Post by hume on Jan 29, 2007 21:20:10 GMT -8
Originally posted 4/27/06:
"In my limited human understanding, I can see a glimpse of God in our enjoyment of the gaming experience."
Why did God create anything? If he's infinite, perfect, complete, then what need would there be for anything additional?
Well, of course I don't have the faintest idea, but as usual this doesn't stop me from wild speculation. I guess you can talk about an over-abundance of himself that might sort of impel God to create other stuff just because he can (not because he needs to). Another idea, alluded to in the analogy of games: perhaps the one thing God can't experience "by himself" is limitation. He's complete, total, perfect; by nature he is unlimited. So perhaps there's a kind of fascination for him in setting arbitrary constraints on himself (such as, creating beings that have the option of ignoring him if they wish -- not because they are intrinsically powerful enough to ignore God, since that's impossible, but because God willingly cedes to them the power to do so if they wish).
"Noboby sees things
In quite the same way"
- Midnight Oil
Of the many things separating humans from "lower life forms," one of the most critical is our highly developed consciousness. We witness the world in a profound way. Put a human, a dog, and a thingyroach in front of some significant event that you happened to miss -- if you want to know what happened, whose opinion will you ask?
Even so, humans do have a curiosity about just how the dog (let alone the thingyroach) would have understood and interpreted a given event -- in spite of the fact that we're confident that our understanding of things is deeper and more thorough, we realize that they can bring a different perspective. For us, their point of view is enhanced by its limitations. Yes, there are things a dog notices that we can't -- like smells -- but for the most part, we notice much more than the dog does, whole additional layers of meaning of which it's unaware. This means that a dog would often focus on things that don't seem important to us, and this changes the whole character of the dog's experience of what is, objectively, the same event.
God never misses anything. Presumably he never has to "focus" on anything in particular; he can literally "take it all in." So God has nothing to gain from considering the perspective of a more limited observer. Or does he? Perhaps there's a sense in which the God's Eye View is almost too complete. Seeing every conceivable angle might not always be entirely satisfying. Maybe God finds something charming in watching the world through the eyes of one of his creatures: so much is missed, but on the other hand, there's a particular flavor imparted to every experience by the observer's limitations. Again, limitations are something alien to God. So maybe this is another way that God gains by creating: he gets to see the world through the experience of creatures who, unlike him, can't fully understand it.
"In my limited human understanding, I can see a glimpse of God in our enjoyment of the gaming experience."
Why did God create anything? If he's infinite, perfect, complete, then what need would there be for anything additional?
Well, of course I don't have the faintest idea, but as usual this doesn't stop me from wild speculation. I guess you can talk about an over-abundance of himself that might sort of impel God to create other stuff just because he can (not because he needs to). Another idea, alluded to in the analogy of games: perhaps the one thing God can't experience "by himself" is limitation. He's complete, total, perfect; by nature he is unlimited. So perhaps there's a kind of fascination for him in setting arbitrary constraints on himself (such as, creating beings that have the option of ignoring him if they wish -- not because they are intrinsically powerful enough to ignore God, since that's impossible, but because God willingly cedes to them the power to do so if they wish).
"Noboby sees things
In quite the same way"
- Midnight Oil
Of the many things separating humans from "lower life forms," one of the most critical is our highly developed consciousness. We witness the world in a profound way. Put a human, a dog, and a thingyroach in front of some significant event that you happened to miss -- if you want to know what happened, whose opinion will you ask?
Even so, humans do have a curiosity about just how the dog (let alone the thingyroach) would have understood and interpreted a given event -- in spite of the fact that we're confident that our understanding of things is deeper and more thorough, we realize that they can bring a different perspective. For us, their point of view is enhanced by its limitations. Yes, there are things a dog notices that we can't -- like smells -- but for the most part, we notice much more than the dog does, whole additional layers of meaning of which it's unaware. This means that a dog would often focus on things that don't seem important to us, and this changes the whole character of the dog's experience of what is, objectively, the same event.
God never misses anything. Presumably he never has to "focus" on anything in particular; he can literally "take it all in." So God has nothing to gain from considering the perspective of a more limited observer. Or does he? Perhaps there's a sense in which the God's Eye View is almost too complete. Seeing every conceivable angle might not always be entirely satisfying. Maybe God finds something charming in watching the world through the eyes of one of his creatures: so much is missed, but on the other hand, there's a particular flavor imparted to every experience by the observer's limitations. Again, limitations are something alien to God. So maybe this is another way that God gains by creating: he gets to see the world through the experience of creatures who, unlike him, can't fully understand it.
