Even if God is real, why should someone worship god?

MayCaesar

Because when you sit at a campfire late in the evening sharpening your axe and spear, you need some assurance that tomorrow you will be okay, will not die to hunger, disease or one of the hundreds of scary animals living in the jungle - and since you cannot find that assurance in yourself or your fellow tribesman, you have to believe in a higher power that will protect you. And, of course, you are no fool, you understand that protection is not granted for free - so you stroke this higher power's ego as hard as you can hoping for its generosity.

Or, at least, that was the case 20,000 years ago. Why would someone worship god today? Our brains have not evolved that much over the past 20,000 years, so that defensive mechanisms is probably still there.

Barnardot

@GronkThonk Because God is a total anal tard thats why. It stands to reason that he is the only God and that all that power goes unchecked. And it stands to more reason that his only opposition up there is a total bad ace called Satan so if you dont do what your told and kiss Gods but cheeks then guess where your going when you fall off the stage.

It makes even more sents when in the end you look a bit deeper and analize the hole situation up there in heaven. Because God lives in an uber luxury condo and I bet it costs a hole heap to maintain it for eternity. So what does he do? He makes Earth the training ground for all his slaves to get conditioned for the real thing. And sure God does all the sweat talk by telling every one that they are going to go to the land of milk and honey and gold roads. What he doesnt tell you is that he is going to get you pealing potatoes and cleaning his ensuite the hole time. And you wont even have time to play a round of golf up there because God is going to get you caddying and picking up his balls.

So thats why atheists are all going to go to Hell because its just like trying to turn conscribers in to soldiers. It would be like pushing jello up hill and there worth less to God any way. Any way thats just a theory.

RickeyHoltsclaw

@GronkThonk ;  It is basic commonsense that our Creation, Nature, has not manifest by accident and it is commonsense for the inquisitive that a Creator is essential as is design and that this Creator is omnipotent - sovereign - outside the constraints of Time and physics; therefore, it makes good commonsense to search for this Creator, His purpose for having created and there is no greater authority on the subject than the Canon of Scripture which explains the who, what, where, when, why, relevant to our presence in Time.

jack

GronkThonk said:

Just as the title says, if God is real, why should a person worship god?  Persuade me otherwise. 

Hello Gronk:

In this great nation of ours, a person should DO whatever the hell pleases them as long as they don't require others to join them.  Ain't this a great country, or what?

excon

RickeyHoltsclaw

@jack ;  Moral Relativism is NOT American...it's demonic in origin and destructive in reality. Freedom is NOT the absence of all moral restraint.

jack

RickeyHoltsclaw said:

@jack ;  Moral Relativism is NOT American...it's demonic in origin and destructive in reality. Freedom is NOT the absence of all moral restraint.

Hello again, Rickey:

I'm not talking about moral relativism, whatever the hell that is.  As long as I don't require anyone to buy in, I'm FREE to live the life I want to live WITHOUT anybody's interference, or I'm NOT..  That's as relative as I get.  Why do you hate freedom so??

excon

just_sayin

What definition of worship are you using?  If by worship you mean to recognize the abilities and characteristics of someone - like some would say they 'worship' Taylor Swift.  Then it is logical to worship God.  To recognize that he created a universe from nothing, and that he created life and did so in an incredibly fine tuned world.  Just describing His accomplishments would lead to a level of respect for the the being that did this. 

The notion that God needs an atheist's affirmation is ludicrous and laughable - guys, no offense, but you just aren't that important.  I think when we acknowledge God's accomplishments and His characteristics, we move to a better understanding of who He is and I think God desires that we acknowledge Him, though I admit we can't fully understand or comprehend someone so different than us.  

Factfinder

just_sayin said:

What definition of worship are you using?  If by worship you mean to recognize the abilities and characteristics of someone - like some would say they 'worship' Taylor Swift.  Then it is logical to worship God.  To recognize that he created a universe from nothing, and that he created life and did so in an incredibly fine tuned world.  Just describing His accomplishments would lead to a level of respect for the the being that did this. 

