I have an intriguing (I hope) concept to throw "out there"

[hyphenate]

Let me know if it's a little too weird. Disclaimer, first: I am 90% an atheist, 10% of a dabbler in world philosophies, so this concept might be a bit strange.


Let's assume there IS/WAS a creator. This creator is nothing like what any relgious group follows today, or might not even be able to be conceived of in anyone's mind, regardless of how creative an imagination someone might have.

This creator follows what we have described as evolution, but yet "it" knows that it's going to have to help out the most promising of its creations, by helping them out now and then, helping them to move forward in both time and progression of their race. At one point, ite makes a boo-boo, and while trying to experiment with more than one race, makes a second one which fails to thrive, even though it is potentially superior to the other race. The creator wipes the slate clean of this second race, and Neanderthal man is gone.

At one point, it sends "helpers" now and then who help create civilizations, languages, mythology, and societies. Depending on the location of these civilizations, different cultures are made, and different laws, rituals, and inherent behaviors are given, and then, this creator begins to back away from its "creation."

Like a parent, this creator watches from afar once the basic lifeforms are established, and only intervenes when it believes man is going in the wrong direction. He drafts "commandments" to give people a sense of right and wrong, and each somewhat isolated group develops their own idea of "god" and so world religions flourish with mostly the same natural laws, but interpreted differently.

Over time, the creator corrects some mistakes, by "punishing" people, making them go through some pretty rough stuff. But the creator also knows that unless these people are able to endure almost everything, that they will not "grow up" or grow wise.

To the creator, 12 billion years is like a couple of years, and the whole creation bit is like playing a game like D&D or Risk, or some other similar SIM type game.

Finally, after untold years, the inhabitants of this planet have reached the "legal" age, and it is time for the creator to "let go" of the people, letting them fall, stumble, make their own mistakes, and become "adults"

The defining moment of adulthood? The nuclear bomb.

In adulthood, we have to forget the past, and move on into the future, perhaps some day becoming such creators ourselves, even if it is a billion years in the future. We have made such great strides in our progression through time, and now the human race begins its adolescence without the "parent" there to shepherd us forward.

And all the fundies out there? They're the timid ones. They're the ones who still want to have someone lead them around by the hand, who refuse to grow-up and who want to take their ball back and go home. The creator is done with them, but they sit at the door and cry and cry, hoping that the creator will return. They even try to appease said "parent" by doing what they think the creator wants: a return to the behaviors that the wiser and more mature "kids" knows is sucking up.

Nowadays, the extremists are just bawling little ass-kissers who tattletale on their siblings, trying to get back in the creator's "good graces" again, not realizing that the creator doesn't want them to do that, and that the creator has moved on to its next project or game. The creator has no intention of trying to mollify these weasels--even if they're the ones who ultimately overcome the rest: if that happens, the creator will come back and collect the pieces when the last one is dead, and not look back to its game, moving on instead to the next one.

______________________________________________________________________________


I think it makes a certain amount of sense, though I am likely anthropomorphizing a large part of it.

[Fridays Child]

1. When you cast the movie...

...I'd like to audition for the creator role.

[dkf]

2. I'm thinking it's more like creating your ant farm to see how things progress.

Maybe we are just entertainment.

[rrneck]

3. 42

[BeFree]

4. An atheist friend of mine thinks...

...the proof of 'God' is the fact that we haven't blown us all to kingdom come.

As a spiritual person, too me, that makes perfect sense.

God has kept us from doing blowing ourselves to bits, because, you know, we do have lot of people that would happily push the same button at the same time.

God must have stopped them?

[cleanhippie]

8. Well then, he is not an atheist.

If he has found "proof" of god, then he must believe god exists, therefore he is not an atheist.


I think it is more plausible that when tensions get near the breaking point, reason and compromise have saved us, not some mythical being.

[BeFree]

9. Humans?

Reason and compromise in a world where war is the largest export?

I don't see that. The only reasoning and compromise I see is when it comes to how the money will be divvied up.

Fictional reality quote: ""One for you and two for me. Don't like it? I have a gun. Either you reason and compromise with me or that's all she wrote for you, bubba.""

[cleanhippie]

10. And that is just the kind of reasoning that keeps us from self-destructing.

Regardless of how its used, reason and compromise ARE the hallmarks of human prosperity. Even at the tip of a sword, in the end, reason and compromise win out. It may be brutal and it may not seem fair (compromise is not always fair) but thats the way it is.

My point is, is that its HUMANS that save humans from annihilation, not a mythical being.

[life_long_dem]

5. I think your concept is just as plausible as any of the mainstream ones.

Your ideas reminded me of one of my favorite songs.

