The Atheist Asks: And here's how that story ended (The Epiphany)

[GrimKingGrim]

A good four or five years ago the post eludes me but I was a Christian still and still rustling the jar in my brain about God. One day on facebook I had an epiphany to write something I thought was "thought provoking" enough to get people on God's side.

I stated that if you think about a story writer, he controls the events, the flows of nature, and the characters down to the little details. Now knowing that how could you NOT believe in God? It's the same thing.

This is a summary I'm trying my best to find the post in my FB history.

It's a post that actually warrants a revisit.

The Question is: Is God "The Author?" and this is nothing more than the Matrix? Where does this quote put your mind?

 

[True Scotsman]

A good four or five years ago the post eludes me but I was a Christian still and still rustling the jar in my brain about God. One day on facebook I had an epiphany to write something I thought was "thought provoking" enough to get people on God's side.



This is a summary I'm trying my best to find the post in my FB history.

It's a post that actually warrants a revisit.

The Question is: Is God "The Author?" and this is nothing more than the Matrix? Where does this quote put your mind?

No actually we are the authors and gods are characters in our stories and their actions and attributes are as we imagine them. The reality we live in is real and objective and the place where gods exist is subjective imagination.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

That's exactly how it was first explained to me. Not even 5 minutes later one of my friends basically said "Why would I base my belief in God on a lie?"

It hurt alot. I never even heard of a counter argument to God even existing before so to me it was like "WHAT?" But looking back on it, being that I'm a writer, this is one of the quotes that sealed my fate as a Theist.

I have been God himself about 1000 times. So I know where he exists.

 

[Freodin]

While I agree with your conclusion, and True Scottsman's view, I don't think that the "author" analogy is valid here.

Humans have a limited imagination, due to our nature as well as due to the nature of communication. When we "imagine" stories, we need to base them on a reality existing outside of ourself, and on our perception of such a reality.
Humans cannot imagine something that is not based in some way on this reality.

Human stories never control "everything". They control what they describe, and this down to the "little details". Sometimes - quite often - they manage to get it wrong.
But they don't imagine or control the things that are not described. These are taken from our own and shared knowledge of reality.

With God, this would have to be different. He would literally have to imagine and control everything, because outside of his will, imagination, creativity, there is no reality. Also, for the same reason, the whole story would have to be based on something not real.

This would make God quite different from any human understanding of "author".

 

[BL2KTN]

The simulated universe issue is real, and one that science will likely answer in the future. Every two years our computational power doubles, and it's not hard to imagine that in a few centuries we may play a version of Sim City with sentient citizens. Will that make us liars? No, of course not.