Was watching a Star Trek episode, “Who watched the watchers?” In the episode, the crew encounters beings who get engaged in group think, which leads to them believing Piccard is a super natural being, a god. Near the end of the episode Piccard is prepared to give his life so the beings will have proof that he is not a god. it is so important to him that beings do not believe in god, that he is prepared to do this. Why do you think it was so important to Piccard and the crew that the beings not believe in a god? (During the episode the point was driven home that religion had been extinct for some time, and so it was unusual that these beings (who were primitive besides, believed in a god)
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21 responses to “make an argument for why the idea of “God” is, or is not the most dangerous idea circulating in the society.”
If people would just live and let live, not judge others for what religion they believe in things would be OK. So many wars are in the name of god, and if there really is one; I am sure he or she thinks we are a bunch of sinful freaks for fighting over them.
This is my fav song about god.
Dear God, XTC
Dear God, hope you got the letter
And I pray you can make it better
Down here
I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving on their feet
‘Cause they don’t get enough to eat
From God
I can’t believe in you
Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but I feel
That I should be heard loud and clear
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street
‘Cause they can’t make opinions meet
About God
I can’t believe in you
Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!
Dear God, don’t know if you noticed
But your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
Us crazy humans wrote it
You should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain’t, so do you,
Dear God
I can’t believe in
I don’t believe in
I won’t believe in heaven and hell
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well
No pearly gates, no thorny crown
You’re always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it’s the same the whole world ’round
The hurt I see helps to compound
That Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody’s unholy hoax
And if you’re up there you perceive
That my heart’s here upon my sleeve
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in
It’s you
Dear God
@Gina In the episode, the issue seemed to be beings thinking they knew what a god would want.
@Scarlett
Exactly! It was less a statement about God/Creator, than the ability to render it “usable” for personal gain.
@Gina
Consider just how many of those “prayers”, are things that we have the power to fix. Or at least to make a lot better.
The problem is we don’t want to grow up and take responsibility. We would rather cry for the parents to come and do it for us.
I think the idea of god is problematic all around.
1. There is no repeatable process we can perform to verify this being’s existance… and whose promises are so vague “agreement in prayer,” “prosperity,” “heaven,””eternal life, ” and the like it’s almost impossible to pinpoint exactly what these things really mean, at day’s end it really means nothing without proof positive. Furthermore, those who believe are treated like shit by this diety, allowing them to die horrendously- by disease, by persecution, by accident (being in the wrong place at the wrong time – and to those who don’t believe in that, i will always call out bullshit).
2. This being is supposedly so smart, powerful, and just, that the only solution to evil it could find is free will – which at its core is what caused mortality in the 1st place, when the right thing is most often the most costly.
3. The concept of this being has caused countless wars since the beginning of time.
4. This being changes its mind about what it wants. Is killing everyone in a city good or is,it bad? If it is good for god to do (Sodom and Gomorrah), why is it bad in other instances? Is sex outside of marriage good or bad? A prophet was told to take his cheating wife back time and again. Is divorce and remarriage allowable? Some say yes. Others say no. This is only some surface level things, excluding the many contradictions therein.
5. Science has shown many of the things in the bible – and many other religions to be wrong.
6. The concept of sin is strange. If you know we’re going to sin from the get go, why not make it so everyone gets saved automatically, instead of having to commit prolicide. And even if necessary, no one should need to be taken out of the book of life.
In light of these things, i must outright reject the idea of a god.
@Jear77 yes, and it seems to me that people changed their ideas about what this being would want. Everyone is going around trying to guess what this being would want.
@Scarlett
That is quintessential deistic religion: us the imperfect trying to render the perfect susceptible to us. Fully understandable by us. And therefore controllable by us.
It has tie-ins to the Jungian archetypes I mentioned to @jear77.
You would see this in any clinical practice dealing with children, where the rail against the parent for not being understandable in childish terms.
