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[Sy Borg]

Dark Matter, your persistent personal undermining betrays your desperation, your inherent insecurity in your position. You are desperately trying to convince yourself that your possible impending annihilation is just the product of soulless and pessimistic minds. For me, the possibility of annihilation is real, but so might other possibilities. I would like resolution to the big questions, sure, but accept that that's about as likely as world peace.

So you aggressively assert that what you so desperately to exist, does exist. It's as though you think you can wish an afterlife into existence with desire. Like you, I hope that when I fall of the perch that a warm, loving light will draw me out of the darkness and so forth. However, I'm not going to insult people when they suggest that that is only one possibility, and that there's no way of knowing.

Also, you don't misunderstand that I treat this as an intellectual exercise. This isn't a personal whinge. My life is good. I am retired and free. However, when rating reality, am I to avoid pointing out the suffering of others? This is the suffering that every day I feel grateful that I'm not experiencing. The suffering in the wild over millions of years. Mothers losing their babies and vice versa. Tragedies playing out with hearts breaking every minute of every day, humans and others. Who cares, right? It's all for the glorious future ...

Also, there is this tendency for theists to assume that all secularists are Nietzsche and Schopenhauer clones. Completely wrong. Most non believers figure that, since life is brief and fortunate, we should make the most of the time we have. That seems like a positive and reasonable approach to me.

[Dark Matter]

You insult people all the time, Greta. You did it in your post.

And the excerpt is most fitting. I understand the "retired and free" part, but looking at the elephant through a magnifying glass tells you nothing about the life of the elephant. You want resolution? Then step back and take in the whole picture from a distance and question everything, especially the obvious things. What must be in order for what is to be as it is? At least have the courage to acknowledge that in the end, your "positive and reasonable" approach makes a joke of everything that makes us human: fears, loves, longings beliefs, hopes, aspirations, etc.; that, in the end, you have no logical reason to care about anything but yourself.

What has God actually done wrong? How can anyone but a narcissist complain?

[Burning ghost]

Getting back to the topic, “what has the Lord actually done wrong;” should the question not also be, what have we done wrong? If we started out, according to Genesis, as content and safe, should the blame not rather be on us? Imagine you get your son into a firm, everything is safe, and the company belongs to him. He runs it into the ground, spending all his cash on personal assets, luxury holidays and soon there is not a penny left. If he and his children keep following the same pattern, why should his father help him again? Is it wrong of the father to say, halt? Is it wrong of the father to force him to earn his own money after that?

If the fathet is all knowing and knows the best foe his children why would he err? That is the problem.

From this we can assume that all the bad in the world is for the greater good. It is "necessary". That is the only possible view to have of the situation from a theist position is it not?

If we do wrong then we do so because he put us in the position to do wrong, knowing we would do so. God can not do wrong. If God does err then why should we trust in the judgement of some being who merely "assumes" it is correct.

There is of course only a return to the view that "suffering" is necessary. Perhaps it really is necessary for living beings. I wouls openly admit that to suffer gives us appreciation for things usually taken for granted. The issue is more about the "sharing out" of suffering equally, or even regulating "suffering" enough to imbue "souls" with a fuller appreciation of life.

We are operating in ignorance. Our view of any God with our ignorance could be said to be the reason why we cannot see nor imagine a being free from ignorance. To us such a proposition simply doesn't fit into our sensibility and use of reason within language, and reason extended into natural sciences as a means to objectify and understand nature.

Can a mere mortal honestly and logically critic an all knowing being? That makes little to no sense to me. To view myself as such an all knowing being (which in an enclosed and somewhat solipistic sense I am) I cannot accuse myself of being "bad" only perverse. By this I mean I do as I see fit and my confusion lies simply in my all knowing ability of myself as present is encapsulated within a "piece" of time. To do what is good now may make something very bad happen tomorrow. All I have is my judgement and experience to work with and my greatness lies in me being ignorant and aware of my ignorance. It lies in questioning my actions then, now and to come, and my freedom lies in developing understanding of my own ignorance and recognising how and why I err can err andnhave erred.

Is that the kind of response you were hoping for?

[Spiral Out]

Getting back to the topic, “what has the Lord actually done wrong;”

He made man capable of becoming lost in silly questions like this one.

Precisely. This supposed 'God' has created a set of rules man must live by that directly conflict with man's nature, the very nature that the very same 'God' has imparted upon him.

This 'God' has created a complete and enduring model of failure. That's what 'God has actually done wrong'.

