Tickled by Life is conducting an interview about God, and luckily /me too was invited to answer the questions. Unfortunately my answers were possibly too harsh and unpopular, so it is still unpublished :-) (EDIT: I guess I jumped the gun, it's been published, was the cover story during the last weekend, and is in editor's picks) But I wrote those anyway, pausing to think before answering them. So I decided to post here before it goes into oblivion:
1. God is ...
a hypothesis (that there exists a super intelligence who created this universe, and controlling the fate of individuals by communicating with them). Apply all your scientific mind and you'll realize there is very little chance of the hypothesis to hold true. The concept is a wishful thinking for *most* of us.
2. God or the Big Bang? (or both)
Big Bang; and God doesn't have any role to play in that. The singularity of the Big Bang doesn't let any information to pass through. So even if God instrumented the Big Bang, he would have no way to tune the fundamental physical constants.
3. God or Darwin? (or both)
Darwin wins by a large margin. Complex life (which can even wonder whether there is a God) evolves via the process of gradual evolution. Post Big Bang, the universe has been on its own, and life appeared where the condition is right for it, and we (the Boltzmann's brain) came as the end product (as of now, maybe in a few million years earth will be dominated by a newer species) of a slow and extended evolution process.
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4. God or Darfur? (How can Darfur happen if there is God?)
Darfur conflict is a fight for limited resources in an overpopulated place. There might have been religious and ethnic unions on the conflicting sides, but at the end, it is a group of desperate genes that are trying to survive at the cost of another group. The catastrophe is created because people can't access basic resources for survival without violating someone else's.
5. Who is God’s God?
Whosoever he is, if he wants to exist, has a bigger problem. We are already challenging the idea of supernatural intelligence creating the universe. We say God himself is extremely improbable as a designer of the universe, and the same question would be even harsher on him.
6. Will the real God please stand up? (Why do we have so many religions?)
Every leader wants his followers, and encashes on human weakness. As I said most people find God's existence as "desirable", and hence each religious leader finds their way to "satisfy" people's need. Just like evolution, I am sure there would be hundreds of theories floated to make people gratify their desire of God, and only the best 4/5 ones survived so far. And once achieved the critical mass, they
concentrated on crushing the competition to increase their own follower count, resulting violent human conflicts. I wonder if "real" God ever existed, whether he'd approve the behaviour of such fan clubs.
7. Is this just a big lab and are we just guinea pigs and God just a researcher?
No, it is the dolphins :-) Humor apart, even if God existed, things wouldn't have been any different. I said the singularity wouldn't have allowed to set initial conditions of his experiment. No one can research this way, where you set off an experiment without getting to set the laws, and even tweak them. The best he can do is to be a silent observer. Best to consider ourselves as Boltzmann's brain who
wonders of his own existence before second law of thermodynamics makes further information processing impossible.
8. Unexplained phenomena = God?
Nope; it is an opportunity for a scientist to work on a problem. Attributing gaps in knowledge to God is a glorified way of giving up. As someone else explains the mystery, we find that God is having lesser and lesser space to hide in.
You too can try answering the above questions and mail them to interview @ tickledbylife . com. They'll publish if they like your answer!
1. God is ...
a hypothesis (that there exists a super intelligence who created this universe, and controlling the fate of individuals by communicating with them). Apply all your scientific mind and you'll realize there is very little chance of the hypothesis to hold true. The concept is a wishful thinking for *most* of us.
2. God or the Big Bang? (or both)
Big Bang; and God doesn't have any role to play in that. The singularity of the Big Bang doesn't let any information to pass through. So even if God instrumented the Big Bang, he would have no way to tune the fundamental physical constants.
3. God or Darwin? (or both)
Darwin wins by a large margin. Complex life (which can even wonder whether there is a God) evolves via the process of gradual evolution. Post Big Bang, the universe has been on its own, and life appeared where the condition is right for it, and we (the Boltzmann's brain) came as the end product (as of now, maybe in a few million years earth will be dominated by a newer species) of a slow and extended evolution process.
MORE
4. God or Darfur? (How can Darfur happen if there is God?)
Darfur conflict is a fight for limited resources in an overpopulated place. There might have been religious and ethnic unions on the conflicting sides, but at the end, it is a group of desperate genes that are trying to survive at the cost of another group. The catastrophe is created because people can't access basic resources for survival without violating someone else's.
5. Who is God’s God?
Whosoever he is, if he wants to exist, has a bigger problem. We are already challenging the idea of supernatural intelligence creating the universe. We say God himself is extremely improbable as a designer of the universe, and the same question would be even harsher on him.
6. Will the real God please stand up? (Why do we have so many religions?)
Every leader wants his followers, and encashes on human weakness. As I said most people find God's existence as "desirable", and hence each religious leader finds their way to "satisfy" people's need. Just like evolution, I am sure there would be hundreds of theories floated to make people gratify their desire of God, and only the best 4/5 ones survived so far. And once achieved the critical mass, they
concentrated on crushing the competition to increase their own follower count, resulting violent human conflicts. I wonder if "real" God ever existed, whether he'd approve the behaviour of such fan clubs.
7. Is this just a big lab and are we just guinea pigs and God just a researcher?
No, it is the dolphins :-) Humor apart, even if God existed, things wouldn't have been any different. I said the singularity wouldn't have allowed to set initial conditions of his experiment. No one can research this way, where you set off an experiment without getting to set the laws, and even tweak them. The best he can do is to be a silent observer. Best to consider ourselves as Boltzmann's brain who
wonders of his own existence before second law of thermodynamics makes further information processing impossible.
8. Unexplained phenomena = God?
Nope; it is an opportunity for a scientist to work on a problem. Attributing gaps in knowledge to God is a glorified way of giving up. As someone else explains the mystery, we find that God is having lesser and lesser space to hide in.
You too can try answering the above questions and mail them to interview @ tickledbylife . com. They'll publish if they like your answer!