@Jear77
1. There is repeatable process, as evidenced in many wisdom traditions of our species scattered throughout time. There is also clinical evidence of shared subjective experience in the purer manifestations of it (ie, non-religious/ideological applications of it.)
They appear more as a body of common evidence then of a cold hard that equation which you seem to have limited “evidence” to.
2. This is just “the Child” trying to prove it would be a better Parent/Creator, than the Parent/Creator (capitalized because they are Jungian Archetypes)
3. That something has been misused, is no proof that it is (totally?) without merit.
4. This point is just another exercise in trying to apply incomplete temporal understanding to a Transcendent system or archetype: the Child trying to render the Creator on par with them.
5. The whole Transcendent archetype plays out on a repeatable but very subjective playing field with abundant objective spun-off. The originating mandate of science was to eliminate anything subjective. So it is an imperfect system for measuring such things — because it was originally intended that way!
6. This is just a subjective beef about the nature of what has come to be called “sin”. It is simply any process that makes “Death” (the Trickster, the Deceiver) the master.
Consider that no logical argument can go logic to illogic, back to logic then swing back to illogic without sabotaging itself.
And the same if one wants to cling to a paradigm of objectivity (scientism), but repeatedly swings back to subjective argument.
@griz will try to respond in depth later at my computer. Am off the museum job today (overstaffed), but had a doctor note yesterday to have off and still worked. I am going to be helping my “friend” with his (censored) trucking plan. I’ll help him with his stuff but I’m so underqualified to do this, it’s not not even funny.
@Jear77
It sounds interesting.
I would love some time to hear about your museum job.
Respond at your leisure.
And perhaps something we should learn as friends, is that sometimes we might not need to respond if the complications of “real life” need more attention.
It would not be a ceding of the point. Simply “something ‘real’ came up”.
(I’m sure the two of us particularly, will pick up on the same point in some future discussion!)
The most dangerous idea in society IS,………….
Wanting!
For most, God might as well be a highly revered mascot.
@luftballooneyegouge you mean, ego?
Maybe the most dangerous idea is wanting a god, wanting things to be different than they are.
@luftballooneyegouge
Or a wishing/hoping machine?
I know the episode of which you speak.
I’ll have to go back and rewatch it, but I think Picard’s sacrifice was so they would not think that HE was God.
There is very good argument for the benefit of there being some higher purer ideal existing beyond us that is worth reaching for.
Even a rudimentary glance around at society the news and even our own selves reveals that we are still a very primitive species, with so many primitive processes going on within our minds and psyches mostly without our awareness — and manifesting without our apparent control!
Any study into behavioral or analytical psychology, or philosophy only emphasizes this fact to incredible degree.
Without The Transcendent, the very real risk is there to start thinking that “we are it”. This leads to a breakdown in commonly held moral structure.
This leads to more and more extreme existential crises that cannot be resolved with the imperfect system that is us, or systems that can spring from us.
And this leads to more angst, hopelessness, feelings of meaninglessness and powerlessness to effect meaning in our life.
And this leads to more mental illness.
@griz I have a different take on it. I think that the crew felt the idea of a god was dangerous. The biggest problem being that the beings were guessing at what a “god” /supernatural being would want. And It is impossible to know what a supernatural
Being would want.
@Scarlett
Trying to please a God is entirely the realm of religion. Christ himself apparently made it clear that this was not what he wished.
Without religion one is left with the god or Creator archetype; “The Transcendent”. Any species without this is just scary; because they can justify totally giving into the lower base aspects of their animal nature and call it “divine”.
(Actually, postmodernism does this)
Even in that band of Proto Vulcans before Picard, there was a God or Creator archetype. It was logic and reason, what might to us pass as scientism. It was the Higher Transcendent that they sought.
This episode was more an issue of “which God?” than of “God vs no-God”
God is a problem to people who want HIm to be their slave.
God is not a problem to those who choose to be HIs.
