Is there any sort of deity or primordial creature whose dismembered body was used to create the earth and all of its features? Not Tiamat or Ymir per se, or even any being specifically identified by a past human culture, but is there something.
Obviously, we can’t know for sure one way or the other. This is a question science can’t ever really answer for us definitively. But maybe scientists are finally catching up to what past societies figured out long ago because, after all, stars going supernova to provide heavy elements necessary for life is a shockingly similar story to what has been passed down to us through ancient wisdoms.
I guess what any reasonable person has to answer is, ‘I don’t know’. However, the corpse of a massive supernatural being providing the physical basis for all life on earth can offer a lot of meaning for those who choose to believe in it, and I respect that.
HUMAN 1
Well I’ve been thinking about something similar lately that I can’t really even grasp my head around. “What is the universe/multiverse doing and why”. Not really talking about God in particular though as that word has a lot “funny” connotations to it.Everything from the stars, galaxies, black holes to quantum particles and atoms is “inside” this unfathomable—theoretically infinite—multiverse. All the way down to us, the animals and plants (and maybe aliens). We are conscious of our existence in this universe, and we are aware of this universe. Kind of like we are the universe’s consciousness.
But even that is still “inside” this entire thing we call the universe. All the art and music and creativity and thought is not some external force that comes from outside the universe, it comes from whatever is the universe. Nothing is outside our universe.
So this giant everything is just there, doing. And it seems to “growing” or “moving”? Is it intelligent? Maybe some type of super-intelligence we couldn’t even conceive of? Or just some mechanical reality processor? Or maybe its some crazy hyper-illusion.
Even if it’s all just by chance, it’s pretty amazing what came to be and that blows my mind.
HUMAN 2
I’ve often wondered why the brain is conscious and aware given that it is in no way a special, magical consciousness inducing type of matter. In turn, ive given considerable thought to the concept of the multiple realizability of consciousness and wondered what types of things might produce higher level phenomenon that are self aware.Given the same line of thought, it’s also given me serious pause to consider consciousness along the lines of a spectrum and imo gives some pretty serious intellectual backing to the whole notion that everything is in some way sentient—just some areas of the universe have a higher density of sentience than others.
But why do people think so highly of consciousness or creativity, other than the fact that humans have it and little else does?
If we were some more complex form of eusocial insect like ants or termites and had a capacity for wonder, we’d probably be wondering if there was something out there that had an even greater capacity for directing activity via pheromone.
I know that analogy breaks down real fast, but it seems narcissistic and self-serving to imagine a universe or force of mind out there, no matter how abstract the terms are defined, and not so different from inventing deities that jerk off and eat their cum, are jealous when their spouse fucks around on them, or whatever. We imagine ourselves, just more, exaggerated.
I don’t know of anything we’ve learned about the universe that would lead anybody to the conclusion it’s being directed by an intelligence of the sort that inspires art or wants things or is curious. Life is wonderful because we’re the ones living it, but we’re probably not the most efficient kind of self-perpetuating process possible within the laws of physics of our universe, or even the most wonderful machines at increasing overall entropy. We celebrate imagination because we have it, but why should imagination matter to supernovae and up quarks?
Maybe math is the transcendent thing that has real value because it seems to exist entirely separate from us to be discovered independently by other life forms and natural processes, and if that’s the case, maybe the Pythagoreans were right in their form of worship. But all of the other
But all of the other talk is some variation on anthropomorphic fallacy, and math, in all of the ways we’ve ever tried to describe it, likely is, too.
ADJ 