“In an infinite universe, if there is even the slightest chance that something will happen, like the development of life from non-living materials, it not only will, it must. It’s simply the laws of probability at work“—Grouchy Farmer
Taking the shortcut “god”, is lazy economics. In the easy-way of zero effort we were taught that god created the universe. A god that we could only not see, but not even comprehend. It fails the simplest test of reason—it’s a feeling, imposed upon us for lack of a trying effort to think for yourself. A better answer (in an age where little was understood about the physical world) would have been “I don’t know”, god made a little sense—Enter reason
“Searching for god, we don’t discover who he is, we discover who we are”—
Just kidding. We don’t find who we are unless the search is a completely personal, expert-free search. Listening to the religious professionals, we adopt their beliefs and sort out our own equilibrium with their ideas. That is not us, but a conglomeration. In some cases you may need to journey their path—only to later realize you don’t need them. We are so easily influenced (as evidenced by mass belief) the only person you can trust is yourself—by your own observations and meditations.
After a lifetime of drawing your sources from a poisoned well, well, it takes a conscious effort to set such preconceptions aside for a time and admit to yourself this—You may very well be wrong about every single thing you think you know. Hitting the reset button takes courage and most of all, true humility. The fact is, 99% of what you think is yours, are the ideas and opinions of others. Who would you be without that?
I finally have a belief—that one curious soul can quietly see the world and in their own way and add a striking point of interesting realism to this puzzle we call life. It just takes a step back from the coercive opinions to find it. Not from the “experts” but through our own observations.
TheCommonAtheist 
Egads, I think this is the first time anyone has ever quoted me
LikeLiked by 4 people
I think I heard you quoted before—Or maybe it was accused. And that was in the 80’s on Lee Meilky’s Dairy line.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha!!! Don’t do that when I have a mouthful of coffee! I would like to know how Meilky accumulates all that data, though. Either he has a huge staff or he does nothing but sit at a computer all day long monitoring every ag news outlet and market in the world
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think you just described his beginnings. Collecting day old papers from around the country and working it into a masterfully boring 90 seconds of 5am AM radio
LikeLike
The problem with a lot of true believers is that they equate the merely unlikely with the miraculous. Like the development of life. The development of life is, we think, extremely rare. After all, we’ve only found one world (so far at least) that supports life that we know of.
But there are as many as 250 billion stars in our galaxy, and it looks like a lot of them, perhaps most of them, have planets. Deep space images from Hubble and other telescopes show us that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, each one with tens or hundreds of billions of stars, and a lot or even most of those stars have planets as well. So while the development of life on any specific world is highly unlikely, when you take into consideration the number of planets out there, the development of life on at least some of them is a virtual certainty. No miraculous intervention required.
Admitting that we exist not because of some miraculous intervention but because of random chance doesn’t do much for one’s self esteem, so I can understand why some people like to think that some deity sits up late at night admiring them and doting over them
LikeLiked by 3 people
Life exists in a very small window of opportunity. The earth may very well be a focal point in the universe, collecting consciousness wherever it may be developing, this is the best chance to make something of it for quite a distance.
I just watched the Hubble deep field video again last night. Truly remarkable what is out there. And then this—The pale blue dot teeming with life as we have the senses to observe
LikeLiked by 2 people
If the believer can prove that the sole purpose of the universe existence is for the emergence of life then they may be on to something.
But I see no reason why the existence of life on earth is any more miraculous than the existence of Saturn’s rings in the exact position that it is
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s a pretty good point. Excellent. God wanted a planet with rings…or this is a random display of nature making its way.
LikeLike
Speaking of the reason why intelligent life exists, there was a vague theory or notion proposed by someone in the field of quantum mechanics many years ago (possibly as a joke or a sarcastic way of trying to point out just how silly things at the quantum level look to the average person) that, in a manner of speaking, the universe created us, and actually *had* to create us. There are certain quantum phenomena that seem to take place only if they are observed. Sort of like the idea of Schrodinger’s cat. The idea being that unless there is someone to actually consciously observe the phenomena, it cannot take place. The act of observing brings the phenomena into reality, so to speak. So the universe couldn’t exist unless we were here to observe it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sounds a bit like those who think we’re in a matrix.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“God is a feeling.” I like that. It explains much because it is all about how we feel (to us anyway). The mockingbirds are loud and busy here this morning. I wonder how they feel about the god and belief thing.
