>>13569013I'm not not open to the idea of a God (or godlike being), but all the ritual and holy text that seems to be extremely culturally specific and forensically traceable to different social movements and time periods and whatnot needs to be discounted. The idea of heaven, hell... What being with ultimate power and ultimate kindness would condemn a consciousness to an eternity of agony and torture for not following the rules he has people like pedo priests and televangelists be the mouthpiece of. If he wanted us to act a certain way but retain free will, he'd work miracles and have chats with us from time to time.
So let's say for a moment that God is an extradimensional being, capricious and sadistic, and wants to reward the dogmatic and torture the skeptic... Why? What purpose could he have? How is it not a more likely reality that there's nobody there? Consciousness isn't really special; I don't understand how people think that /this/ particular chemical reaction is far more important than all others. You replace most of the atoms in your body near constantly, and animal behavior is a pretty demonstrably smooth curve up to apes, and with a couple jumps once we started sharpening rocks and sticks. Where does a 'soul' start? Are dogs not conscious? They have emotions, they're reasonably intelligent, and we can communicate more meaningfully with them than any other animal and vice versa. Does God have a God heaven and dog hell?
And of reincarnation, I can support to a certain extent, that perhaps someday your exact arrangement of atoms will coalesce again, given infinite time. But will it be you? Are there souls just hanging out in higher dimensions waiting for their exact signature to reappear again?