Band: Judas Priest
Song: Starbreaker
Album: Sin after sin (1977)

LYRICS:

Look out, here's Starbreaker
Cruisin' into town
Set his mind to stealin'
Every little heart around
Step out on the sidewalks
If you're feeling game
He comes but once a lifetime
Never seen again

Starbreaker
Glides in from the sky
Starbreaker
Takes you up so high

Paradise is waiting
For the chosen few
Let's hope maybe this time
He picks me and you
Star voyage to a new world
Light-year miles away
Cross your fingers, here he is,
Take us now this day

Starbreaker
Glides in from the sky
Starbreaker
Takes you up so high

Starbreaker, take my hand
Starbreaker, understand
Starbreaker, you're the one
Starbreaker, lead us on, and on

SOLO (K.K./Glenn/both)

Look out, here's Starbreaker
Cruisin' into town
Set his mind to stealin'
Every little heart around
Step out on the sidewalks
If you're feeling game
He comes but once a lifetime
Never ever seen again

Starbreaker
Glides in from the sky
Starbreaker
Takes you up so high

If you would like to listen to the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr8pgN195Zw

[Iggo]

14. I've listened to that song eleventy brazilian times.

:headbang:

[zeemike]

6. There is a lot of cosmology that makes more sense than Christianity

That is practiced today.
Eastern mystics have a much more complex understanding of the spiritual worlds than the christians that long ago abandoned understating for dogma.
To the ascetics, God is the universal consciousness and that we are all part of it and make up the body of God.
But this is not easy to accept by most and so they prefer to see God as the angry parent that will punish what he does not like....as if likes and dislikes are god like quality instead of human weaknesses.

[SheilaT]

7. Your collection of ideas

contain things that have shown up in various science-fiction stories and novels over the years.

There's also an idea out there that we are living in a computer simulation, that none of us are actually alive and sentient in the way we think we are. It's all just a computer simulation.

[whosinpower]

11. There is no creator

And we, the human species are not the centre of the Universe. The creator, a fictional charactor in our own fantasies, will not "clean up" our messes in spite of our own inadequacies. Nor does his "dissappearance" lend one to naively think we are now "grown up".

The construct of "The Creator", father, mother, leader is a fictional charactor that we imagined in our own minds as a way to narcisstically reinforce our own superiority over the other inhabitants on Earth; a way to conform morality as the chosen few wished to portray. A wild card that "forgives" the fundamentally evil things we do to each other, to those who will not conform the fantasy that others provide and insist that everyone believe.

We are pretty clever as a species. We control (?) the atom, change molecules, build great edifaces. We have used our brain and imagination and rescources to be able to fly to the moon. We coax larger yields of crops to feed an increasingly hungry planet of people. We divert great rivers and use the energy to provide electricity for an immense group of tools, appliances and equipment. We drill deep into the earth and extract oil for the same hungry purpose of energy consumption. All these things are impressive examples of human ingenuity, but not a single one of them confirms a Creator. Not one single achievement has ever, ever leapt over the boundary that confines and defines us. The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to it. We breathe its air. We eat its bounty. We borrow its energy to live our lives, and at the end, we must give it back.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Panspermia, exogenesis-- the concept goes back to the ancient Greeks...

and maybe before. The Greeks never decided whether the spread of life was purposeful or accidental and random, though.

I'm really fond of the recurring sci-fi plot where we are the result of some ancient alien terraforming project that may have gone awry. Maybe the aliens are just watching to see what happens, maybe they are intervening. Maybe they just got bored and went away.

At any rate, there is no conflict between science and religion if one doesn't anthropomorphize the "creator" into something we are comfortable with. Gods, or any form of alien life, could very well be in a form completely unrecognizable to us. Or in a dimension we can't observe.

[hyphenate]

13. My thought exactly!

The theories of science in the early world weren't just thought about by the Greeks, thankfully, as if I recall correctly, some of the other civilizations BCE were fairly well-grounded as well. It took powermongers, popes and emperors to fuck things up with their "heaven for the peasants" promises, to promote a god of their own choosing, and create the subculture that came with it. It wasn't until the 19th century that the whole "rapture" and fundamentallism really took over: the authoritarian POV won through and mucked everything to the point of extremism.

[ironbark]

15. Most of what you postulate matches the theory/proposition of Progressive Revelation.

Progressive Revelation is proposition that all major living religious traditions are sequential...given/revealed to humanity in stages through prophets, messengers and manifestations.
This, progressive revelation, is one of the central principles of the Baha’i faith but can be found reflected in the scriptures of all major religious traditions.


“Let's assume there IS/WAS a creator. This creator is nothing like what any relgious group follows today, or might not even be able to be conceived of in anyone's mind, regardless of how creative an imagination someone might have.”

