What if...

[Lucifer]

Please note that I'm not attempting to put down Christianity, and I don't mean to offend anyone, if you think my thoughts get too silly.

What if...

God is an amateur creator? If intelligent designer isn't true, and someone still needs to believe that God created us, then if he created some of us with vestigal limbs and poor design, it may indicate that he's just an amateur.

God is a bacterium? Let's see here...God's everywhere, bacteria are everywhere. God lives practically forever, and bacteria live very long. God created us, and we eventually came from bacteria; we somehow had a very, very distant ancestor that was a bacterium (ie, near the very "beginning").

[potwalloper.]

I understand that there are bacteria that can exist in quite extreme conditions (over 100 degress centigrade and without oxygen).

A chart of extremophiles can be found here if you're interested - and these are just some of the ones we know about at present

http://www.resa.net/nasa/otherextreme.htm

[scorpia]

yeah, I know there's extremophiles out there, and yes they can survive space. But what I mean is space usually being empty, so bacteria being area cannot be so. Not unless the whole area above the atmosphere is crowded with bacteria, which it isn't. There's no pressure up there.

[potwalloper.]

Well - I agree that we would be unlikely to find bacteria simply floating around in a vacuum. However "space" is rather full of pieces of matter floating around from dust, through meteorites and asteroids to planets...any of which could house an extreme form of life.

If we consider that our galaxy has around 100 million suns in it and there are a 100 million other galaxies each with 100 million suns (or thereabouts) then the possibility of there being some planetary body that could house life increases significantly.

However - I think we are getting away from the thread...

[Amphigorey]

yeah, I know there's extremophiles out there, and yes they can survive space. But what I mean is space usually being empty, so bacteria being area cannot be so. Not unless the whole area above the atmosphere is crowded with bacteria, which it isn't. There's no pressure up there.

But as potwollaper said, interstellar space is filled with a lot more dark matter than we generally think. In fact it's quite a debate among physicists as to how much dark matter exists and whether it in fact out weighs the stuff we can see. We have found huge clouds of organic molecules in interstellar space. I know that's not "life", but what about protolife? There could be viruses for example.

[aprilannies]

Well, Gnostism is new to me. If you see my usergroup, I'm agnostic. I kind of suggested the amateur creator for either humor or a suggestion, depending on how you look at it.

Gnostic

GNO/s/tic

Greek, noun

GNO- base; to know
-s/tic noun suffix; one who

"One who knows"

According to what you've told me, I'm not sure where they got the idea for that word.

What I've found on http://www.gnosticchristianity.com I quote directly because I'm far from an expert on the subject.

Gnostic Christianity is not about Jesus' public teachings; it is about the gnosis, or practical knowledge, that Jesus taught in private.

Jesus' Christ/logos teachings bring a new element to the debate between Jewish and Greek philosophy. For all the reasons given above, Jesus' contribution of nonjudgmental logic, when added to Aristotle's judgmental system of logic, will expand our consciousness. And we will, because of our renewed thought process, process ideas with the same wisdom/logos as does God.

My own personal take on it is to look at it as kind of a western Buddhism, that may be horrifically inaccurate though, it's just what I've gleaned from it so far.

[mrmufin]

Please note that I'm not attempting to put down Christianity, and I don't mean to offend anyone, if you think my thoughts get too silly.

What if...

God is an amateur creator? If intelligent designer isn't true, and someone still needs to believe that God created us, then if he created some of us with vestigal limbs and poor design, it may indicate that he's just an amateur.

God is a bacterium? Let's see here...God's everywhere, bacteria are everywhere. God lives practically forever, and bacteria live very long. God created us, and we eventually came from bacteria; we somehow had a very, very distant ancestor that was a bacterium (ie, near the very "beginning").

This question reminds me of my first date with the very lovely msmufin... I was probably about as romantic as an IRS form that day. The date consisted of a hike in the mountains, during which I interrogated her about everything from her opinions on marriage and taxes to TV sitcoms and breakfast cereals. One particular line of questioning went something like:

mr: Creation or evolution?
ms: Evolution.
mr: How do you know that?
ms: Make some rice pudding and stick it in the fridge. Leave it there for a very long time. Stuff will grow on it; trust me. Give that stuff a few hundred million years and it might just design a better refrigerator.
mr: Ha!

While msmufin's reasoning may be of dubious scientific integrity (and certainly doesn't preclude a creator since the rice pudding is definitely created), it casts an interesting (and curiously unpopular) set of questions about the intentions--if any--of the creators. What if we're an unexpected, unwanted, or experimental consequence? What if the creators have taken a short vacation of, say, 100 million years? Is our destiny in any way contingent upon their mood when they return?

Another possibility is that God is a lower level functionary in an heirarchy of deities. Perhaps this particular deity is in charge of creation and support of, say, the third and fourteenth universes within the larger multiverse. Ah, for the love of asking pesky, rhetorical questions...

Regards,
mrmufin