On the Impossibility of Playing God

What is God, Who is God. The necessary being. Maker of all things visible and invisible. Creator of the laws of the physical world, creator of reality. The First Cause and Source of all things. The direct creator of nature and indirect creator of Man’s creations. Creator of the laws of the physical world, creator of reality.
God is the Divine Goodness, Divine Beauty, Truth, Love, and Logos.

How then can we say that one can play God. Even if we take it that playing is not the same as being. Even if playing is merely an imitation. How can we imitate being metaphysically necessary. How can we imitate making a non-illusory reality. How can we imitate being the First Cause, by definition there can always be only one First Cause. How can we play as if we are the creator, the inventor of Man, if we will always stay as Man.  How do we imitate creating laws of our universe (more on simulation later).

How can we imitate being metaphysically simple, how do we imitate existing as our own essences. How on earth or in the universe or multiverse, can we be the idea of the Good, Being beauty himself, being Truth, being Love or being Logos.

The answer is impossible, not just because of limitations of our time, of our abilities, but because it is rationally invalid.

To highlight an important example of the usual usage of the phrase playing God, let us look into genetic manipulation. Genetic manipulation may first seem like imitating creation, trying to create a new Man, a Transhuman, a new species. However, this does not come anywhere close God’s creation. Did we rewrite the laws of genetics, of chemical interactions? Can we do manipulation without God’s creations, hence creating something entirely new? Without any blueprints from previous genes, without the idea of the DNA. Are we not merely recycling and fulfilling God’s creation.

Even if we are be able to create life from scratch, we are nowhere near imitating God. For the creation of life is merely an infinitesimal fraction of God’s creation. More so, if we only manipulate genes, even if we manipulate our own genes. These pale in comparison if we compare with the creation of physical laws alone.

How about immortality, is trying to achieve physical immortality playing God? No, God is Eternal not immortal, and our eternal life is nothing like physical immortality. One is merely staying in time, one is being beyond time.

How about artificial intelligence? No, emphasizing the word artificial is enough to prove that our actions differ from God’s qualitatively.

Even if we create the technological singularity, it is still not playing God, for God can smite the tower of Babel in any instance; but us, we will have no power to keep it up or to smite it with a word.

Playing God is impossible. It is rationally invalid. Lord There is none like you, and this is a rational deduction.

“Death is naked before him, and nothingness hath no covering. He stretcheth out the north over empty place and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He createth the forces and keepeth the laws in place.”

Other Writings On the Philosophy of Physics and Mathematics

Substituting Nature into (God) & Knowledge of the Falsified

Between Occam, Bayes, and Heisenberg

Is Geometry Synthetic and A Priori?

Arguing for ESR: to Induce and to Abduce

Mediating the Formalists and Intuitionists: Genetic, Logical, Epistemic Order

The Fall of A Republic

The Fall of A Republic

There was once a republic, built in the image of Plato’s. A republic where the guardians rule over all with their wisdom, with their knowledge of the forms; A republic where the auxiliary enforces the guardian’s rule with their fortitude, their passionate spirit; A republic where the producers sustained the auxiliary and the guardians for the republic’s sake, with their temperance. The republic is a soul of a man. A spirit where wisdom rules over passions as passions rule over appetite. A spirit sustained from both ends – the world of forms and the world of physicality.

The republic was not always such a Platonic one, in fact the republic started as an appetitive city. As the city grows, so too does his appetite. To meet his appetite, a new class of citizens arises, a military class, the auxiliary. The auxiliary waged wars after wars, to gather up lands for cultivation, for the producers to work on. They conquered some territories, gave up others that he deemed unworthy. Some wars were won, others were lost, but in everything there was chaos, both in victory and defeat. It was as the days when the Olympians fought against the Titans, when there were no gods, only wrestlers. Amidst this chaos, the citizens gathered, the citizens debated, the citizens deliberated. It was not right for the military to wage indiscriminate and all-directional wars, the citizens concluded. Thus, a new class is necessary for the survival and welfare of the city. But what class should they create? What else is necessary? For they had food, they had iron, timber, stones, weapons, houses, great halls, temples and palaces; they had colonies, protectorates, allies, they had all the things of this world. They need all the things of another.