The notion that God needs an atheist's affirmation is ludicrous and laughable - guys, no offense, but you just aren't that important.  I think when we acknowledge God's accomplishments and His characteristics, we move to a better understanding of who He is and I think God desires that we acknowledge Him, though I admit we can't fully understand or comprehend someone so different than us.  

Of course the rational person would not worship any god that there is no evidence of its existence.  That's just looney, even if you gish gallop the board with stuff you wish was evidence, you still just delude yourself into thinking it is, still even then it's just looney. While all evidence of theories always points to reality, natural phenomenon.

The notion god "is" is ludicrous and laughable. No offense, but should we let self deluded people have important jobs in our country? Look what the christian dictator did in Germany during WW2. In the Israeli/Palestinian conflict both sides have invoked the name of invisible friends. When do we say enough, and admit we've grown past the need for such imagined security blankets as a species?

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

Some philosophers have made the argument that worshiping something or someone is useful in that it holds one accountable before an external entity, which is a stronger form of accountability than before oneself. A popular variation of this is the argument (common in the UK) that it is useful to have a monarch representing some higher ideal to which the citizen is to be beholden to, and even if said monarch barely has any legal power, simply having him/her there and attributing to him/her the "sacred" status creates a strong external source of accountability for politicians. A politician is less likely to be corrupt if doing so implies falling short of the ideal set by the monarch. It could be seen as a form of worship.

It is functionally similar to worshiping a non-existent god, since, objectively speaking, the monarch is just a person dressed up nicely. King Charles is the same kind of biological creature as you or me, and him representing "royalty" is a purely human convention. Yet, the argument goes, in practice said "royalty" is more than just fiction. Much like the country borders, while it is a purely human convention, it is a convention resulting in very concrete physical consequences.

I suppose worshiping, in this sense, a fictional creature is not completely ludicrous. There is a place for fiction in our lives, and sometimes taking fiction seriously may be warranted. Of course, "fiction" is not what Christians have in mind when worshiping their god, so...

Factfinder

@MayCaesar

There is a place for fiction in our lives, and sometimes taking fiction seriously may be warranted.

I can agree to a certain extent that there is a place for fiction in our lives. Entertainment value has its positives. I would rather take people seriously who adhere to fiction as reality more than taking the object of created fiction itself seriously. When people start listening to voices, urgings, whisperings, of fictious characters you can bet as this board reveals, they will do and say bizarre things in the name of the fictious being that can and often does affect others who choose not to delude themselves. In the voting booth, whether or not a child dies from an easily contained and preventable disease, raise taxes on legit businesses they are against while claiming tax free status themselves, all kinds of things the voices in their heads tell them to do. So no I can't take a fictious god seriously, but what people will do in the name of....I take seriously. As there's only one reason to take the fiction itself serious, and that's to manipulate or submit without reason and be manipulated.

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

I agree with you, and I personally dislike the argument I outlined in the previous comment. There is a hard line between fiction and reality, and at the end of the day, no matter what constructs we hold in our heads, actions in the physical world have to be taken. Fiction can help with modeling reality, but grounding one's world view in fiction is a precarious choice.

Santa Claus is a great example of this. I would argue that the Santa Claus stories told to kids are actually quite beneficial: Santa Claus is that cool grandpa that brings kids nice presents and has an awesome style. At that stage of human development having a fictional character like this in one's mind can be quite a boon. Kids like to play around, and this gives them one more sandbox to play in.

But these stories are always told in a semi-joking way. I doubt anyone ever tells their kids that Santa is real and has to be worshiped... Most kids understand that it is not a literal truth. They may learn some moral lessons from Santa, such as the value of kindness and generosity, but they eventually outgrow this stuff.

Now imagine grounding one's entire worldview in stories around Santa... Having churches venerating Santa... Having politicians saying, "Our country is based around Anglo-Santian values"... Advocating that, instead of saving or investing money, people blow it on entertainment and ask Santa to deposit a large amount of money to their bank account on Christmas... That would be quite twisted.

Yet that is what religions have been doing for millennia.

Barnardot

@just_sayin ;Just describing His accomplishments would lead to a level of respect for the the being that did this. 