[Dark Matter]

Basically, what I see here are two different mindsets bumping up against each other. One sets itself apart from reality, describing it as it cruelty and uncaring God's “mistake”; the other, seeing the same suffering, posit various reasons for it, all voicing hope and all rejected by the other side as naive and unrealistic. The Buddhist way of detachment and compassion and (in Zen) not-knowing is another way of dealing with suffering, but the subject here is God's supposed mistake.

It is, of course, just another framing of the PoE, a problem that for many theists is completely irrelevant to the “God hypothesis.” But the first mindset is pathological in its clinging to the idea of theistic personalism, as though it comprised the whole of theism, and close their minds to anything else no matter what its history.

Just saying.

[Whitedragon]

Getting back to the topic, “what has the Lord actually done wrong;” should the question not also be, what have we done wrong? If we started out, according to Genesis, as content and safe, should the blame not rather be on us? Imagine you get your son into a firm, everything is safe, and the company belongs to him. He runs it into the ground, spending all his cash on personal assets, luxury holidays and soon there is not a penny left. If he and his children keep following the same pattern, why should his father help him again? Is it wrong of the father to say, halt? Is it wrong of the father to force him to earn his own money after that?

I see, so the the posited omnipotent being bears no responsibility while little helpless, post-apes must take full blame - despite being, by design, rarely capable of controlling their emotions enough to be the person they aspire to be. It's like saying that businesses aren't to blame to climate change problem - it's solely on us individuals. If one is to apportion responsibility then one must look for where the power lies.

In your example, what responsibility do the parents take for raising a fool with no respect for money? Who can respect a father who blindly leaves major responsibility in the hands of an obvious incompetent? One of the great human delusions is that we are in control of ourselves and our lives. Yet the nightly news is basically a listing of colourful human impulse control failures.

Dark Matter asks what sane person would answer this question. I wonder what sane person would believe that everything about reality and the universe is just peachy and beyond reproach? Generally those with a Pollyannaish view of god/the universe lack life experience and have not undergone serious privations and suffering.

Never mind, deep, scorching suffering eventually catches up with everyone ... in time we all learn just how brutal and cruel existence can be.

That post is a bit presumptuous, because it indicates that the bloggers have not really suffered yet. We all can share stories of our suffering on here. Furthermore, if you had any children at all, you should know that sometimes, no matter how you parent them, they just do not adhere to their upbringing. Certainly, we cannot claim to be helpless apes, as you put it. Granted that there are some things out of our control, but if someone starts out good and then wantonly fall from that grace, we hardly can call them helpless. Perhaps the word we are looking for is stubborn.

-- Updated December 18th, 2016, 12:23 pm to add the following --

Getting back to the topic, “what has the Lord actually done wrong;” should the question not also be, what have we done wrong? If we started out, according to Genesis, as content and safe, should the blame not rather be on us? Imagine you get your son into a firm, everything is safe, and the company belongs to him. He runs it into the ground, spending all his cash on personal assets, luxury holidays and soon there is not a penny left. If he and his children keep following the same pattern, why should his father help him again? Is it wrong of the father to say, halt? Is it wrong of the father to force him to earn his own money after that?

If the fathet is all knowing and knows the best foe his children why would he err? That is the problem.

From this we can assume that all the bad in the world is for the greater good. It is "necessary". That is the only possible view to have of the situation from a theist position is it not?

If we do wrong then we do so because he put us in the position to do wrong, knowing we would do so. God can not do wrong. If God does err then why should we trust in the judgement of some being who merely "assumes" it is correct.

There is of course only a return to the view that "suffering" is necessary. Perhaps it really is necessary for living beings. I wouls openly admit that to suffer gives us appreciation for things usually taken for granted. The issue is more about the "sharing out" of suffering equally, or even regulating "suffering" enough to imbue "souls" with a fuller appreciation of life.

We are operating in ignorance. Our view of any God with our ignorance could be said to be the reason why we cannot see nor imagine a being free from ignorance. To us such a proposition simply doesn't fit into our sensibility and use of reason within language, and reason extended into natural sciences as a means to objectify and understand nature.

