I would give women the ability to re-absorb fetuses, like rabbits, when they're under stress.
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Women absorb rabbits when they're under stress??

As an omniscient, omnipresent god I would answer any questions, except about the future.

Of course this would open the door to all sorts of problems, but eventually intelligent life would have to adapt accordingly. I've no doubt that I would break the universe this way, but then I'd create another one and try something else.
 
Certain apex predators could probably be designed to be more obviously scary and less friendly looking:

 
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TofuFighter said:
Of course this would open the door to all sorts of problems, but eventually intelligent life would have to adapt accordingly.
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There is a school of thought that letting intelligent life figure things out for themselves and make their own choices in a world of cause and effect marks you as the most supremely evil being that could possibly exist.

A kind and loving God would create automatons that are incapable of making any choice that might have suboptimal outcomes. Or else would erase any suboptimal outcomes arising from the choices of His creations.
 
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quote of subsequently moderated content removed but on topic reply kept

No frickin clue. I don't think god exists, but it'd be much easier to convince me that a malevolent god exists, than a benevolent one. The latter just makes no logical sense whatsoever. And, if god is illogical, why would he make a universe bound by logical rules?
 
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lobosrul5 said:
No frickin clue. I don't think god exists, but it'd be much easier to convince me that a malevolent god exists, than a benevolent one. The latter just makes no logical sense whatsoever. And, if god is illogical, why would he make a universe bound by logical rules?
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If I were to believe in a god I would suggest he is more imperfect and incompetent than malevolent.

How about designing us with replaceable parts? Create a system other than evolution for biological improvements that really improves the species.
 
theprestige said:
Seems like a late start to me. You're God. Why not start with the Assyrians or something?
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You are too late too... why not refrain from making or even extirpate the homo sapiens and protect from their perniciousness the poor homo floresiensis or neanderthalensis or even the chimpanzees?
 
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A good and benevolent etc. god would have come up with a way to be held accountable. And since he's supposed to be perfection incarnate, it wouldn't be something he'd have reason to fear, would it?
 
God: "Ya know, if I make creatures with free will, I bet they will aspire to be like me"

Lucifer: "Betcha they put more effort into porn, opiods, and weapons?"

God: "You're on"
 
HansMustermann said:
We're not as much at odds as you seem to think. Yes, it serves a purpose. It achieves a function. But that doesn't mean it's automatically the best implementation. Nature doesn't do perfect design, it does whatever mutation gets the job done well enough.

Trivial example: your lungs do the job, right? Does it mean it's the best way to do it. No, and nature already produced a better implementation elsewhere. Bird lungs are more efficient than mammalian lungs.

At any rate, there you have it: nature evolved two different implementations of the same function, with different degrees of efficiency. You can't automatically assume that either is the best imaginable just because nature evolved it.

Also trivial example: the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve going all the way down to around the aorta, and then back up to the larynx, instead of just going straight to it. When that route first evolved in fish, it was ok, since the heart was right behind the head anyway. By the time you get to humans, that's already almost a foot worth of detour to go down and then back up. In giraffes, it resulted in a FIVE METER nerve to go all the way down to the chest and all the way back to the larynx. It gets even worse. Sauropod Dinosaurs may have had a 28-meter-long nerve.

Could I or you do a better design if either of us was God? Quite obviously yes.

Because nature doesn't roll back and re-evolve something from scratch. It just piles up hacks on top of old hacks. If that nerve went that way in fish, that's the way it will always go. But if you were to actually be God and design it, you could achieve the same function with a lot less nerve.

That's what I'm proposing for menstruation too: that, understanding the function it's doing, if I were God and could program cells any way I want them to behave, I could achieve the same functionality with a lot less discomfort.
Click to expand...


First thing to come to my mind if we're talking about design issues - have your air hole separate from your food hole.
 
I would immediately create everything (and by that I mean EVERYTHING, every possible state of existence, at every possible point in time, existing all at once), and then immediately erase myself and all of creation. Why wouldn't I?

And since this particular "state" is obviously part of EVERYTHING, God, if God exists, must have done just that, and so there is nothing I could possibly do better than God.
 
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