And then came the prophet, the wandering philosopher, the teacher that taught them knowledge of another world. A world consisting of true goodness, true justice, true beauty. A world of forms. A certain group of people, the philosopher’s hearers and pupils emerged as the new class, a class of guardians of the city. The guardians ruled the city as the republic, with the wisdom, the knowledge of this world of forms. They ruled with a strong hand, imposing wisdom on the auxiliary, who then imposes their might on the producers. The republic at last was stable, as wisdom rules over passions, and passions rule over appetite.

But the republic fell…

The republic fell at the sight of a tree. A tree of beauty, a gift from the lady of wisdom and war, the virgin lady Athena daughter of Zeus Polieos. Why did Athena gifted the republicans with this gift? A gift that could far surpass anything that Poseidon could give? Perhaps it was because Athena deemed it good for the city to build itself up with the beautiful fruit and wood and oil of this tree. Maybe then, the republic would not only be wise and mighty and prosperous but would be beautiful and pleasant. Perhaps it was a gift out of her generosity, perhaps it was a trial out of her envy. Perhaps, Athena was challenging the republic’s guardians, a council of Arachnes in her sight, for their hubristic wisdom of a world beyond hers, of the forms that sustained Athena’s own being. No matter the intention, the republic fell nonetheless, long gone was its wisdom, long gone was its might. Or perhaps the republic was never wise nor mighty in the first place.

But the tree was truly the incarnation of the beauty herself, of the Platonic, immaterial, form of ideal beauty, pure and untainted. Or at least that is what the tree seems to the guardians. Or perhaps it was not the tree, but the smile or the laughter of the tree. A smile purer than a child’s, than an unborn child’s. A laughter that is as if it escaped the fall of man, untainted by Sin. A smile that hints at the world beyond this physicality. A smile truly from the world of forms. Alas, it is impossible for this to be a trial from Athena, for this is truly beyond her, beyond the gods of Olympus, beyond Zeus! If it be a trial, it certainly is not from Olympus. It must be from the world of forms, if… This tree was in Eden, certainly so. Is it the tree of knowledge? Is it the tree of life? Or perhaps it was a tree that was cast out of Eden, yet somehow uncursed? For the beauty of Eden was in this one tree, the gift of Athena.

How can a republic stand before such a tree. Even Adam fell for a lesser one! If it be a trial, the republic has failed. For once again I tell you, the republic fell at the sight of the tree. All its structures crumbled, and even though the knowledge of the forms remains, the social order was no longer in place. The guardians, begged the city to allow them to be producers instead of guardians so that they could cultivate the tree. So too did the auxiliary, for they could not be passionate about any other thing other than to be stripped of their military might, so they could be cultivators of this tree. How can a republic stand when its leaders forgo the whole concept of duty! Wisdom cried out in the streets together with justice, but the guardians are deaf now and the auxiliary are blind. Certainly, the republic was not as wise and mighty as it perceived itself to be. For it was certainly not wiser than Athena, who gave it a gift or a trial. For it was certainly weaker than Athena, or even weaker than a tree. Alas, what might the future hold for this republic? Can it rebuild itself up, set up its just social order once again, together as it grows together with the tree within its borders? Or would the tree not have it? I pray to the God of gods, the God of forms, that the republic and the tree may rise together, building each other up, bring about the truly just order, for the love and glory of the God of gods, the God of forms, and not for the republic’s.

Sublime Unknown

The sublimeness of dread fills my soul. What a paradox, the frightening anxiety is seemingly soft, harmless, and non-threatening. The greatness of the unknown fills my heart with awe, even with fear and yet also peace of mind. The peace of mind that comes from the revelation of the absence of knowledge, of the futility of human reason and perception, peace nontheless. How can there be peace , but it is there, the peace is real, a joyous feeling, almost delight. But the Unknown seems too great, inducing dread, and yet the Unknown softens all the perceptions of the of the dread itself, leaving behind a memory, not a memory of the past, but a memory of another state of existence, a recollection. A recollection of our fallenness.