Can a mere mortal honestly and logically critic an all knowing being? That makes little to no sense to me. To view myself as such an all knowing being (which in an enclosed and somewhat solipistic sense I am) I cannot accuse myself of being "bad" only perverse. By this I mean I do as I see fit and my confusion lies simply in my all knowing ability of myself as present is encapsulated within a "piece" of time. To do what is good now may make something very bad happen tomorrow. All I have is my judgement and experience to work with and my greatness lies in me being ignorant and aware of my ignorance. It lies in questioning my actions then, now and to come, and my freedom lies in developing understanding of my own ignorance and recognising how and why I err can err andnhave erred.

Is that the kind of response you were hoping for?

We do what we can, but according to the Genesis myth, the Lord forewarned us about whatever it was we were supposed to avoid. It is a good response, Burning Ghost, but even today people warn us to stay away from things and often all that pushes us to ignore the warning is blatant defiance. Of course, there are circumstances that are out of our control, but if we hold true to the myth; there was some point where we had no reason at all to jeopardise our security and happiness. Again, there are still many examples of how we do the same things today. If a man or a woman were in a happy relationship as man and wife, they still would give all that up for an affair. Why do we do these things?

-- Updated December 18th, 2016, 12:47 pm to add the following --

(Nested quote removed.)


He made man capable of becoming lost in silly questions like this one.

Precisely. This supposed 'God' has created a set of rules man must live by that directly conflict with man's nature, the very nature that the very same 'God' has imparted upon him.

This 'God' has created a complete and enduring model of failure. That's what 'God has actually done wrong'.

No, Spiral Out, the Lord created us with a good nature. There was no law in paradise, because man naturally did what was good. In dream symbols, trees often present security; the tree of life represented the security of immortality, which people have been hammering on all this time. On the other hand, the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents placing your security in what belongs to someone else. That “tree” was not theirs to eat; it associated with the Lord’s property.

Knowledge of good and evil was not a bad tree, but it was not meant for us, because we could not handle it. Supposedly, a tree holding the knowledge of good and evil would give us a better insight, but instead it just confused us. The Lord created Adam and Eve naked, but when they ate from the tree, they felt ashamed. If he created them naked, nakedness must have been natural and good in the creator’s eyes. Looking at the myth again, it seems the tree of knowledge of good and evil confused them instead. They started saying that what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. Very much what people are still doing now.

How could the Lord let them eat from a tree thereafter, which would make them immortal? That would mean; Adam and Eve would still be alive today, in pain and confused. Again, devil spelled backwards gives you, “lived.” He did not create Adam and Eve with a sinful nature, but that does not mean they could not change their hearts afterwards. They placed their security in the wrong thing, instead of choosing immortality, they chose to be thieves; and very much like the story of Sir Author Conan Doyle of “The Blue Carbuncle,” they ended up stealing something they could not use.

[Fooloso4]

Dark Matter:

It is, of course, just another framing of the PoE, a problem that for many theists is completely irrelevant to the “God hypothesis.” But the first mindset is pathological in its clinging to the idea of theistic personalism, as though it comprised the whole of theism, and close their minds to anything else no matter what its history.

If theistic personalism is pathological then the majority of Christians suffer from a pathology, including Whitedragon, because they believe in a personal God. You ask:

Am I to assume that as far as you are concerned, repeatedly insulting the intelligence of theists is okay?

You may not have insulted their intelligence but you did insult their mental health. Are we to assume that you think that insulting the mental health of theists is okay?

Although Plotinus did not suffer from what you call a pathology he nevertheless recognized the problem of evil. He did not, however, conclude that it was the result of something that God had done wrong. There is more to what he says on this matter but your defensiveness has prevented it, and this is not the time or place to discuss either of those issues.


Whitedragon:

We do what we can, but according to the Genesis myth, the Lord forewarned us about whatever it was we were supposed to avoid. It is a good response, Burning Ghost, but even today people warn us to stay away from things and often all that pushes us to ignore the warning is blatant defiance.

Christians, following Paul, tend to look at this story as one of punishment for defiance. The problem is, it ignores the central theme of knowledge:

“See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, to prevent his putting out his hand and taking also from the tree of life, eating, and living forever — ” (Genesis 3:22)

Man is banished from the garden because they became like gods, but they had not yet eaten of the tree of life and were not immortal. It is to prevent them from becoming immortal that they are banished and blocked from returning. Note that the sentence is left incomplete. What man might do if he were immortal is left unsaid.

Why do we do these things?

The answer often given by Christians is that we are essentially good but have fallen from grace. There is nothing in the story to support this. What we find is that man is described in terms of a unity of opposites, dust and breath of God, the lowest, most common and worthless thing together with the most rarified and valuable. This is just one of many of the dualities we find in the story. In fact the creation story is itself a duality. First a watery world where everything is fluid and nothing is distinct, a world that requires acts of separation. The second story is just the opposite. Everything is fixed, static and dry, a world without motion and change.

