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[Ephemeriis]

Oh please, why did He put the tree in the garden if He didn't intend Adam and Eve to eat from it? Forbidding them to do so is just basic reverse psychology.

That thought gave me a interesting thought to go along with that as well. What if God and the Devil have never really been at war with each other, but instead, have been playing us like a succession game or something. I mean, God had to have created the Devil as well, and despite the whole "fallen angel" status that was carried by the Devil, things would be carried more as a friendly rivalry, than as a full-blown war between Heaven and Hell with Earth as the chosen battlefield. Everything needs a purpose, and last I recall, Hell had more purpose as a prison (or "Time Out Zone") for demons, than fallen Man that have done much wrong.

Well, that's kind of where things start to fall apart, isn't it?  I mean...  The Christian god is supposed to be all knowing, all powerful, and all good.  So god had to know that the serpent would tempt Eve, had to know that we'd eat from the tree, had to know that Lucifer would rebel...  And had to be OK with all that, because if god wasn't OK with all that then it wouldn't have happened.

"Don't play God" should only ever be uttered in B-Movies to the scientist who created the Rabid-Flying-Amphibious-Sharks that were created to clean up oilspills before he releases them on the world.

Agreed.

Still, it's not as arbitrary as Ephemeriis makes it out to be. One way a person can take these is advancing ourselves 'till these things are no longer godlike. Electricity would be considered godlike a thousand years ago, and they likely wouldn't know what to do with it. Then you have stuff like gunpowder where you know it'll be used as irresponsibly as we have used it. We shouldn't play with things that we cannot handle, as we could hurt ourselves. We should play human, working with what we understand.

Except that the scary things we cannot handle become the things that we understand when we play with them.  That's how we learn.  And usually there is hurt along the way.  Which is essential to the learning process.

To play devil's advocate here (God's advocate?), you could argue that it's more like a parent telling their 2-year old not to play with matches. Yes, the adult gets to play with matches, but that's because we're (hopefully) more mature and careful because we more fully comprehend the danger.

Great example, but probably not in the way you intended.

When I was a kid we had a big ol' kerosene heater in the basement, which was also the playroom for us kids.  It had a big, flat top on it that got incredibly hot.  I used to have fun melting my legos on it.

My parents told me time and time again not to touch it because it was hot and I'd burn myself.  I got yelled at, grounded, had toys taken away, etc.  I kept ignoring them.  I knew what I was doing.  I was being careful.  I wouldn't get hurt.

Then one day I thought it was off, and put my hand flat on top of it.  Burned the hell out of my whole hand.  Hurt like hell.  Not only was I in pain, but I was terrified to tell my parents because I knew I shouldn't have been doing it in the first place.  I spent the rest of the day playing outside in the snow, minus one mitten, so I could stick my hand in the snowbank to stop the pain.

I never played with that heater again.

People need to make their own mistakes.  It doesn't matter how much you warn them or how much advice you give.  Everybody has to screw it up themselves.

[RedKing]

Now I've got Frank Zappa's "Dumb All Over" running through my head.

Hey, we can't really be dumb if we're just following God's orders
Well let's get serious, God knows what he's doin'
He wrote this book here and the book says, "He made us all to be just like Him"
So, if we're dumb
Then God is dumb
And maybe even
A little ugly on the side

[Soadreqm]

Still, it's not as arbitrary as Ephemeriis makes it out to be. One way a person can take these is advancing ourselves 'till these things are no longer godlike. Electricity would be considered godlike a thousand years ago, and they likely wouldn't know what to do with it. Then you have stuff like gunpowder where you know it'll be used as irresponsibly as we have used it. We shouldn't play with things that we cannot handle, as we could hurt ourselves. We should play human, working with what we understand.

Well, how is humanity supposed to learn to understand new things if it isn't allowed to play with them? The usual Mad Scientist Movie Lesson, it seems to me, is that the thing to do when you discover something is to burn all your research notes and destroy the prototypes, because otherwise everyone gets eaten by giant zombie spiders. It's only really possible to assess the risks of some wondrous new technology after the giant zombie spider accident has happened, and if you never take the risk, you never find out what could have happened.

People need to make their own mistakes.  It doesn't matter how much you warn them or how much advice you give.  Everybody has to screw it up themselves.

I don't like calling it necessary. People often do screw up for themselves, but I'd like to think that it's at least possible to sometimes learn from the mistakes of others. And I think there is something absolutely hilarious about a situation where you were more terrified of telling your parents that you burned your hand while playing with a heater than you were of the actual burning.

Also, the idea that God and Devil are not enemies, but rather doing some elaborate good-cop-bad-cop-routine on humanity is probably my favorite heresy.

[fqllve]

Well, that's kind of where things start to fall apart, isn't it?  I mean...  The Christian god is supposed to be all knowing, all powerful, and all good.  So god had to know that the serpent would tempt Eve, had to know that we'd eat from the tree, had to know that Lucifer would rebel...  And had to be OK with all that, because if god wasn't OK with all that then it wouldn't have happened.

I'm pretty sure that Lucifer and the Fall thing doesn't have anything to do with Christianity. I blame John Milton for that, just like Dante is to blame for the modern conception of hell.

In Job God and Satan seem to have more of a friendly rivalry going on than any kind of war.

don't play me, bro

We could just think of it as a friendly reminder that when we muck around with stuff we don't quite understand mistakes will be made. Shit will go down. Use caution.

You know, because we shouldn't pretend we can fully understand the consequences of something we just discovered. As if we were some omniscient deity. Kind of like a memento mori but more of a memento fuckup.

[RedKing]

We could just think of it as a friendly reminder that when we muck around with stuff we don't quite understand mistakes will be made. Shit will go down. Use caution.