Well level of respect is putting it mildly since God wants all his sheeple to bow down every day and kiss his rare end and do all the crappy things he tells them to. And any way how could any one have an ounce of respect for a master who according to you created a universe from nothing, and that he created life and did so in an incredibly fine tuned world and then lets 10,000 kids die every day when he could do some thing about it. God can go to hell for all I care.

Joeseph

Why would one worship an entity that would watch children die of starvation and cancer every minute of every day?

This permanently hidden god apparently loves its creations and could easily alleviate the brutal suffering such children go through but instead it just watches and does nothing.

What is it about such an entities conduct is worthy of worship and respect.

MayCaesar

@Joeseph

Something that I wonder is why these people give "god" the benefit of doubt, but do not give it to other people involved in horrible atrocities. I have never heard anyone say, for instance, "Well, at the first glance, it would seem like Hitler's actions were extremely evil... But Hitler probably had a great plan that is beyond our understanding and that, if allowed to be carried through, would lead to the best outcome for all individuals involved. Hitler worked in mysterious ways!"

As I see it, if it takes you literally zero effort to save billions of people from very painful deaths, yet you do nothing - then you, at the very least, are extremely heartless scumbag. If there was a button on my table that, I knew for sure, was going to deprive billions of people from horrible suffering if pressed, with no negative consequences - and I did not press that button - why, I would be the most evil creature in the history of this planet.

One apologist in a debate I listened to yesterday said that suffering is a good thing because it makes life more interesting, and he compared it to the Lord of the Rings movie, pointing out how the scene of Frodo fighting off a spider was exciting to watch. He did not realize that he made his opponent's argument for him: that, by this analogy, human suffering is just entertainment for god.

As someone said, "Let a religious person talk for long enough, and he will make the best case against his own belief".

Factfinder

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

― Epicurus

21CenturyIconoclast

@RickeyHoltsclaw

RICKEYHOLTSCLAW BELIEVES IN A BLOODY SERIAL KILLER GOD NAMED JESUS THAT COMMANDED THAT INNOCENT INFANTS AND SUCKLING BABIES WERE TO BE MURDERED!

"This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; BUT SLAY both man and woman, INFANT AND SUCKLING, ox and sheep, camel and  ox.” (1 Samuel 15:3)

As shown, Rickey is still RUNNING AWAY from this biblical axiom in the post/link below!
https://www.debateisland.com/discussion/comment/182489/#Comment_182489



RUN RICKEY, RUN AWAY FROM THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR DEPLORABLE JESUS AS
GOD WHO MURDERED INFANTS AND SUCKLING BABIES!

Joeseph

@MayCaesar

Sound points and I totally agree.

Imagine how that same apologist would feel if his child  was dying of cancer and a doctor said " lucky you this will make your life so much more interesting and it will be exciting to watch your child battle cancer , will we get popcorn to watch it unfold"?

Another thing that always gets me is that we humans will fully understand God's plan when our time comes , a plan so convoluted and complicated that it requires child cancer , child abuse , and dreadful human suffering for it to come to fruition and we are not bright enough to understand the grand plan.

MayCaesar

@Joeseph

Funny enough, his opponent asked this exact question: "If your child was dying of cancer, would you celebrate it? And when he actually died, would you be happy for him going to Heaven?" The guy weaseled out of it by saying, "Well, I have emotions and all, so at that moment I would not be able to fully appreciate the meaning of it".

Your second point is something I have been asking Christians and Muslims since nearly 20 years ago: "If god is so mysterious and his plan is so beyond human comprehension, then how do you know that he is good? Should this not be beyond your comprehension either?" It is not, after all, inconceivable there to be a god that wrote the Bible to deceive humans into thinking that he is good, while committing all these horrible atrocities and enjoying the absurdity of it all. Allegedly one of the worst Roman emperors, Caligula, was like that, intentionally making the most absurd claims about his ingenuity and generosity and enjoying his political opponents' dismay.

Again, which is more likely: that beyond all these horrible actions of Hitler is some benevolent genius understanding what is good for humanity far better than anyone else - or that he was just a wicked bastard? The simplest explanation is usually the most plausible one.