[Dark Matter]

If theistic personalism is pathological then the majority of Christians suffer from a pathology, including Whitedragon, because they believe in a personal God.

I should have been more clear: atheists obsessively and pathologically cling to theistic pesonalism as though it constitutes the whole of theism.

The title "theistic personalism" is used to distinguish popular concepts of God from "classical theism." Both believe in a personal God, but in a different sense.

[Whitedragon]

Fooloso4, what would have happened if the Lord granted humankind to eat from the tree of life after the fall? Can we speculate?

[Sy Borg]

You insult people all the time, Greta. You did it in your post.

And the excerpt is most fitting. I understand the "retired and free" part, but looking at the elephant through a magnifying glass tells you nothing about the life of the elephant. You want resolution? Then step back and take in the whole picture from a distance and question everything, especially the obvious things. What must be in order for what is to be as it is? At least have the courage to acknowledge that in the end, your "positive and reasonable" approach makes a joke of everything that makes us human: fears, loves, longings beliefs, hopes, aspirations, etc.; that, in the end, you have no logical reason to care about anything but yourself.

What has God actually done wrong? How can anyone but a narcissist complain?

I know you are supposed to be speaking to me, but you seem to be speaking to yourself. Your words have nothing whatsoever to do with me, nor anything that I have said or done aside from you claim that trying to make the most of this life is somehow an insult to all that we think of as human - which is more bizarre still. It is those with faith who seek resolution, not agnostics. Your post seems to me more a case of projection than anything else.

It's all rather strange.

[Fooloso4]

Dark Matter:

I should have been more clear: atheists obsessively and pathologically cling to theistic pesonalism as though it constitutes the whole of theism.

The title "theistic personalism" is used to distinguish popular concepts of God from "classical theism." Both believe in a personal God, but in a different sense.

If atheists criticize popular concepts of God and theistic personalism is the popular concept of God then why is this pathological for atheists who do not believe it but not for popular theists who do believe it?

Because they do not address “classical theism”? One problem is that the term classical theism includes both the concept of God as the ultimate or supreme being and God as the ground or source of being who or that is not itself a being. Another problem is that there are educated atheists who know and reject classical theism in all its forms. At best you are identifying some atheists and at worse simply attacking your own caricature of atheism.

Whitedragon:

Fooloso4, what would have happened if the Lord granted humankind to eat from the tree of life after the fall? Can we speculate?

Men would be gods. In order to see this we first have to look at what the story of tower of Babel says about knowledge:

“Look, the people are united, they all have a single language, and see what they’re starting to do! At this rate, nothing they set out to accomplish will be impossible for them! (Genesis 11:6)

If nothing is impossible for man, if he can do whatever he sets out to do and he were immortal he would be a god. But knowing how to do something does not give us any guidance with regard to whether it should be done. If men lacked wisdom they would be dangerous gods. It may be for this reason that God did not want men to be gods or god-like.

One possible outcome of immortality would be endless oppression or oppression lasting for thousands of years. Those in power could remain in power indefinitely. Death can bring relief from suffering, but without death a person could suffer endlessly or for thousands of years. Overpopulation is a problem that occurs to us but I do not know if it is one that would have occurred to the authors or listeners and readers until more modern times.

[Felix]

Fooloso4: The answer often given by Christians is that we are essentially good but have fallen from grace. There is nothing in the story to support this.

Huh? Being banished form the Garden, et. al., is not a fall from grace?!

King James Bible; Genesis, Chapters 2 & 3:

3 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

16 Unto the woman he (God) said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he (God) said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree (of the knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden), of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed [is] the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return.

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

[Dark Matter]

It is those with faith who seek resolution, not agnostics.

Stranger still. it was you who said, "I would like resolution to the big questions" but then resign yourself to a defeatist attitude.

How familiar are you with Buddhism? Or is that just another ancient superstition?

[Sy Borg]

It is those with faith who seek resolution, not agnostics.

Stranger still. it was you who said, "I would like resolution to the big questions" but then resign yourself to a defeatist attitude.

How familiar are you with Buddhism? Or is that just another ancient superstition?

Defeatist? Not expecting resolution to the big questions is defeatist? That's about as weird as your claim that trying to make most of this life is a denial of humanity.

