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The Evil God Challenge

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techstepgenr8tion
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24 Feb 2026, 7:04 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I'd ignore the binary and say that any being comes from the wellspring of it's own necessities, ie. consciousness is functionalist. It's going to be the product of where it's been and where it is (leaving genes out momentarily because that's a substrate specific thing which may not always be the case for all things conscious). It's interactions with smaller agents will reflect where it is. It's likely to have both warm and cold attributes, just that much more likely than we could assign good or evil to it we wouldn't even find it's mind intelligible because our fitness landscape is too different. It would be like sorting out whether Nima Arkani Hamed's amplituhedron is good or evil, we generally don't apply moral valence to math.


Some nice shorts from Isaac Asimov, Phillip K Dick, and Stanislaw Lem:




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funeralxempire
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24 Feb 2026, 11:24 pm

quietbear wrote:
I already sent you the arguments that are available in a book. You can check it out if you want, or not.


It appears to be written by people.
Just like every other book, including the Quran and the Bible.

Believing a book was written by something other than people doesn't make it so. I can claim some book was written by an invisible pink unicorn but very few people would consider that claim to be based in reality. I can even point to where that book claims to have been written by an invisible pink unicorn and claim that as "proof" that the book was indeed written by an invisible pink unicorn, but that's just circular reasoning.

I don't believe any book that you can provide was written by anything other than humans and claims of divine authorship presuppose the existence of whatever divine entity is being claimed as the author. Treating such claims critically is a reasonable position, taking such claims at face value demonstrates a failure of critical thinking.


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quietbear
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25 Feb 2026, 8:45 am

funeralxempire wrote:
quietbear wrote:
I already sent you the arguments that are available in a book. You can check it out if you want, or not.


It appears to be written by people.
Just like every other book, including the Quran and the Bible.

Believing a book was written by something other than people doesn't make it so. I can claim some book was written by an invisible pink unicorn but very few people would consider that claim to be based in reality. I can even point to where that book claims to have been written by an invisible pink unicorn and claim that as "proof" that the book was indeed written by an invisible pink unicorn, but that's just circular reasoning.

I don't believe any book that you can provide was written by anything other than humans and claims of divine authorship presuppose the existence of whatever divine entity is being claimed as the author. Treating such claims critically is a reasonable position, taking such claims at face value demonstrates a failure of critical thinking.


That's a tell me you didn't even look at it without telling me you didn't look at it situation :). The book isn't written by god.



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25 Feb 2026, 9:42 am

quietbear wrote:
That's a tell me you didn't even look at it without telling me you didn't look at it situation :). The book isn't written by god.

What book are you referring to? Perhaps this one, which you inconspicuously linked to way back here?


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funeralxempire
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25 Feb 2026, 3:28 pm

quietbear wrote:
The book isn't written by god.


Then how does it support your claim that not all books were written by people? :scratch:

It's still a silly claim even if you're trying to let someone else do the heavy lifting of making such an argument.


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BillyTree
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28 Jun 2026, 4:45 pm

quietbear wrote:
[The book isn't written by god.


My take on that particular aspect is that a book actually written by God would be far better written than the Bible. If you can create the Universe, with all the planets, plants, animals and people including Shakespeare, you would surely be able to write better than any of the authors you have created.


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quietbear
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28 Jun 2026, 10:40 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
quietbear wrote:
The book isn't written by god.


Then how does it support your claim that not all books were written by people? :scratch:

It's still a silly claim even if you're trying to let someone else do the heavy lifting of making such an argument.


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WillTedRose13
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Yesterday, 2:00 am

I think my favorite quote from Cersei in Game of Thrones (before the show suffered an epic fail) was when she told Sansa "The Gods have no mercy that's why they're Gods".

God or the Gods or the "Universe" are all pretty indifferemt towards all of us. And why shouldnt they be? Humanity is nothing but a bunch of specs that believe they're more deserving of importance than they really are.



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Yesterday, 6:32 am

^If God is indifferent towards me (and us humans in general) why should we care about God? Worshipping a non-interfering and indifferent God is like worshipping gravity. It seems kind of pointless to me.


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WillTedRose13
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Yesterday, 9:13 am

BillyTree wrote:
^If God is indifferent towards me (and us humans in general) why should we care about God? Worshipping a non-interfering and indifferent God is like worshipping gravity. It seems kind of pointless to me.


I think of the Gods as being like our real world politicians. Sure the majority of them are self-serving sociopathic aholes, but they have all the power in the world and you do not want to cross them for any reason as they can destroy you without mercy.

Best to just let them do their own thing as they run the world. Unless one wants to have a particular deity on their side in which case you can try to appease them for personal favors (again those lawmakers in power work the same way).

But in my honest opinion if the Gods are real the stories speak for themselves. The Gods arent loving and merciful. They can be outright cruel and selfish, just like mortals. Only they're immortal and all-powerful.

This includes the Christian God so many people cling to and have burned countless people at the stake for.



BillyTree
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Yesterday, 3:04 pm

WillTedRose13 wrote:
BillyTree wrote:
^If God is indifferent towards me (and us humans in general) why should we care about God? Worshipping a non-interfering and indifferent God is like worshipping gravity. It seems kind of pointless to me.


I think of the Gods as being like our real world politicians. Sure the majority of them are self-serving sociopathic aholes, but they have all the power in the world and you do not want to cross them for any reason as they can destroy you without mercy.

Best to just let them do their own thing as they run the world. Unless one wants to have a particular deity on their side in which case you can try to appease them for personal favors (again those lawmakers in power work the same way).


But in my honest opinion if the Gods are real the stories speak for themselves. The Gods arent loving and merciful. They can be outright cruel and selfish, just like mortals. Only they're immortal and all-powerful.

This includes the Christian God so many people cling to and have burned countless people at the stake for.


I interpret it as an indifferent and non-interfering God doesn't care what you think or do. In that case there's no way for you to cross the God or get it on your side.


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WillTedRose13
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Yesterday, 8:06 pm

BillyTree wrote:
WillTedRose13 wrote:
BillyTree wrote:
^If God is indifferent towards me (and us humans in general) why should we care about God? Worshipping a non-interfering and indifferent God is like worshipping gravity. It seems kind of pointless to me.


I think of the Gods as being like our real world politicians. Sure the majority of them are self-serving sociopathic aholes, but they have all the power in the world and you do not want to cross them for any reason as they can destroy you without mercy.

Best to just let them do their own thing as they run the world. Unless one wants to have a particular deity on their side in which case you can try to appease them for personal favors (again those lawmakers in power work the same way).


But in my honest opinion if the Gods are real the stories speak for themselves. The Gods arent loving and merciful. They can be outright cruel and selfish, just like mortals. Only they're immortal and all-powerful.

This includes the Christian God so many people cling to and have burned countless people at the stake for.


I interpret it as an indifferent and non-interfering God doesn't care what you think or do. In that case there's no way for you to cross the God or get it on your side.


I see it more as the Gods being indifferent towards human suffering and our need to feel more special than we really are.

You guys can see the divine as "evil", I see them as beings of a higher level that our barely evolved ape minds will never truly grasp. They don't have to explain themselves to us because we are merely specs in this world.