Having spent a decade of my life in the Bible Belt of the southern United States, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people make unsubstantiated supernatural claims, and then jump straight to the god of the Bible. I understand why some people might say, "God did that." to plug the current gaps in their understanding.
If you stop there, then you become useless in terms of scientific discovery. But I can understand that. What makes no sense is jumping from, “There are patterns in the universe,” to talking donkeys, global floods, ludacris prophecies, and a 6000-year-old earth? Just off the top of my head, here are five unique god hypotheses more likely than the ones held by most religious adherents.
1. Aliens seeded life on earth.
Arthur C. Clarke’s third law states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Michael Shermer’s variation: any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God. It’s possible that billions of years ago aliens seeded life on earth, in fact, I find it plausible.
However, while no one can really disprove this hypothesis, there’s no real evidence that this actually happened. And without evidence, the burden of proof lies heavily on the person making the claim. And even if life on earth did come from aliens, we’re still left wondering where they originated from. So we’re back to square one.
2. It’s all a simulation.
Elon Musk has hypothesized that we could very likely be living in an alien simulation. Because as any civilization advances technologically, it’s highly likely that at some point, they would develop a virtual reality indistinguishable from actual reality. And it’s very unlikely that we’d be the first ones to develop such a technology. Meaning it’s more likely that we would be the subjects of this experiment than the ones enacting it. Or maybe there’s an infinite recursive simulation in a simulation in a simulation.
But even Musk finds science and religion incompatible and doesn’t believe in god. And this theory doesn’t explain the origin of those running the simulation. It’s likely that they began in some type of big bang themselves. And like the first scenario, there’s no real evidence for this. So if we can’t interact with the outside reality, or even prove it exists, then as much as I want to know the truth, without any proof of this hypothesis, it shouldn’t alter the way we live our lives.
3. We are the incubated egg of a future god. - Based on The Egg by Andy Weir
Your life, my life, and everyone from Hitler to Jesus are all just reincarnations of the same person. We are merely an egg in the developmental process of becoming a god, and only after we’ve experienced every single life across time, will we actually achieve this end. This hypothesis while completely unsubstantiated, is actually a far more just universe than the one the Bible claims, because you not only live as Stalin, but you also live all the lives of the people he had executed or sent to the gulag, and in this way, you receive exactly the same amount of cruelty and suffering that you dish out.
4. God is a Cosmic Internet of Collective Consciousness. - Based on The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
As scientific advancement takes humanity from a single planet species to an intergalactic civilization, only one question remains unanswered, can entropy reverse itself? As the last star dies out, the last human merges consciousness with the ethereal, interstellar, internet-like supercomputer answering the question with the words, “let there be light” – reversing entropy, and speaking the universe back into existence. While I find this god hypothesis the most likely of any I’ve ever heard. It still demands that everything in the universe had a natural starting point – came about without a god, and eventually evolved one. There’s no reason to assume that us earthlings aren’t in the early stages of becoming the first gods – whatever that means.
5. We are the Remnants of God’s Suicide. - Based on God’s Debris by Scott Adams
God is able to do everything, but out of curiosity or boredom, he asks if he’s able to kill himself, being eternal. Being eternal, he eventually decides to give it a try and blows himself up, causing the Big Bang. Just as living cells evolve over time into multicellular organisms in which all of the parts work together to make a greater whole, we are god’s debris – slowly reforming itself and evolving back into the divine. This last theory is a bit far-fetched.
On the one hand, it doesn’t postulate an interactive deity whose interests are caught up in the petty under goings of meager humans. But like a lot of eastern religions, it assumes that everything in the universe is somehow connected, and that there’s some cosmic force that we can’t see or measure holding and connecting all of us together. A force that leaves no evidence, and scientific equations work perfectly fine without it. Any claim like this would need to put forth some pretty impressive proof in order to be accepted as a plausible theory. And like the other four god hypothesis and like every other religion ever concocted, it just falls short.
6. …?
Now the possibilities of different types of gods are only limited by the human imagination. For example, there could be a highly advanced alien civilization outside our universe that collided two universes together in such a way as to trigger the Big Bang, but they’re unable to enter our universe or interact with it, and would most likely even be oblivious to our existence. Maybe they’re harnessing the energy created by the Big Bang as a fuel source. Maybe they move through time at a rate relatively slow compared to us, and so to them, the Big Bang happened mere seconds ago. The problem with this god belief is I literally just pulled it out of my butt. Just like someone somewhere did before me with every religion ever made.
If you’d like to check out any of the short stories mentioned in this video, I’ve put the links to these books in the video description. They’re all excellent reads, and trust me, my summaries don’t do them justice. Also, I want to say a thank you to my patrons who you could join in supporting me by going to patreon.com/holykoolaid. Thanks a bunch for watching guys. Don’t Drink the Koolaid!
“When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” - Stephen Roberts
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Ugh
Very interesting