I don't believe in evil, nor in judgement, aside from social games. Social animals are always engaging in argy bargy. These tussles means nothing. The "evil", the "judgements", all of it - meaningless outside of the personal and practical domains. In terms of existentialism they are as important as volcanoes and asteroids - just entropy and reality reforming itself.

What you and other theists on this board tend to gloss over - or perhaps don't notice - is that there is an unofficial secular version of Pascoal's wager. No matter what one believes - be it in an afterlife, or if this is our one and only chance - we cannot lose if we choose to embrace kindness, empathy, gratitude, sincerity and general decency and harmlessness.

I read up on Buddhism incessantly in my 20s and for a long time thought it was The Answer. I did an extended TM course, and was pretty close to becoming a Buddhist but held back due to too many superstitious claims. I went to various yoga classes, from regular Hatha to Sahaja. I am open to reincarnation and suspect it's the most likely option on the table ATM. To me, the consequences of reincarnation are exactly the same as the materialist claim that we simply die and snuff out.

You might as well just die and snuff out for all the difference it makes if you don't know what you did wrong in the last life and thus cannot learn from your mistakes. Further, if you don't know that you are you (from the previous life), then you are in fact someone else. A stranger. That's exactly the same as simply dying and being recycled in the "cosmic compost heap". The new incarnation is no longer you - it's someone else completely - someone who probably doesn't even know you existed.

In the sense of individual annihilation at death, materialists and Buddhists are on the same page.

[Dclements]

That post is a bit presumptuous, because it indicates that the bloggers have not really suffered yet. We all can share stories of our suffering on here. Furthermore, if you had any children at all, you should know that sometimes, no matter how you parent them, they just do not adhere to their upbringing. Certainly, we cannot claim to be helpless apes, as you put it. Granted that there are some things out of our control, but if someone starts out good and then wantonly fall from that grace, we hardly can call them helpless. Perhaps the word we are looking for is stubborn.

Your argument is a hasty generalization and your cherry picking; if some people misbehave does their lack of 'morality' give a cause as to why we ALL had to from grace like the bible suggest. I may not know for sure but I think there is one or two percent of people at both ends of the spectrum who will either give a strange the shirt off their back (or their life to save them) or will hurt and/or take from others without remorse; the rest of us try to help others when we can but mostly we just look out for ourselves and those close to us. Also I'm pretty sure that most of the western and industrial world is rules by a hard work ethic that makes near impossible demands on its workers where they have to sacrifice for the 'common good' and get little in return other than a possibility of a 'normal' life. On top of that we all have to deal with the human condition which threatens to unravel each person as well as society as a whole.

Given all that we have to face, I'm more surprise that people don't behave WORSE than they do instead of really expect them to be more 'moral'. Also I think that people that are so critical of the 'moral' failures of some people in our society greatly underestimate what those people have been through. As the saying foes, it is easy to judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. As someone that grew up in the projects, there is nearly an endless number of people that silently do the best they can no matter how many times life gives them the short stick. If one or two people turn out 'bad', I think some (or most) of their sins are atone for by those of us who do the best we can; this is of course if you take 'humanity' as a whole.

We do what we can, but according to the Genesis myth, the Lord forewarned us about whatever it was we were supposed to avoid. It is a good response, Burning Ghost, but even today people warn us to stay away from things and often all that pushes us to ignore the warning is blatant defiance. Of course, there are circumstances that are out of our control, but if we hold true to the myth; there was some point where we had no reason at all to jeopardise our security and happiness. Again, there are still many examples of how we do the same things today. If a man or a woman were in a happy relationship as man and wife, they still would give all that up for an affair. Why do we do these things?

(For some reason this part of your post reminds me of the play Oedipus where Oedipus is interrogating the blind man as to whom and how the former king was killed and it is obvious in his speech that Oedipus knows this already because it was him that committed the crime.)

I hate to keep saying that it is all caused by the 'human condition', but more or less it is. If you realize (like some of us do) that our lives are finite and any 'happiness', 'security', 'health', 'wealth', etc is fleeting at best, you might understand why someone might risk it all if it is a given that everything they have can already be lost at the drop of a hat even if they don't do anything 'wrong'. While 'God' (or at least the church that tries to represent his will) and human societies may expect us all to obedient automatons no matter how many times that someone spits in our face, unquestioning/blind obedience and 'faith' is something that can not be expected from all of us.