You know, because we shouldn't pretend we can fully understand the consequences of something we just discovered. As if we were some omniscient deity. Kind of like a memento mori but more of a memento fuckup.

Which is why every good Dwarf Fortress has that one red lever behind half a dozen locked doors. "Shouldn't play God" = "Shouldn't pull levers that you haven't fully tested."

Of course, the only way to test them....

[fqllve]

Which is why every good Dwarf Fortress has that one red lever behind half a dozen locked doors. "Shouldn't play God" = "Shouldn't pull levers that you haven't fully tested."

Of course, the only way to test them....

As long as you expect that there will be magma and it will wreck a whole bunch of shit, then you're at least slightly better prepared to deal with it.

[Criptfeind]

Issue.

If that lever will kill all the dwarfs if pulled wrong, should you pull it? Or should you look deeper into it to try to find out what will happen?

[RedKing]

"And the LORD spake unto Urist, saying 'Build thee an ark of bauxite, and place two of every kind of animal within. Except cats. Take unto thee but one cat, lest doom befall you all. Truely I say unto thee, although boats work not, thou wilt really want to be in that ark when the Lever of the Covenant is pulled.'"

[Cthulhu]

Why are we all assuming the Garden of Eden story is to be taken literally?  Maybe it's an allegory for something more complex than the early Hebrews could grasp.  Maybe it's a fable or myth that got brought into the Official Canon by early Christian scholars who assumed it was to be taken as fact (Which is how we got the idea that you'll burn forever if you don't worship God).

Honestly, would you really want to live in a world where Eve didn't eat the fruit?

[Ephemeriis]

Why are we all assuming the Garden of Eden story is to be taken literally?

Well, it'll depend on who you ask...  Me, I think it's all hogwash.  Other folks think it's some kind of metaphor.  A disturbingly large number of people think it is literal truth. 

Honestly, would you really want to live in a world where Eve didn't eat the fruit?

Nope.

But, then again, I'm one of those heathens.

[Duke 2.0]

Well, how is humanity supposed to learn to understand new things if it isn't allowed to play with them?

We could just think of it as a friendly reminder that when we muck around with stuff we don't quite understand mistakes will be made. Shit will go down. Use caution.

Basically don't play around with things carelessly. Use caution, slowly look over these new things and be ready to deal with whatever unexpected things come from it. Go ahead and make those flying batsharks meant to clean oil spills, but only if you already have a lab in place to contain them if they go berserk, a poison that will only effect the batsharks and not any other ocean/mammal life and a strike team on call to deal with any possible escapes, as opposed to some dude sitting in his college lab and sewing that uranium to the shark fetus hoping that the resulting batshark doesn't go berserk.
 Or replace batshark up there with nuclear technology. You have to ease into it, understand the effects and not start mass-producing nuclear-powered cars before you realize that these things crash all the time.

[DJ]

Why are we all assuming the Garden of Eden story is to be taken literally?

Well, it'll depend on who you ask...  Me, I think it's all hogwash.  Other folks think it's some kind of metaphor.  A disturbingly large number of people think it is literal truth.

It's a painfully obvious metaphor for gaining sapience. Which is what makes us similar to God. So the apple was basically the final step in creation of man.

[Virex]

I prefer "God shouldn't play with men" myself, but to each it's own I guess.

[Soadreqm]

Issue.

If that lever will kill all the dwarfs if pulled wrong, should you pull it? Or should you look deeper into it to try to find out what will happen?

These two options are logically equivalent.

Basically don't play around with things carelessly. Use caution, slowly look over these new things and be ready to deal with whatever unexpected things come from it. Go ahead and make those flying batsharks meant to clean oil spills, but only if you already have a lab in place to contain them if they go berserk, a poison that will only effect the batsharks and not any other ocean/mammal life and a strike team on call to deal with any possible escapes, as opposed to some dude sitting in his college lab and sewing that uranium to the shark fetus hoping that the resulting batshark doesn't go berserk.
 Or replace batshark up there with nuclear technology. You have to ease into it, understand the effects and not start mass-producing nuclear-powered cars before you realize that these things crash all the time.

I don't think the movies ever present caution as an option, though. The guy to create the giant spider is inevitably the kind of eccentric loner who doesn't tell anyone about his experiments, doesn't notice the obvious flaws in his safety precautions, has never even heard of peer review and is quite possibly actively evil. And after the protagonists mop it all up, nobody even suggests doing the experiment again and being more careful this time. You can either do zombie research alone in a swamp with a hunchbacked assistant who keeps dropping the doom serum vials, or not do it at all. There is apparently no middle ground.

[Kogan Loloklam]

I view the whole "God created man in his own image" in two three...
First, that god is the same as us. We know our limitations, but supposedly god is infinite and unlimited. In which case he abused the power he had to arbitrarily force us not to be capable of our full potential. That makes him evil and a douche.

Second, is that god created us with a fundamental weaker power than himself. How would you feel if you learned you were a crappy clone missing the ability to breathe on your own? Yea. Same outcome. Evil and a douche.

The alternative is we weren't created in God's image, which makes the bible false, making the people who created it evil and douches, for being liers directly responsible for the deaths and suffering of millions of people FOR NO REASON. This is the theory I believe.


In the first one, playing god is achieving your full potential, something the great oppressor is trying to supress, and might kill us all to prevent the knowledge of freedom from spreading.

In the second, playing god is an example of us evolving beyond our programming, becoming dangerous. The new evolution would have to be destroyed before it spread, with a safe margin.

The third, playing god is literally new territory, and you might be doing it by accident, and there is no assurances that you won't destroy life, the universe, and everything in a freak accident.

Any which way, go play god away from me please, and if is 1-2, please let me know the secret before you get destroyed. He can't kill us all, after all. He can try, but once we are god, we can kill him!