This reflects the most ancient and contemporary conceptions of the Abrahamaic god... Unknowable, indescribable, beyond human ability to grasp...even gods name was unpronounceable...”Beyond the comprehension or description of aught else except itself”. What you describe is what the Abrahamaic god was always supposed to be- indescribable....known only through its revelations, its attributes and its creation.

“This creator follows what we have described as evolution, but yet "it" knows that it's going to have to help out the most promising of its creations, by helping them out now and then, helping them to move forward in both time and progression of their race.”

Moses 1500-1350 BCE….Krishna 2000 BCE…. Zoroaster 628-527 BCE… Buddha 563-483 BCE…Jesus 1-33 CE… Mohammed 570-632 CE…. Baha'u'llah 1817-1892 CE

This is Progressive Revelation (or the divinely guided ‘evolution’ of religion)...revelation “helping them to move forward in both time and progression” through teachers/ messengers who appear as stepping stones through history. (In ten thousand+ years we never get the founders of two major living faiths in the same time frame...why not?)

“At one point, ite makes a boo-boo, and while trying to experiment with more than one race, makes a second one which fails to thrive, even though it is potentially superior to the other race. The creator wipes the slate clean of this second race, and Neanderthal man is gone.”

Don’t know about Neanderthals representing a “boo-boo” (or the veracity of the possibility of an all seeing all knowing god making a mistake). There are lots of plausible/ reasonable explanations for why a god, having set evolution in motion, would foresee and allow rich diversity that sometimes leads to dead ends. Dinosoars may speak of/reflect- “The world could well have been so violent/hostile you would never evolve or advance” and Neanderthals- “Intelligence will overcome brute strength”.
It does not necessarily follow (in a ‘created’ universe) that either was a “boo-boo”

“At one point, it sends "helpers" now and then who help create civilizations, languages, mythology, and societies. Depending on the location of these civilizations, different cultures are made, and different laws, rituals, and inherent behaviors are given, and then, this creator begins to back away from its "creation."...”

Again...this is straight up Progressive Revelation theory. The ‘social laws’ change in accord with the era and condition and capacity of humanity to comprehend...But the central spiritual teachings (The Golden Rule ect) remain constant through all the living religions. In this framework the teachings humanity received in kindergarten are just as important/valid as the teaching received at university...but some instructions are superseded and others refined.

“Like a parent, this creator watches from afar once the basic lifeforms are established, and only intervenes when it believes man is going in the wrong direction.”

As I understand ‘the story’ the last major/direct intervention prompted by humanity “going in the wrong direction” was the flood...followed by the promise/assurance that such a spanking would not be necessary nor happen again.

“Over time, the creator corrects some mistakes, by "punishing" people, making them go through some pretty rough stuff.”

Doccumentary last night revealed how Archeologists had found thousands and thousand of clay fertility goddesses in Israel from a period in which it had been assumed ‘monotheism’ was well established and entrenched. This was prior to the Babylonian conquest and subsequent exile of Jews to Babylon. Upon return to Israel the Jews concluded they had been “punished” by the withdrawal of divine protection...and fertility goddesses cease to appear in the archaeological record.

“Finally, after untold years, the inhabitants of this planet have reached the "legal" age, and it is time for the creator to "let go" of the people, letting them fall, stumble, make their own mistakes, and become "adults"
The defining moment of adulthood? The nuclear bomb.”

At this point I can only suggest/recommend you Google/seek out the Baha’i writings because most of what you have put forward parallels or paraphrases what they teach/believe. Subtle but distinct differences remain in perception and conception... Baha’is see the evolution of humanity as one of- family,clan,tribe,village,town,city,city state, country, nation.....and maturity/adulthood occurring with the (practical and spiritual) recognition that we are “One World, One People” and have “One Faith”.
A “nuclear bomb” is seen as one of many threats to humanity that necessitate the maturity of adult understanding of our essential ‘oneness’.


“In adulthood, we have to forget the past, and move on into the future, perhaps some day becoming such creators ourselves, even if it is a billion years in the future. We have made such great strides in our progression through time, and now the human race begins its adolescence without the "parent" there to shepherd us forward.”

If by “we have to forget the past” you mean that we have to forget/forgive old animosities and move forward (?)...then I am in complete agreement. I also share with the Baha’is that we are extremely unlikely to move into the future clinging to conceptions such as ‘American’ ‘Australian’ ‘Russian’ ‘Christian’ ‘Moslem’...if they are not subsumed within the conception- ‘Human’ and ‘Earthling’.

“the creator will come back and collect the pieces...”

According to the Baha’is the last time the “creator came back” was in 1844 (Curiously, the same year determined by William Miller to be the year of ‘Advent’/Second Comming)...and the next intervention/Manefestation/messanger will not be for a thousand years from that date.

I enjoyed your thoughtful and thought provoking post....hope my response was of some interest to you.