If you were from a different galaxy.....

Myrtle · #1 08-05-2006, 07:49 AM

...I don't know if this question has been dealt with in this forum before as I haven't visited here for a while. If it has, please excuse my re-asking it.

In any case, for the sake of discussion......

Let's imagine that you were an intelligent being from a different galaxy, and your civilization had never evolved the concept of a supreme being.

You have been living on Earth, icognito, for a long enough period of time to have become fully exposed to the teachings of all of the major & minor organized religions.

How would you frame your analysis of them?

Would you be able to come to what you would consider to be a logical conclusion?

Michaelson · #2 08-05-2006, 07:53 AM

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Let's imagine that you were an intelligent being from a different galaxy, and your civilization had never evolved the concept of a supreme being.

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Does not compute.

I can almost imagine a civilisation that had thouroughly disregarded the concept of a deity, but the notion that no one had ever postulated the possibility of a deity seems absurd.

MidGe · #3 08-05-2006, 08:01 AM

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I can almost imagine a civilisation that had thouroughly disregarded the concept of a deity, but the notion that no one had ever postulated the possibility of a deity seems absurd.

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The notion that no one ever postulated a deity seems sbsurd???

You can postulate an infinite number of things, postulating a god is only one of those, what are the chances of it... Just the way it panned out here, dude, nothing special, remarkable ot truthful about it! Just an idea amongst an infinitude of them, like unicorns, fairies and father xmas. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Any specific hand, regardless of how little value it is, is as likely as a royal flush.

Michaelson · #4 08-05-2006, 08:12 AM

Uh, okay. So the systematic acceptance of some sort of spiritual realm accross virtually, if not all, human cultures is just a bunch of royal flushes being dealt, is it?

Maybe you were saying that it's a fluke that the human mind was wired that way. This no doubt is a fair assertion. But we cannot perceive things in anything other than a 'human' way. So if we speak of some imaginary civilisation that has "never evolved the concept of a supreme being" then I would say that their mind would be wired so completely differently to ours as to make subsidiary questions regarding "what they would think about this and that" completely daft.

MidGe · #5 08-05-2006, 08:23 AM

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Uh, okay. So the systematic acceptance of some sort of spiritual realm accross virtually, if not all, human cultures is just a bunch of royal flushes being dealt, is it?

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Examine how different they are, and in fact, at odds with each other. Don't fall for the cliche that they are all the same. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I wish they were; it would be more palatble, and credible, to me and, definitely, more beneficial to humanity.

Michaelson · #6 08-05-2006, 08:30 AM

I'm not saying that all cultures share a similar conception of a deity. Though I am not well versed in world religions by any stretch, that would clearly be absurd. What I am saying is that the impulse to explain life's mysteries away with recourse to mythical beings is pretty universal, and I can't conceive of an intelligent life form that never thought "hey, maybe we're part of something bigger! That sure would explain some things and give our life some direction!"

MidGe · #7 08-05-2006, 08:52 AM

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impulse to explain life's mysteries away with recourse to mythical beings is pretty universal,

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Like the impulse to make a hand with the cards (in hand and community) by pokerplayers! The difference is that they don't assume an absolute game, whose rules they don't know, whilst you do. The rules are watever they accept them to play with. The analogy just doesn't hold. That's all I am saying.

Michaelson · #8 08-05-2006, 09:20 AM

I think you're misunderstanding me (and to be honest, I'm not 100% sure what you're saying either).

I am an atheist. I do not believe that fantasy should be employed to explain away life's mysteries. All I am saying is that there are any number of mysteries in life that human's feel compelled to answer. Because those answers are not immediately forthcoming, God, Allah, Dreamtime spirits etc enter the equation. I think this is natural to humanity. By this I do not mean, obviously, that everyone accepts belief in a deity. Rather I mean that it is natural that theism pervades all human cultures.

Now, as I said before, it is, I suppose, plausable that some alien life form exists that just never thought to seek insight and guidance from religious belief systems, but the notion that humans could somehow get inside the mindset of such creatures seems ridiculous to me.

MidGe · #9 08-05-2006, 09:24 AM

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I do not believe that fantasy should be employed to explain away life's mysteries. All I am saying is that there are any number of mysteries in life that human's feel compelled to answer.

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And they answer it in different ways, not neccesarily a specific spiritual/religious one. And some don't even posit a question that would lead to such an answer.

Myrtle · #10 08-05-2006, 09:30 AM

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I think you're misunderstanding me (and to be honest, I'm not 100% sure what you're saying either).

I am an atheist. I do not believe that fantasy should be employed to explain away life's mysteries. All I am saying is that there are any number of mysteries in life that human's feel compelled to answer. Because those answers are not immediately forthcoming, God, Allah, Dreamtime spirits etc enter the equation. I think this is natural to humanity. By this I do not mean, obviously, that everyone accepts belief in a deity. Rather I mean that it is natural that theism pervades all human cultures.

Now, as I said before, it is, I suppose, plausable that some alien life form exists that just never thought to seek insight and guidance from religious belief systems, but the notion that humans could somehow get inside the mindset of such creatures seems ridiculous to me.

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My intent was not to employ some kind of 'fantasy' to examine the question.

It was an attempt, (maybe feeble) to get posters to try to 'think out of the box' a bit, without falling back on our accumulated mindsets.

I set the stage that way to posit the opinion that there is a possibility that that situation/mindset exists, and if one does their best to emulate it, what would come out of it?

Is it really that difficult for you to make the jump?