Originally posted by sumydid
Do you believe a Creator of any kind exists? If not, do you believe it is at least possible? If you answered "no" to both, then we're done. If you answered "yes" to either or both, then I have one more question: Do you believe a Creator can have a personality?
I have a lack of belief in a creator. Which is not the same thing as denying the possibility of one. It just appears so far from scientific evidence a creator is not needed for our universe to have come about. Further scientific study may change that but for now the scales for me tip to the non-created universe. I have no built in bias that I would fight for one way or the other, that is to say, I am open to further evidence.
I think that humans can eventually figure it our for themselves one way or the other. Of course that may take 10,000 years of study, who knows, which would also imply we as the human race would have to remain technological for that length of time and not run into some catastrophe that kills us all like the asteroid/comet that hit in what we now call Yucatan 65 odd million years ago. Avoiding the end of the human race and the exponential growth in knowledge we are presently enjoying, if that continues in the future for a few hundred more years we might have a real answer one way or the other.
If it turns out the scientific evidence points to a real creator god thing, I would not be pulling what is left of my hair out over the issue. I don't have much emotional commitment to the idea one way or the other, either case will be fine with me.
I don't however, believe even for one second, in the biblical god. Too many human characteristics given to such a god for it to be more than ego building, mankind controlling, women hating, totally man made religion by and for men to control all people and specifically to put women in their place, a few notches lower than men.
That alone proves to me the man made nature of your god. I will believe for the rest of my life unswervingly that a real god would introduce no such gender bias and any religion that does is undoubtedly made up by men. That leaves pretty much zero in the way of religions NOT made by men in my opinion.
That said, I still leave open the possibility for some kind of god since we are really fresh on the scene geologically and our whole solar system is fairly fresh on the scene from the standpoint of the universe so our planet and system could have come about at least 3 or 4 times, 4 billion years at a crack leaving 8 billion odd years with developments happening elsewhere in the universe so just our kind of life could possibly develop into beings we would not be able to tell apart from what we think gods would be like. They could be so far above us spiritually, intellectually, physically, life span and so forth we would not be able to tell the difference between them and what we would think a real god is.
We are so far down on the possible universe totem pole one of those alleged beings could come down to Earth and set itself up as a god and we would not know the difference.
Like the man said, a sufficiently advanced technology cannot be told from magic from our POV.