think about that rule

Masimatutu@lemm.ee to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 681 points –
79

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis

I love that. "GOD created them that way to FOOL the unbelievers! He also created the universe to appear older than it is, but we knows better!" The laws of time, space, reason, and logic bend to fit their narrative.

I kind of subscribed to that line of thought before my deconversion. That if we believe in a god with unlimited power, he has the power to create a universe that's already 13 billion years old. But if God did that, then he'd be presenting a 6,000 year old universe as a 13 billion year old one. And doing so would make him a liar. But God doesn't tell lies? And a god capable of lying is not a god worth following. But a god that is incapable of lying is limited in his abilities. And a god limited in his capabilities is not worth following.

Why is a god simply being capable of lying not worth following? If he's capable and chooses not to, isn't that a better god than one who can't lie?

Well this god installed thirteen billion years of red-shifted light from the furthest visible stars. Last Tuesday.

Yeah but he did though. Multiple times.

I'm not talking about a specific god, just the general concepts of gods.

It always annoys me how hard it is for me to make people understand this. I often debate the concept of spirituality and Gods in general, and people (in the US) always reply with some response like 'but catholic church bad.' Which, sure, I'm not disagreeing, but is such a narrow viewpoint and doesn't exactly have anything to do with the possibility of a God or Gods existing.

Nah it wouldn't make him a liar- it isn't necessarily an attempt to fool humans, in my opinion any God capable of doing something like that did it for their own reasons, not as some cosmic prank

If God was real he would probably be a massive pervert, considering he's just watching us while we don't have clothes on all the time. Bit of a weirdo.

I mean according to some religions he was the one who told people to put some clothes on in the first place

Man, I sure do love it when our all-loving God does everything in his power to trick non-believers into further doubt so they burn in hell for eternity!

Nah god is definitely just an introvert who doesn't want us to know about him. Joke's on the thiests, they're gonna be eternally punished for not leaving him alone. Which is horrible--did I mention he's also an asshole? /s (/s because I don't believe in any god, to be clear)

I mean the "fool unbelievers" thing is stupid but also it's not really unreasonable that if you could speak things into existence and did so for cosmic entertainment or whatever that you would make it at the point that it's actually interesting. Like if I was going to make people I probably wouldn't start with infants, I would start with actual independent ones. Likewise I wouldn't start with an infant universe

But then how do you know he did not create everything 5 seconds ago? Shouldn't be a problem for him to create memories surely. Or maybe he hasn't created anything yet, but he is just thinking about it and we are literally his imagination.
The logical conclusion of this is we can't really know anything including wether or not god is real, which brings us right back to the start, doesn't it?

No, you are completely right, but it's kind of the same with the "we are living in a simulation" thing (there isn't really a functional difference between a God's imagination and a simulation).

A more interesting question to me is not where we came from, but if there is an endgame. Created 5 seconds, 500 million years ago, 'real', or just avatars in a superconsciousness, the question remains- is there a "RIGHT" way to use our agency and experience?

And he made the earth flat but he is fooling the non-believers into thinking it's a globe! Trust me bro

This feels like the Haruhi Suzumiya theory where the universe was created like 2 years prior to the beginning of the series.

And somehow the one created for a young adult novel series seems more realistic than the one actual people believe.

The thing is, many of these issues shows up in Christianity, and not in Judaism or Islam.

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Not as funny as pictures of Jesus wearing a cross.

I have a theory, but I'm betting nobody truly wants to hear it.

I bet it has something to do with Adam and Eve being fictional characters in the mythological texts of a bunch of hokey religions.

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And yet when I think about it, it really doesn't seem that mad. If god is real and can make people he's certainly capable of making people with belly buttons.

There was actually a 19th century guy who noticed this and made up a hypothesis that the reason we see so many signs of long-term natural development of Earth's features (canyons, mountains, etc.) is because God intentionally put fake evidence there, like he did with Adam and Eve's belly buttons. I think he named his book Omphalos, which means navel in Ancient Greek.

Interesting, instead of acceptance, simply invent another hypothesis to "confirm" the likely uncomfirmable.

I get the "scientific" method of it though.

At this point I'm kinda afraid to ask, but why the hell does nowadays almost every post title on Lemmy end with "rule"?

Not lemmy, /c/196.

It’s just the β€œ196” community, which already existed on Reddit. From what I understood, the only rule is you have to post something before you leave, and put β€œrule” in the title. As for the reason, or why is it called like that, I’m not sure either.

the titles are tradition but not a rule. it's called 196 because it's a descendent of 195. why was it called 195? 195 was created by a college student as a social experiment, and 195 was their room number. they shut down 195 when they graduated, so 196 was created

"almost every post title on Lemmy".

I counted my feed and it was 2/30. Apparently that means "almost every" in 2023 lmao

I often browse everything, not just what I subscribed to. I can see quite a lot of "rule" posts that way. Sometimes all I can see is "rule" everywhere. Not knowing the scheme it was very annoying, because it didn't make any sense. Now I know, all I need to do is restrict myself to my subscribed communities.

The rule is that you have to post before you leave

'Rule' is to lemmy what 'Desu' is to 4chan

As someone who has never used 4chan that makes it now clearer.

Wtf is 4chan? (No need to reply lol, I'm not really interested.)

Isn't the easy answer that God just created them that way?

The paintings? Nah, those were made by people.

Well that's even easier to explain, people are flawed and do flawed representation

And Jesus Christ is caucasian on european paintings, so what?

Historically that's the best guess we have. Or did you think a rando guy from Bethlehem looked any different than the rest of the Mediterranean? What you should indeed question though is blonde hairs and blue eyes, that's quite unlikely (though not unheard of).

"Caucasian" now that's more questionable the term in itself is bunk and the stuff that backed it up back then is now understood to be the archaeological evidence of the spread of the Indo-European languages out of their Urheimat (ballpark Ukraine/Caucasus). But you'll have a hard time telling a Sicilian, Greek, Turk, Palestinian, or say Tunisian apart because guess what, the sea is a highway, people fucked.

Or are you one of those Seppos who think Egyptians are black?