Thursday, August 12, 2010

SMBC rescues the Teleological Argument

The fatal flaw in the Teleological Argument, even before Darwin came along and gave us a better explanation, is that it leads to an infinite regress. If you think that the only acceptable answer to the question, "What created all this shit?" is "God", then you're going to have a doozy of a time with the question, "What created God?"

Until now.

Turns out that God was created by an insane space monkey who rules reality. Who knew???



Solves that pesky theodicy problem too...

5 comments:

  1. Our insane space monkey, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.....

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  2. The infinite regress does shoot the prime mover argument in the foot. But it gets even worse. Why can't the universe be an infinite regress? The big-crunch models of the universe have been pretty well ruled out by red-shift and dark energy (universe is expanding, and accelerating as well), but that doesn't mean our universe was the first.

    It could be that a god-like being arises, creates a universe, in which another godlike being eventually arises, who then makes a universe, ... and so on.

    It doesn't really explain anything, but neither does hand-waving an infinite regress away because of course god did it.

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  3. One of the less well-known doctrines in the LD$ church is the idea that those who reach the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom (i.e. heaven, but Mormons have a more complicated afterlife structure than just heaven/hell) will go on to become heavenly parents to new worlds. Which of course invites the obvious question as to whether their God was the first of his kind, but people tend to find that question, er, a bit blasphemous.

    No surprise they kinda keep that aspect of the religion under wraps, eh?

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  4. When I was in Catholic HS the closest we ever got to a comparative religion class was talking about various protestant sects, I drew LD$ -- if I remember correctly, isnt it like:

    tier 1 heaven - pretty much everyone gets in, and its more betterer than anything you can imagine thinking about imagining.

    tier 2 heaven - for people who were good, but didn't accept the mormony goodness into the bottom of their hearts. It is unimaginably better than tier 1 heaven. So like, more betterer times a million.

    tier 3 heaven - special reserve for LS$ all-stars. I guess that's the Celestial Kingdom. It makes tier two heaven make tier 1 heaven look like earth! -- or something.

    Not the kind of thing you'd parade around, probably.

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  5. Yes, exactly. Tier 1 is the "telestial kingdom", tier 2 is the "terrestrial kingdom", and tier 3 is the "celestial kingdom". The telestial kingdom is not necessarily "betterer than anything you can imagine thinking about imagining", but it is usually touted as better than Earth.

    There's also "outer darkness", which is reserved for those who have "committed blasphemy against the holy ghost" -- which I understand to mean, those who have received direct revelation about The Truth and then denied it. Or something.

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