The Alternative to God

An idea you hear expressed vociferously among atheists is the idea that theists see a human face in a creator because they are human. You take a society of giraffes, they have a giraffe-shaped being as an almighty being, with giraffe characteristics.

That's not the way I see it, and when I hear this idea I think of someone who has not done very much philosophy. "We are created in God's image" is not an important line to me.

One fundamental difference between the way atheists think and the way I think is about the concept of reality. What is really real? Well, what is really real is what is currently being experienced. Experiences are real. Without being experienced, atoms and objects on the grid of physical space are completely and utterly meaningless, and might as well not exist. No one would know the difference.

With the giraffe problem, you realize the flaw in your thinking when you realize that the traits we attribute to God are so fundamental it's hard to call them uniquely human. Traits like awareness, you think of awareness and you think of the numerous number of alternatives to awareness.

It goes back to the concepts of spirits before truth. There are one of two possibilities. Either the universe was created by spirits for spirits, or by dead particles and forces and CHAOS. You look at various belief systems, there may be different takes on these two ideas, or they may not express them in exactly the same words. But it comes down to, either spirits are more important and powerful than physical space and atoms or atoms are more powerful than awareness.

God is a conscious being. I am not making any other claims about his abilities other than He is intelligent, and has the power to will things into existence.

The belief that objects are more important than consciousness is one created by biased thinking related to some sort of conditioning. It "seems" unlikely that the soul transcends death or that God exists, you are not relying on any sort of evidence or higher reasoning powers, you say so due to a bleak worldview. These are my firm beliefs regarding these matters. It is emotional reasoning, not logical reasoning.

From a logical perspective, you see that something of great depth and beauty came from absolutely nothing. The universe had no soul and contained no awareness, and over a period of time it comes to the point where YOU exist. You want more than to survive as a species. You want more than for your offspring to produce more offspring. You want excitement, meaning, spiritual fulfillment, recognition, fame, respect, wonder, knowledge. These traits do not enhance your survival.

Objects over truth includes the idea that there is no good or bad, and the universe would have you endure an eternity of misery if that were a flaw in its design.

In a universe filled with empty space and lifeless atoms, the advent of self-awareness is a miracle. The alternative is no awareness. You either have awareness or you don't, there are no greater or smaller concepts, there are no alternative concepts to the idea of awareness. Of course, it may be that our human framework is incapable of comprehending them. And we take that into consideration, but for the time being we deal with what we are capable of understanding.

The idea of a self-aware being is not comparable to the idea of a giraffe god. A self-aware God contains awareness, intelligence, and will. Those are the only components we know about for sure. They are wrapped up into a concept that means that these three components are inseparable from each other. You contain the same three elements, and these three components inside you are also incapable of being separated from each other. This is a concept strongly in MY mind, and makes it so I can't reason with atheists. Well, if you don't have a soul, that means you wouldn't have (this concept). Wait, that's a concept you don't believe in, that I only understand on a subconscious level.

Also in an atheist world, it is completely normal to dwell on a large spherical object, orbiting another spherical object, in a universe where all over the place spherical objects orbit other spherical objects.