I will add one last piece that I also mentioned in another thread: that the most devoted believers are usually the least educated ones about other religions, folklore and ideologies. Anyone who has studied folklore and religions of hundreds different civilizations would have noticed some patterns and commonalities between them all. The exact content is highly diverse, yet the underlying ideas are strikingly similar. Once you notice some of those patterns, you cannot unsee them: you cannot take Christianity more seriously than, say, Slavic folklore, with vodyanois, domovois and koscheis.

Many Christians I have talked to are just completely oblivious to these things. They see Christianity as somehow special, somehow incredibly profound.

Factfinder

@MayCaesar

"If god is so mysterious and his plan is so beyond human comprehension, then how do you know that he is good? 

And to add on to that, why would such a god foresee not the fact of it's incomprehensible nature to the creation of its making; and just pardon everyone on the account we couldn't comprehend the full ramifications of not being able to convince ourselves of something we do not believe due to no evidence to support said beliefs? Why pretend you did (as god) yet still require the 'bend the knee or else' nonsensible belief requirements?

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

Good point. Since god's designs are incomprehensible, how do we know that, for instance, murder is wrong? Perhaps this is how god is testing us: telling us that murder is wrong, while knowing that it clearly is right, and seeing if we blindly take the bait, or rise above it? And based on this everyone should be pardoned, since no one can possibly know what is right or wrong.

This is yet another example of theists punching themselves in the face. First they claim that the only valid source of morals is god... And then they attribute properties to the god that make said morals inherently incomprehensible, hence "anything goes" is as good a moral system as any.

Unfortunately, most of them will never try to think seriously about the obvious contradictions in their world view. They, like @just_lyin, will just label all inconvenient arguments as "Fallacy" while themselves making piss poor arguments in defense of their position. Pretend that everything that contradicts your beliefs simply does not exist or is not what it is, then yell nonsense at the top of your lungs, loud enough so you cannot hear your own inner voice telling you that it is nonsense - and keep carrying on.

Factfinder

@MayCaesar

Yes, like you've pointed out before... Ancient people afraid of their surroundings due to intimidating presences, but coupled with the internal drive to know ones surroundings, both instinctual aspects of humanity and both leading to a god figure to provide answers as well as comfort. You'd think with what we have learned from those ancient times till now all gods would be regulated to fiction and put behind us yet it persists on some lower levels. Just think of it. Someone a long time ago got the idea to wrap up the fear of the unknown along with the desire to know; in a fable about a tree in the garden and poof! People cling to it. Go figure? 

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

What I think is missing here is the idea of being comfortable with uncertainty. Indeed, it is understandable that in the ancient times, when people knew very little about the world, the uncertainty was enormous, and the cost of acting on false positives was often one's life - or even survival of the entire community - some strong coping mechanisms to convert ignorance into false knowledge were essential. Dying of sickness nobody understands is scary, and explaining this sickness as the spirits' wrath gave people some sense of control over their lives: as long as they please the spirits, the sickness will not affect them - and if it does affect them, then they have done something wrong.

However, nowadays the cost of getting things wrong is usually quite low. If I do not understand how the stock market works and have a hard time deciding between five stocks to invest in, just picking one of the stocks at random and investing in it is likely to result in a decent return. There is no need for me to think up some deity that is testing my resolve by giving me 5 choices, so if I get it wrong, I have an explanation for why I got this wrong. I am perfectly comfortable with the following explanation: "The stock market is beyond my understanding, and my rule-of-thumb strategy failed. No problem, on to the next investment".

There are many things we are ignorant about, and that is fine. "I do not know" is a perfectly reasonable statement to make. Pretending to know something when we do not in the modern world is unlikely to consistently produce good results. It is more useful to say, "I do not know, but I think we can study this phenomenon and try to understand it better". False knowledge is worse than lack of knowledge, for it closes the door towards acquiring the knowledge. If I do not know something, then I can hope to eventually learn it; if I believe that I know something that I do not, then it is over for me, and I am doomed to remain forever ignorant.

Joeseph

@MayCaesar

Again, which is more likely: that beyond all these horrible actions of Hitler is some benevolent genius understanding what is good for humanity far better than anyone else - or that he was just a wicked bastard? The simplest explanation is usually the most plausible one.