On Nature as a Resource

Is there anything wrong for human beings to manipulate nature and use nature as a resource? If yes why? If not, why not? Discuss cases of genetically modified food or animal testing. How would you draw the line between what we should and should not do?

No, Why would it be?
I do not believe that there is anything wrong for Man to manipulate nature and use 'nature' as a resource.

First of all I do not believe that there is a dichotomy between Man and nature. Man is a part of nature and therefore all actions of Man is an expression of nature. Even genetic manipulation is an expression, a process of nature which just happen to involve Man.

Of course we can insist on the differentiation between Man and 'nature', 'nature' being a set complimentary to Man, all that is not Man. Many would say that nature does not exist for the sake of Man. I would probably agree. But neither does Man exist for the sake of 'nature'. Man can exist for the sake of Man, and this can be seen as the 'natural order'. This is how every species exist in my view, this is the reason for reproduction.

Man has always 'manipulated' nature, our ancestors manipulated the genes of swine, poultry, horses, camels, by their own means, a eugenics of their own. There's nothing new with genetic manipulation, we just found a more effective method.

However I believe that senseless violence towards other species -be it plants, animals, or bacteria- is not justified, not because I see them as ends, but that those actions is inhumane, contrary to our nature, damaging to our psychology.

Our Other Half

Aristophanes has a very memorable analogy of love in Plato's The Symposium, one which is surprisingly widely accepted. Although many believed that his explanation is intended to be comic and not in any way accounting for real events, let's just take our imagination to a world where what he said holds true.

In summary, Aristophanes mentioned in The Symposium how humans are originally a being with two heads, four arms and four legs. We were such a powerful force that we are a significant threat when we decided to attack the gods. Zeus then takes his lightning bolt to split us in half, and scattered our halves throughout the Earth, so that our lives will be significantly spent on seeking our other half. Thus love is an irrational force in a person to seek their other half. A lot of people will find this romantic, but suppose that this is true, it might mean a few things.

First, is that we are no longer perfectly rational. It is one thing to split our four-handed persona into two weaker beings, and from The Symposium the split is designed such that it is impossible to physically combine with our other half. Scattering us and 'cursing' us into an endless pursue for our other half is another thing. This gives us a very significant force of irrationality as a human being, so that we are too busy doing something irrational to think about anything else. The only reason our great Zeus did this is that our rational thinking another thing that makes us powerful, and threatening. Hence it is fine to assume that we were perfectly rational in our four-legged state.

Second, is that love is necessary for rational thinking. This is an implication to the previous point, actually. Although it is impossible for us to go back to our perfect state, it might be possible for us to go back to our perfect rationale once we are one with our other half. That is to say, suppose that we can synchronize our thoughts perfectly with our other half, we will attain the truest kind of rational thinking with which the search for truth might be possible. Hence get laid, O virgin philosopher; lest your pursue be for naught.

Third, is that it is a fact that the perfect human seeks to take down gods. It is still debatable whether the gods here are supposed to represent pagan gods or the being that created us. It is a fact, however, that we sought to take down the superior being. Is that how we will end up should we attain our rational thinking back?

Again, this is just a what-if about a scenario made by a comedian. Yet how fascinating it is should all that be true.

Do Not Offend the Common Contemporary People

What the rational should realize is that there is no neutral position, there is no objective view, there is no unbiased opinions. Un-neutrality makes a position, subjectivity makes a view, and biases shapes opinions.

 There is no relative morals, for if morals is relative there is no morals. Bull excrements and fairy tales is what morals is to the modern people. But they would never accept that there is no morals, that the 'evil' Hitler is just as moral as martin Luther King Jr.

Their thoughts are not a product of thinking processes, they are not thoughts, they are noises. They do not base his noises on premises and conclusions. Their noises are just manifestations of the crowd or their current concentrations of different hormones in their body. Packs of animals is what they reduced humanity into.

Do not offend them for they will growl if you do. For they have to defend their pack with sheer number, for their intellect is weak, but together they unite. The Crowd is what they are.