Regardless of whether a “God” exists, to serve something that is greater than the fucked up species we are allows us to actually be better. It motivates.
Sure, there are the scared shitless morons that hold a fake reverence because their community supports the synthetic homage, but to accept and serve for the purity of wanting to, can’t do anything but contribute positively.
Picard is accurate in suggesting that religion is bad. It is divisive unless EVERYone is on the same page. Religion is a man made, organized group think and as such fails on so many levels. The main message of Christ was that religion is unacceptable. It is just plain wrong. Leave it to men to make that into culturally acceptable for the benefit of the few that hold the power of leadership.
Patrick Stewart is awesome. A gay man who represents the ultimate in masculinity. either on screen or off.
@spitfire3dc There was definitely group think going on in the episode. The entire crew was surprised that these beings believed in the supernatural. It was stated in the episode that religion had essentially been extinct for sometime. One thing I think about, is if one day religion will be extinct?I think it would be a great may years from now before this happened. I also think about how we evolved in the way we did for survival, but at this point with all we’ve learned, is it time to get out of survival mode?Is it time to begin exploring the way the universe works, and how to make it better in a different way, rather than believing in a supernatural being that controls things. I don’t think survival mode is working for us anymore. Sitting around waiting for people to reach some elevated faith stage isn’t working, either.
@Scarlett I have no doubt that the supernatural exists. I experience it every day. It just shouldn’t be personified.
Let me share a simple example that reinforces my belief. Coincidence is possible, but sometimes the accuracy associated with coincidence is just kinda freaky big.
So, yesterday I had a client who needed something. I needed to supply a 48″ diameter panel. I called my resource that could cut something out for me on a machine he has. I asked him, “Do you have any material in stock to cut out”. He said, “No”. I said if I brought a piece to him, could he cut it out while I waited to save two trips? He said, “Depends on when I came over”. I said, “When do you want me to come over”? He said, after he finished another job he was doing in the morning. I said, “Ok, I can come over in the early afternoon. I need a 48″ circle cut out of this very specific material”. He responded, “ummm that’s was his morning job and there was actually going to be just enough leftover material to cut mine out”, but it was his client’s material. He’d call to see if she would sell it to him. She said “ok”. Mission accomplished. It doesn’t stop there. He had to make a delivery and could meet me ten minutes from my place. That saved me at least an hour of round trip travel.
How does that happen? How did I call at just the right time? How did all those circumstances match up? Here’s another little thing. This circle is for a Christian kids’ camp.
I’m not saying it all aligned because it was a Christian kids’ camp. But the real word of Christ is that prayer starts not with asking for something, but expecting it to happen. The Universal Law of Attraction. I’ve experienced this enough to believe it and that belief reinforces stronger belief over time. That is the “God” that exists and it is just as much a part of our human component that is the capacity to love. If you can remove the religiosity of personification and consider the real scope of infinite breadth; a person can start to fathom the Greatness of God.
Unfortunately, those that prefer the easy route of someone giving them easy answers rule the day. When you can’t explain God, many people go to the extreme opposite of No God and won’t even try to consider an alternative.
I serve the Alternative God and AG continuously astounds me with reciprocity. It is illustrated very similarly in the dynamic of love. Two poles co-operate and generate an energy that is neither and both. The thing in the middle that is created is the thing that matters. However, if you don’t believe the other pole is there; you can’t work the magic. The victories without the participation are hollow in comparison to the Big Picture. A big Boat or your own airplane? A huge house? Material wealth? All peanuts compared to the “Connection”
@spitfire3dc yes, I understand what you say, and that is a lovely example. I have seen this, too, with setting the intention. I have seen it happen a great many times lately. I actually tell myself “cancel” when some weird thought spills out of my half mistaken brain because I think that if I think that, it will happen. I agree with what you say about the personification of things we do not understand, but is it really supernatural, or just not yet In our nature yet to understand it. Do you ever feel the algorithisms of reality flooding through you?
@Scarlett I don’t understand the question.