What's the difference...

[Q]

::I didn't know where this topic belonged so feel free to move it...::

I used to tell myself that I would know God by just knowing in my mind. Either that or witnessing something supernatural that proved its existence. However after thinking about the possibilities of advanced alien races in ours (or other) universes, it doesn't seem as though I could even be certain about God. For example, if one day I woke up and somehow knew God was watching over me, there is no way to know if this is just a much more advanced alien race who is capable of manipulating our thoughts. Or if I witnessed something supernatural, what guarantees this is the result of a heavenly being and not just some superior intelligence whose brain has evolved further than our own and can perform tasks that seem supernatural to us. And what is God anyways? If an alien had somehow put us here, or designed us to evolve from apes, would followers of organized religion still worship this God with the same fervor as they do now? I apologize for rambling but I'm not sure how to phrase my questions... How do we know God is God and not some advanced alien race capable of performing things that seem impossible to us? If God turned out to be some advanced type of alien, would you (religious folk) still worship him with all your heart?

[Cathar1950]

Interesting idea and I have wondered the same thing myself.
The Gods and God of the bible and all the spirits do seem alien.
I have even read books claiming God was an alien. Their ideas are not much different or crazier then the bibles ideas.

[Being1]

Have you ever seen an alien? Have you ever seen God? To all intents and purposes, God may as well be an alien. In both cases, it is an intelligence responsible for the development and emergence of the human being. It is not supernatural, just very intelligent and completely natural.

[harvey1]

]How do we know God is God and not some advanced alien race capable of performing things that seem impossible to us

Of course, we can always just be inside the matrix sleeping in the real world and acting as batteries powering the whole thing, but if we utilize a principle of parsimony, then we can rule out such wild notions without losing any sleep. It doesn't mean we are right, but since almost anything is possible at any given moment, we ought to spend our time focusing on what really seems possible from what doesn't really seem possible.

In that sense, we can eliminate the idea that we can't tell the difference between God and ET. Presumably, ET would have many indications of them being from another planet, having a history, etc.. God, on the other hand, would be something that we could expect if we died. We should, I suppose, have some indication that we died (although no one knows for sure). In addition, God as a divine being would presumably not lie.

But, as you pointed out, our knowledge of just about anything is on very thin ice, and Occam's razor is sometimes difficult to utilize in some situations.

[juliod]

How do we know God is God and not some advanced alien race capable of performing things that seem impossible to us?

The key is in the definitions of god that theists make up. God is above all very interested in the earth, it's inhabitants, and the personal lives of his worshipers.

Any alien whoo just comes swaning in would have none of those things. The question for the alien would be "If you are god, where have you been for the last ten millenia? Huh?"

Clearly, any newly-encountered alien could not be equated with any of the existing god-concepts of the various religions.

DanZ

[Q]

Certainly the Gods commonly referred to in religions don't really have an alien history, but those stories were all thought up by people. If an advanced alien had seeded this planet with what it knew would one day become homo sapiens then it would be our creator. It seems that if this had happened all the stories of organized religion were simply human beings thinking up their own answers to life questions, not at all related to "the truth".

[juliod]

If an advanced alien had seeded this planet with what it knew would one day become homo sapiens then it would be our creator.

Yeah, but that still wouldn't qualify him (her/it/they) as "god" according to the usual and ordinary meaning of the word. There would still be no personal involvement, not guiding or assistance to the faithful, and even no super powers.

My view, as a strong atheist, is that all religious descriptions of god are false (silly stories). There may be strange and unusual aliens "out there" yet to be encountered, but none of these could be "god" in the way religions mean it.

DanZ

[Q]

Agreed. That is what I'm saying is that the religious stories are made up by humans, there is no real tie to the divine. An alien seeding the planet is just as (or in my opinion more) likely to be the case rather than a God in the judeo-christian sense. But I don't know, maybe all the religions that exist were started by different aliens and they are seeing which one can tally the most followers.

[juliod]

An alien seeding the planet is just as (or in my opinion more) likely to be the case rather than a God in the judeo-christian sense.

Yes. And panspermia, the theory that life originated in outerspace is a real scientific theory, but very tentative. It does have some evidence, since putative fossiles of bacteria from Mars have been found in meteorites in Antarctica.

DanZ

[Bugmaster]

Any alien who just comes swaning in would have none of those things. The question for the alien would be "If you are god, where have you been for the last ten millenia? Huh?"

Speaking for the aliens, I'd disagree. A native pre-warp civilization is highly useful, and thus we do care about it. The natives could be put into farming (or, lately, industry and mining) immediately, without the need for all that expensive terraforming. Thus, even uninhabitable (Red-2 or worse) worlds can be efficiently colonized. This is especially important in the beginning, to cut off the enemy empires' access to your territory.

In other words, worship me ! I demand starships and missile bases !

Ahem. Back to the real world I go...