Even just from a psychological perspective, let alone a moral one, expecting man to be less fallible then our nature makes is isn't something that can be reasonably expected. While it is plausible for one of Soren Kierkegaard's 'knights of faith' to transcend the moral limitations/fallibility of normal men such 'transcendence' doesn't come without it's own price; namely one replaces the importance of their own wants/needs with fanatical goals whatever they may be. But I don't think you would necessarily like any of these 'knights of faith' more than you would like typical slothful guy (complete with a wife beater T-****, easy-boy recliner, beer in one hand and remote in the other) but at least their are not as susceptible to some of hedonistic ways and vices. Perhaps future technologies like mind-machine interface could be used to hard-wire most of the human race to be mindless automatons that religion has expected us to be for the last two millennias. It would be ironic for science and technology to eventually be able to do what religious dogma has always attempted but been unable to accomplish.

No, Spiral Out, the Lord created us with a good nature. There was no law in paradise, because man naturally did what was good. In dream symbols, trees often present security; the tree of life represented the security of immortality, which people have been hammering on all this time. On the other hand, the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents placing your security in what belongs to someone else. That “tree” was not theirs to eat; it associated with the Lord’s property.

Knowledge of good and evil was not a bad tree, but it was not meant for us, because we could not handle it. Supposedly, a tree holding the knowledge of good and evil would give us a better insight, but instead it just confused us. The Lord created Adam and Eve naked, but when they ate from the tree, they felt ashamed. If he created them naked, nakedness must have been natural and good in the creator’s eyes. Looking at the myth again, it seems the tree of knowledge of good and evil confused them instead. They started saying that what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. Very much what people are still doing now.

How could the Lord let them eat from a tree thereafter, which would make them immortal? That would mean; Adam and Eve would still be alive today, in pain and confused. Again, devil spelled backwards gives you, “lived.” He did not create Adam and Eve with a sinful nature, but that does not mean they could not change their hearts afterwards. They placed their security in the wrong thing, instead of choosing immortality, they chose to be thieves; and very much like the story of Sir Author Conan Doyle of “The Blue Carbuncle,” they ended up stealing something they could not use.

It is plausible that there might be some truth to that, but I believe it is more plausible for the Genesis myth (and the bible as a whole) to tell us nothing other than be obedient little sheep and to not bother authority by ever questioning it. If 'God' wanted automatons he could have made them, but he didn't. Also 'God' could of created us as we are and he could accepted us as we are warts and all (which is reasonable if he is 'God' after all), but according to Abrahamic religions he didn't. OR it could just be that the powers that be just want us to act like little automatons and use the concept of 'God' to help them do this; as a popular saying goes 'Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful'.

The question I have would people trying to be more like automatons (or perhaps becoming something more like a genejack from Sid Meier's Alpha Centaur) than they already are really change anything for the better even if such people could behave better as you suggested? As far as I can tell, Islam is more successful at turning people into drones than western Christianity. If so does that make Islam a better religion or at least in the way you seem to be defining it?

-- Updated December 18th, 2016, 9:21 pm to add the following --

Fooloso4, what would have happened if the Lord granted humankind to eat from the tree of life after the fall? Can we speculate?

Maybe we would become God-like, maybe we wouldn't. It is hard to make a rational assessment of what might be from something that seems like nothing more than a fable from a child's story. I know that if we were able to just extend human life for a few extra decades that could be HUGE improvement to our quality of life, but to improve it by making us live hundreds of years would change things so dramatically that it is hard to say exactly what would happen. Perhaps we would have to go to school for 25-50 years before we could get a job, and we would have to work for 3-4 centuries before we could hope to retire; if retirement was even allowed at all at that point. Perhaps all of us would just have to work until we no longer were alive.

-- Updated December 18th, 2016, 9:30 pm to add the following --

It is those with faith who seek resolution, not agnostics.

Stranger still. it was you who said, "I would like resolution to the big questions" but then resign yourself to a defeatist attitude.

How familiar are you with Buddhism? Or is that just another ancient superstition?

Maybe she meant resolution in the for of some kind of salvation.; if there is no 'God' or 'goodness' that we have to adhere to as religion says then it would be pointless to seek some resolution/salvation through something that is none existent. I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure she (or perhaps he) seeks answers to big questions, which would provide more tools for atheist and non-atheist to work with.

If salvation is tool/means that we can never have (other than perhaps simulating it through technology) than clinging to it will just cause more grief and suffering; not that it is much more than a drop in the bucket of grief we already have to deal with.