What's even more remarkable is that Christians will and do say that God can do or act anyway he wants with humans as he created us , Just Lyin mentioned this again recently as if its perfectly reasonable and acceptable argument.

I will add one last piece that I also mentioned in another thread: that the most devoted believers are usually the least educated ones about other religions, folklore and ideologies. Anyone who has studied folklore and religions of hundreds different civilizations would have noticed some patterns and commonalities between them all. The exact content is highly diverse, yet the underlying ideas are strikingly similar. Once you notice some of those patterns, you cannot unsee them: you cannot take Christianity more seriously than, say, Slavic folklore, with vodyanois, domovois and koscheis.

Many Christians I have talked to are just completely oblivious to these things. They see Christianity as somehow special, somehow incredibly profound.

I've found that when you tell christians they're victims of indoctrination the vast majority will deny it and claim they were actually atheist at one stage or a different religion altogether , choice rarely comes into their religious beliefs and we cannot expect anything in the way of reason from people who have been fed religious nonsense from infancy which has been further impressed upon them in schools and the society they are a part of.

MayCaesar

@Joeseph

Which makes the supposed anti-slavery position of the Bible even more preposterous. Apparently the god treats humans as slaves and does what he wants to them, but humans are not allowed to treat each other as slaves... So the anti-slavery position is not "slavery is evil", but "all these humans are my slaves, and no one can steal them from me".

To the second point, I have met some Christians that used to not be Christians - however, it was always a product of the circumstances. Either their friends went to Christian church and they went along, or they had some sort of personal crisis in life and the Bible happened to be on their parents' shelf...

It is never a person impartially looking into multiple religions and folklores and then saying, "Hmm, all of this is clearly fiction, but there is something to Christianity, so I will go with that".

A critic could reply with, "Well, you never chose science either: you simply went with what you were taught in school and at university". However, with science, we do not have a hundred different branches of science, with their proponents constantly fighting for dominance and making mutually contradictory truth claims. Older competitors of science have been thoroughly debunked: alchemy, witchcraft, astrology are not taken seriously by anyone, because their methodology is based on demonstrably false assumptions. The beauty of science is that when you conduct an experiment, you get one outcome, and that outcome is independent of what culture you have grown up with, what part of the planet you conduct your experiment on, and what your expectations are.

The reason so many religions and folklores exist is because there is nothing to test there: they are set up in such a way that, no matter what the experiment shows, the results can be interpreted as evidence of them. There is no forking: "If the outcome is X, then we are right; if the outcome is not X, then we are wrong". No, "If the outcome is X, then it is proof that vodyanoi exists; if the outcome is not X, then we need to have faith that vodyanoi exists".

just_sayin

If God is real as the question suggests, then God is sovereign, immutable, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, just, and good.  Those are laudable characteristics.

In this thread some have suggested that God is either weak or evil for allowing people to die or suffer.  This seems to me to be a lack of understanding and comprehension on their part.  First, in any world where free will is present evil is possible and probable.  Free will is necessary to have a world where true love exists, for compelled love is not true love.  So evil actions are possible.  I heard one  atheist say 'well if He is God why can't he have a world with free will where people can't do bad things'. This is a logical contradiction.  Either free will exists and can be exercised or else free will does not exist.  Are there good reasons why God would want a world where true love exists?  I think there are, so then it would make sense we would find people exercising free will and doing evil things in a world where love exists.

But why does God either directly kill or allow people to die?  I don't claim to know the mind of God.  I believe that people's spirits are eternal, so death is just a transition to another form of existence.  God as creator can do with his creation what he wants.  It seems to me that some have mistakenly thought that the rules that apply to them, apply to God.  When we harm someone else we harm God's creation and we don't have the right to do that.  However, God does.  To claim that God has been unjust to his creations by letting them suffer or die, it seems to me that the one making this argument provide evidence that God is obligated to not do these things.  Like so many debates with atheists on this site, I've noticed that the atheists didn't provide evidence for their claim.   