LikeLiked by 3 people
If them mockingbirds only had the devices and enough leisure time to sit around and develop existential anxieties, we might find out a new way to cure boredom.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The magpie couple here work non-stop all day to feed those nestlings and chase off the ravens. Guess they won’t be finding any time to go to church next Sunday.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Taking the shortcut “god”, is lazy economics.” If you don’t have any money in the bank, you can always wish that you did. And if there is no bank it is possible to imagine one and that is where you put the money that you don’t have. The first humans did exactly that. They created heaven so there would be someplace for their imagined gods to exist. We have harbored and passed on this delusion since the beginning. GROG
LikeLiked by 2 people
indeed, it’s in ‘how’ one looks. the ‘reality of god’ is so obvious, that we totally miss it.
like looking for the glasses that sit on our nose. in fact, how can we see, when it hides in the very seeing?
LikeLike
If there is a chance there is a god, then by all means, show us how this artificial world (not natural at all) is a creation by a god no one can see nor begin to comprehend? The hearts desire a hero, doesn’t make evidence these things can and do happen given enough time, all the time, given billions of years and a chance. We are made of inert materials, minerals, hydrogen, carbon and dirt, so it is evidence that we are here by such means after all.
LikeLiked by 1 person
if i am made of inert matter, what is it in me that knows it exists? even the chimp knows it is, and recognizes itself in a mirror.
biologists have always liked to assume that given ‘enough’ time, all the variables of life are possible. but biologists don’t know mathematics. and even given billions of years, the
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whatever it is, at this point if we all jump on board and say god did it, either way we will never know. He ain’t talkin, and we have billions that aren’t even interested because they already think they know the answer. This lack of curious discovery has stifled some of the best minds of all time—including mine for most of my life. There are a myriad of possibilities, and if each and every person were helping instead of hindering, we may just find the element sooner than later. I tend to think it’s very simple and we’re looking too hard. Just a simple thing like oxygen. We can’t see it, but without it there is no potential for this level of life as we know it. Could it be in the wind? I think a host of explanations can be explored.
We couldn’t even see a germ til a couple hundred years ago. Now looking in the subatomic realms and billions of light years into space and we’ve just gotten started on this timeline.
LikeLike
yes, that is common way of looking for hidden part. however, there is nothing to see, as your ‘looking’ is IT. consciousness is non-matter, non-local, non-dimensional, so it cannot possibly be observed or studied. quantum mechanics knows that by looking at an “event” we change its properties. reality therefore, is not fixed or stable, but rather fluid and highly influenced by the participant. in the zero-field, there is the possibility for quantum entanglement. in that state, duality disappears, and one (the mind) is fully immersed. This is the god-consciousness, where the full creative power resides. All humans have this potential. Nothing to do with any ‘exterior’ power.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That we know of…yet. Yet the God-consciousness may very well be unaware it has created anything. Not in the sense of the religious examples.
LikeLike
sorry about that. so, the argument that given enough time anything can happen (life or evolution) is mathematically unsound. the famous example is the “infinite monkey theorem”. it’s true that a monkey will eventually type out Hamlet, but it will take many billions of times the age of the universe.
according to the yogic view, matter is not inert, but has the seed of consciousness. and this is not to say there is a ‘creator’ as in the Christian view, but rather the whole universe is consciousness itself and therefore fully aware.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can agree with most of what you said, but on the infinite monkey theorem, I only get one monkey which makes it an apples to lederhosen type argument. How about a proportionate about of monkeys?
This argument reminds me of the sandcastles on the beach argument (blind watchmaker) if you see a sandcastle on the beach, you automatically think someone made it. But in geologic time we see sandcastles all the time. Look at Moab Utah, for instance. But nothing ever evolved in the time it takes to go to the beach. And Moab is a great example because those sandstone mesas were formed in the very oceans we see today. Just millions of years in the making.
As far as matter goes, I tend to think it’s all alive (like your yogic view). We also see they can be stimulated and transfer their electrons and so forth, so scientifically that is pretty sound. Fantastic ideas and discussion! I don’t think we see things too differently. I have just seen what was once attributed to god, shrink to almost nil over the last 3 centuries. Although creation is the last holdout for religion, I’m pretty sure it will be toppled with a real explanation as well. We shall see.
LikeLiked by 2 people
pls, i encourage you to read the first paragraph only of the wiki page.
