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V_V comments on Alpha Mail - Less Wrong
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I wholeheartedly agree. I had a professor (a former priest) who thought it was absurd that I was willing to use the term creator but unwilling to admit a God. To his dogma they are one and the same. But for me, even if a creator has the power to pull the plug on this experiment, my current thinking doesn't allow omnipotence in the sense used by most theists. And I can't imagine that a creator in this context has the ability to hear our thoughts, respond to daily minutia, or has any interest in dictating morality to a bunch of bits in a hard drive.
God or gods aren't necessarily omnipotent in all religions.
Just because you don't believe in textbook Catholicism it doesn't mean that you are an atheist.
Sure, but if I believe that aliens in a multiverse outside of our own happened to create a simulation that is our universe, does that constitute God in any sense intended by religion? Theism requires that the God has an active role in the creations lives, not simply a belief in a creator - omnipotent or not. The only religion I can think of that mention aliens in doctrine is Scientology. And while I'm sure that most people would allow for Scientology as a religion, I'm pretty sure that with a hundred thousand people arranging the following list of religions based on best to worst religious beliefs, my bet is on scientology coming in dead last.
Christianity, Jainism, Sikh, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Scientology, Judaism, Zoroastrian, Shinto, Wicca.
Which doesn't say anything about the actual validity of those religions, just that the majority of people would probably view a religion steeped in aliens to be less like a religion than the others.
Aliens from other planets are one thing, the sort of thing weird low-status UFO cultists believe.
"Aliens" from outside our universe, who happened to have created it, and maybe even want to have a personal relationship with us (otherwise why would they try to send messages encoded in alpha?) are gods under another name.
Do you know where the word "avatar" comes from?
Agreed, simply calling a creator an alien is simply redefining alien to mean god. I gotta give it to you LWers, conversations on here have certainly proved already to be quite a bit more interesting than with my old line cooks.