MayCaesar

@just_sayin

The obvious problem here is that you do not know the mind of god, yet you somehow know that he is just and good. These two do not square. You try to avoid this problem by explicitly defining god as being just and good - but then you are stuck with the problem of justifying that the entity defined in such a way exists. At some point you just have to take it on faith - or, more formally, as an axiom - that god exist and it is just and good. That is you cannot logically justify it, you have to make an explicit assumption instead.

But then anyone else is free to not make this assumption, and the whole construct falls apart. In fact, one does not have to be an atheist to not make this assumption: one can still believe in god(s), just not in just and good one(s). The Greek or Roman god pantheons, in fact, were comprised of gods with human-like flaws.

Furthermore, one can even be a Christian without believing in just and good god. I have met a couple of Christians who accepted the claim that god exists, but honestly admitted that they cannot make any claims about his motivations, including whether he is just or good, exactly because his mind if incomprehensible to a human being. That is a coherent position.

Factfinder

@just_sayin

If God is real as the question suggests, then God is sovereign, immutable, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, just, and good.  Those are laudable characteristics.

That's an unprovable assumption.

Joeseph

@just_sayin

*** it seems to me that the one making this argument provide evidence that God is obligated to not do these things***

Yet again you resort to lying simply because you have no rational answer to the questions being asked.

No one is saying your god is " obligated" , one of the questions you're being asked is why you think your god is worthy of respect and worship when it watches children die of cancer and does nothing , what is it about that has you filled with the deepest respect and admiration?

Factfinder

@Joeseph

No one is saying your god is " obligated" , one of the questions you're being asked is why you think your god is worthy of respect and worship when it watches children die of cancer and does nothing , what is it about that has you filled with the deepest respect and admiration?

I believe it's called "blind faith". 

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

To play the devil's advocate, I do not see the argument on the picture as being logical. As an analogy, consider procedurally generated games, such as Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The worlds there are humongous, potentially infinite (that is the world keeps being generated as you move around it) - yet the meaningful content is quite sparse and focused. You would look at the map it will take you 1,000,000 hours to fully explore and say, "What are the odds that the developer wants me to do this small fraction of meaningful content?" Yet that is exactly the case: you are not supposed to explore the entire map and interact with 99.999% of its content.

Similarly, it is conceivable that god would really want to have a personal relationship with every human. He could just create one planet and put all the humans there, of course... But why not add a bit of realness to the Universe and simultaneously create some simple script that would generate the rest of the Universe? Perhaps our Solar System is the only one in which something truly interesting is happening, and the remaining 99.99999999999...% of the Universe are just lifeless rocky worlds and exploding stars. In the distant future humans will be able to explore those worlds - and find that there is not much to see there.

There is an obvious difference between a game developer and a god though: the god is supposed to be omnipotent. A game developer would be limited by his coding ability, time and budget: perhaps he would like to create a large and vibrant world full of meaningful content, but he does not have the skill, millions of hours and trillions dollars to make it happen. For a god that is not constrained in such a way creating vast emptiness just to make the world bigger sounds unrealistically lazy. The god would probably be better served creating trillions of sentient beings around the Universe and then having personal - and unique - relationships with every individual.

Anyway, this was just a bit of abstract philosophizing on my part. I like playing around with ideas and seeing how far they can be pushed.

Factfinder

MayCaesar said:

@Factfinder

To play the devil's advocate, I do not see the argument on the picture as being logical. As an analogy, consider procedurally generated games, such as Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The worlds there are humongous, potentially infinite (that is the world keeps being generated as you move around it) - yet the meaningful content is quite sparse and focused. You would look at the map it will take you 1,000,000 hours to fully explore and say, "What are the odds that the developer wants me to do this small fraction of meaningful content?" Yet that is exactly the case: you are not supposed to explore the entire map and interact with 99.999% of its content.

Similarly, it is conceivable that god would really want to have a personal relationship with every human. He could just create one planet and put all the humans there, of course... But why not add a bit of realness to the Universe and simultaneously create some simple script that would generate the rest of the Universe? Perhaps our Solar System is the only one in which something truly interesting is happening, and the remaining 99.99999999999...% of the Universe are just lifeless rocky worlds and exploding stars. In the distant future humans will be able to explore those worlds - and find that there is not much to see there.

