Quote:
Originally posted by onionmon
If we define God to be a being of infinite power, ability, and intellegence, a being that can do anything according to his will, then we can also show that an advanced species from somewhere (another dimension, whatever) with superior technologies can be God.
They high advanced techs can make anything out of nothing, create things that we can't even dream of creating, and think of things that we can even comprehend. (Think startrek-ish.)
How do we tell the difference between God and this advanced species?
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I think some of us are smart enough to know that , if we're shown something that we can't understand, that doesn't mean that the only explanation is a miracle. Arthur Clarke once said something like, "A sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."
Of course, there would be those -- mayb e even the majority -- who would look at the kind of aliens you describe and declare their divinity. But a goodly chunk of us would simply be wondering how the hell they do that. Plus, we've got a lot of memes in our culture -- examples like well-known science fiction plots and movies -- that tell the tale, over and over, that godlike beings aren't necessarily gods.