“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. However, the probability that monkeys filling the observable universe would type a complete work such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but technically not zero).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
LikeLike
Sure, but it’s a hypothetical. I could throw more zeros on there just by my good nature and make any problem harder that it is. Now we shift to “time” and start to wonder what was happening before time existed. If we want a god we’ll have a god. That is a given. Typing monkeys is a more complex problem than the order we see. We’re dealing with 118 known elements and 47 billion light years (Hubble deep field) and about 13billion years of planet earth. Monkeys at a typewriter is like throwing god in the equation. It doesn’t compute.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“given enough time, this and that will happen” is also purely hypothetical, my friend. the “monkey theorem” shows, quite simply, that no, it would not just happen.
i am not bringing an exterior god in the equation… i am bringing YOU. have an awesome day, Jim!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. I think I’m starting to understand that wonderful brain of yours. And I concur. For now. Haha. Thanks
LikeLike
hahah! i lived with it 40 yrs and still have no clue what’s happening in there 😄
LikeLiked by 1 person
The infinite monkey theorem only is for demonstrate that for anything with a non-zero probability that the only variable we need worry about is time. We simply don’t know the probability of life occurring from the raw elements. It is wrong by the way to call matter inert. The only inert elements are the noble gases. Chemical reactions between other elements go on all the time…that’s what we are talking about. The conditions for which chemically reactive substances like carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, which are abundant on our planet, would get together in the right conditions to produce life. It seems quite likely that this probability is much higher than monkeys typing out Shakespeare. But even if it wasn’t, the fact remains that for a non-zero probability there is a chance that it could happen somewhere quickly, even if everywhere else it doesn’t happen at all. We could be alone in the universe if the odds are so astronomically small. Us being alone in the universe doesn’t mean that there is no God. There are 100 billion galaxies and each of those galaxies have billions of stars, and the universes has been around for 14 billion years. That’s a lot of time and space for a lot of rolls of the dice.
Now what do you think the odds are of a being existing that is complex enough to create the universe? What is the origin of such a being? And if it didn’t have an origin, what are the odds of that, given that everything we else we know of in the universe has an origin, and that everything else we see moves from simplicity to complexity. Yet for all the natural explanations for everything else, there is supposed to be something outside of time and space, that has no origin, that nobody can see except through personal hallucinatory experiences. Yet so many people are willing to buy into that low probability existence simple because they are impatient with the fact that we don’t have all the answers for how events unfolded a long time before we existed as humans. Again it boils down to “I don’t know = therefore God.” It’s intellectually lazy and is exactly counter to the methodology that has helped us understand so much about how the universe works. We can certainly have a discussion about the value of religion to human cooperation and culture, but to argue that God is more probable than life originating through some natural process seems very odd to me. Especially given that we come to understand natural processes more and more each day, and yet God still remains without any evidence at all other than the fallacious argument of incredulity. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity
LikeLiked by 2 people
very well-thought reply. i insist, mind/intellect will never take you there. a regular meditation practice where thinking is put aside, however, will give many answers. just like love, you cannot know It until you fall in it. cannot know love by reading or intellectualizing about it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And yet intellectually we know a lot about meditation and love. Just like written facts about someone is not the same as knowing that person. It doesn’t mean there aren’t measurable qualities about them. This analogy draws false equivalence because God has no measurable facts even if God is unknowable as an entity by those facts.
LikeLiked by 3 people
god is very knowable. but never by intellect. and even if you read all the books about love, that will not make you a lover.😉 you gotta dive into it, become it
LikeLike
I have a sneaky feeling that if you had been raised in our society to believe those “relationships”were from the wind and Mother Earth, that would be the god. Since every manifestation of god is in the flavor of the culture, isn’t it likely it’s all in your head, coming from you and our presupposed interpretation? Neuro studies bare this out over and over.
Mormons see the Mormon god, children see the cultural god they grew up with, Hindus see those gods, etc. Either I’m right, or there are just multiple gods out there tinkering by region.