There is an obvious difference between a game developer and a god though: the god is supposed to be omnipotent. A game developer would be limited by his coding ability, time and budget: perhaps he would like to create a large and vibrant world full of meaningful content, but he does not have the skill, millions of hours and trillions dollars to make it happen. For a god that is not constrained in such a way creating vast emptiness just to make the world bigger sounds unrealistically lazy. The god would probably be better served creating trillions of sentient beings around the Universe and then having personal - and unique - relationships with every individual.

Anyway, this was just a bit of abstract philosophizing on my part. I like playing around with ideas and seeing how far they can be pushed.

Philosophically speaking then I'd say the "game" analogy falls apart when you consider one the objects of the gaming industry are to create distractions as well as the goals of the game. In the case of an omniscient, omnipresent god who wants to develop relationships with sentient beings of its creation; why would the need for distractions arise? I think as you were typing you started to realize this about where you began to expound on the limitless abilities of a purposed god? Especially distractions that at the time of disclosing desired relationships, none of its created people are aware of the would be distractions? And for thousands of years will remain unaware?

Philosophically speaking it's like asking the question if god is good and benevolent why does he allow evil, carnage, death and misery? Why not just snap its fingers and all that he has set to accomplish according to the bible is done perfectly and instantly? With all participants perfectly aware of good and evil and genuinely grateful for a loving god to worship?  A common answer that doesn't hold up is freewill. But there is another answer to consider: God simply enjoys the processes of creating, using the time, structuring great expanses and stuff like that. That answer however doesn't hold up either because the suffering caused is avoidable thus negating perfect benevolence.

Then there is the biblical aspect. When you read through the gospels, Ecclesiastes, psalms, Isaiah to name a few books of scripture, one gets the strong sense that everything this god does is for a specific purpose. From counting the hairs on your head to creating the vast universe to every utterance it's been claimed to have spoken, nothing is done for superficial reasons. To the extent Christian authors write about it. One comes to mind by Rick Warren: "The purpose Driven Life". So I'd say it's highly unlikely that this god created some things just for the ambiance of its decorum. 

In conclusion I say if a god created the universe it's one we haven't heard of. You made a good devils advocate btw. Perhaps one day we will come across a real god and it doesn't take itself so serious?

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

I suppose you could ask a larger question: why would an omniscient and omnipotent god need to create anything at all? Such a god would have unlimited imagination and knowledge, therefore any relationship that it could possibly desire it could just recreate in its own mind with 100% clarity. If I was immortal and could imagine anything I want as vividly as if it was real, then I would never need to lift a finger. Any sensation, any experience, anything I could possibly desire - I could just think up. If there is no difference between reality and imagination, then there is no need to do anything in reality.

Furthermore, god cannot possibly be the creator of everything. The god would have to be embedded in some kind of reality itself, otherwise it would make no sense to talk about "god", just like it makes no sense to talk about residents of a non-existent apartment. For "god" to do anything, that reality must have existed whenever god existed. But then that reality could not have been created by the god, contradicting the claim that it created everything... But I digress.

All of this makes more sense though if we relax some assumptions and say that god is "omniscient" and "omnipresent" only from our perspective: it knows everything about this Universe and can make anything it wants out of it - however, it is neither omniscient nor omnipresent in its own reality. It is kind of like a fantastic programmer that can with 100% certainty predict what any program he writes can do, and he can write any program he wants in 0 seconds of time and with 0 effort - however, outside of his programming career, it cannot do and does not know a whole lot. So he writes various programs for fun, escaping the otherwise boring reality.

So perhaps the god wanted to create a virtual world of a particular kind and interact with its inhabitants like we interact with chatbots - but it wanted to do more than that. It created an entire Universe the NPCs (us) in which are the main part of it, but there are other parts as well. Sometimes the god might get tired of talking to us and, instead, just move the camera around and enjoy the vast emptiness. Maybe it can conduct various experiments there like create gamma-ray bursts and see what happens. Sometimes he might hurl something at the NPCs, such as a crazed dictator, and see how the NPCs deal with it. The Universe is a giant lab, and the god is not actually good or benevolent, but just a bored guy in shorts smoking pot and drinking whiskey.