LikeLiked by 1 person
yes, Jim, i also always wondered why christians never see the buddha in their visions, why Muhammad never shows up in buddhists’ mind, and so on. reality is flexible, and lends itself to mind/thought. we assume it is fixed, but it’s anything but that. god is not an exterior thing/entity, it’s very much an inner state of consciousness of total unity. all spiritual paths have discovered this truth. the whole thing starts and ends with you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
But love is not independent of physical systems. That puts love in a very different categories. If there is no life, love is not existent. For God to be reality it must exist and thus must be at least measurable if it does exist. Intellect may never be able to simulate the feeling, but the feeling can be still be measured intellectually. We know it’s a biological drive, we know it impacts chemical levels in the body, we know it activates certain parts of the brain. Love isn’t any different than any other emotions, yet emotions are clearly a product of our physiology and there may come a time when we can create a pill that can give people that sensation of love. But beyond that love is just a category that we have given the sensation. Love exists in many different ways and is experienced differently by culture depending on the importance that we give a particular type of love. Some cultures hold brotherly love as more important, friendship, or familial. Love only exists in so far there are life forms capable of experiencing it and certainly different species also experience it differently. God, is not supposed to depend on life forms to make it real. It is supposedly real whether I exist or not. Just like you are real whether I exist or not. I don’t know you, but facts about you can still be determined and measured. All you’ve done is defined God in a way that can never be tested, which is convenient for theists, but in no way constitutes reality. Love is a label we’ve given to a range of physiological sensations. Furthermore, I don’t need to know love to accept that it is a part of reality. There are all sorts of things I can know about it that are measurable. If you want to equivocate God and love then it’s existence must be measurable in the same way love is.
LikeLiked by 3 people
no, i don’t equivocate god to love, although many do. i just used love as an example to show you that it is the ‘approach’ you take, that makes all the difference. if you approach god as an ‘observer’, as science does, god can never be seen. because an observer is always in duality with his subject. god is nothing more than an experience of oneness, where the individual dissolutes into the whole. so you cannot have a ‘me’ looking for, or understanding, or searching for anything. as long as duality exists, god is not.
this is the ultimate human experience, after which, you may or may not come back to human form. like the buddhists call it, you escape the wheel of life and re-birth, ‘samsara’. nice chatting with you! 😊
LikeLiked by 2 people
But where do you get this definition of God? Is this something you would come up with on your own, had the idea not already been planted in society? Would you be able to discover what a unicorn is, if the idea didn’t already exist. I mean I can conjure up anything into existence by this definition. You first describe God as reality, now God is an experience. While we can say experiences are real, our interpretation of those experiences are highly biased by both our own knowledge and our own lack of knowledge. What you describe can also be obtained by those who are atheists. Sam Harris describes his meditative experience exactly like you do in which duality disappears and there is no “self” or “me”, but does not attribute this to God, but rather the falling away of the illusion of duality, and nothing more. We have to have higher standards for reality than personal interpretation of experiences if we are to achieve some sort of more peaceful existence. Your personal truths matter of course, but these are aesthetics nothing more. The way you choose to feel spiritual, or to experience elation is your preference. My personal truth might be that chocolate ice cream is the best flavor, but I would never argue that this should that this is an objective fact about the universe. If you like the idea of God, by all means enjoy it, but that does not make God an objective fact of the universe, only a personal preference.
LikeLiked by 2 people
god IS the fading away of duality, and nothing more. the label we put on it is totally unimportant. we’ve been indoctrinated to think it’s something outside, but it is your own being, your consciousness/awareness.
god is a quality of being, like heat is to fire, and wetness is to water.
i’ve been practicing meditation over 10yrs. much of this is insight that comes with that practice. 😊
LikeLiked by 2 people
While I certainly prefer your definition of god…I guess in the end I don’t even understand why smuggle in the concept at all. Taking the concept away changes nothing in terms of the quality of our experiences and the universe continues that same way it always has. I like the Buddhist approach, but I think the label of god has been used by so many religions as something outside, that Buddhism would be the exception not the rule. I’d love to reframe what the conception of god actually means, but given the trouble that believing in invisible deities has caused historically, it seems better to just lay the concept to rest rather than trying to redefine it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
for sure. the concept itself goes through an evolution, but historically, its has also been associated with need of power and suppression. if man truly knew what he is, could he be controlled??💪❤taking back our power
LikeLiked by 2 people
I wouldn’t want some deity up anywhere doting over me, because eventually s/he/it would want their due. Be it a first born, my forever adulation, or just a kind word everyday, I aint giving anyone anything if they demand it from me. I give only what I want to give, freely of my own choice.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You’ll let this god do what he wants or else, rg. And you’ll dote right back if you know what’s good for you.
LikeLike
I’d say, screw you, but others might think I’m serious. So I’ll just say, “Fat chance!” Religious people might be reading this, and I’d hate to disturb their cocksucking ears!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hahahah. What an asshole tonight. Lol. You made me laugh.
LikeLike
You honour me…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I live by the honor system—Get on ‘er and stay on ‘er!
LikeLike
I would wager there is some truth to
since at the end, when one searches disparately, you find only yourself and your humanity at the end
LikeLiked by 3 people