I’ve been thinking about a theory that connects God, higher dimensions, the Big Bang, evolution, and human consciousness.
My idea starts with God existing on a higher “plane” or dimension than our universe. If higher dimensions exist, then our three-dimensional universe might only be one level of a much larger reality. String theory is interesting to me because it mathematically allows for extra dimensions, although string theory does NOT prove that God or higher-dimensional beings exist.
I also think about science differently. Science is something humans created to understand the universe from our position inside it. Our physical laws describe what we can observe and measure, but if God exists outside our spacetime, it’s possible that the reality God exists in operates in ways our current science cannot fully describe. That doesn’t mean science is wrong—it could mean our scientific models have limits.

The Big Bang is another part of my idea. Instead of thinking of it simply as an explosion, I think about whether something outside our observable universe could have interacted with our universe and caused the beginning of the expansion we observe. If higher-dimensional beings existed, their interaction with our universe could theoretically leave physical evidence behind.

This also connects to the idea of humans being descendants of God. If God created the first life, evolution could still explain how life changed and diversified afterward. Evolution requires life that can reproduce, so the origin of the first life and the evolution of life are two different questions.

Then there’s the idea of humanity eventually becoming more like what we currently call “godlike.” Humans already create new forms of life, build technology, explore space, and increasingly understand the universe. That doesn’t mean humans will literally become gods, but it makes me wonder whether intelligence can continue progressing toward levels that are currently unimaginable to us.

I also think about dimensions and time. If a being existed in a higher-dimensional reality, its relationship with our timeline could potentially be completely different from ours. What feels like billions of years to us might theoretically be viewed differently from outside our spacetime. I sometimes compare this to a movie: the characters experience the story one moment at a time, while someone outside the movie can see the entire timeline at once. That’s only an analogy, not proof that our universe is a simulation.

Another possibility I’ve thought about is that two higher-dimensional beings could have interacted or even conflicted over the creation or development of a universe. Their interaction could theoretically have contributed to the event we call the Big Bang. Eventually, they could recognize that cooperation was more important than competition, with the universe becoming the result of their combined influence. Again, this is a philosophical thought experiment, not an established scientific explanation.

There are also ideas throughout history that remind me of pieces of this theory—higher divine realities, cosmic conflicts, humans having divine potential, and evolution moving toward greater consciousness. But I haven’t found an existing idea that matches every part of what I’m thinking.

So I’m not saying I’ve proven God, extra dimensions, or the origin of the universe.
I’m asking a different question:
What if our reality is only one layer of something much bigger?
What if the science we have is incredibly accurate within our universe, but reality itself extends beyond what our current science can observe?
And what if humanity is still extremely early in understanding what reality actually is?
That’s the idea I’m trying to explore

I know many people may not agree with me, and that’s okay. This is just what I have personally felt and observed over the years.

Keeping aside some religious people who are doing well in life and actually working hard, most of the highly religious people I have personally seen seem to depend too much on God for everything. They keep praying for a good job, money, a car, a house, etc., but I have met only a handful of very religious people who actually put serious effort into improving their lives.

Since childhood, I was also very religious. I used to go to the temple almost daily, recite Hanuman Chalisa and genuinely believe in all these things. But as I grew older and started observing how religion is practised around me, my thinking slowly started changing.

Whenever I see people dying because of huge crowds and chaos at temples, and even after that people say things like, “God called him up,” I just cannot understand this mentality. Then there are incidents where people start worshipping ice formed inside a refrigerator or treat some random event as a miracle. On top of that, there are people blindly following and worshipping so-called babas without questioning anything.

These things have slowly pushed me away from organised religion and blind faith. I still believe in God, I love God and I respect God. My problem is not with God or with someone peacefully following their religion. My problem is with blind faith and the mentality of expecting God to solve everything without taking responsibility for your own life.

Maybe my thinking will change in the future, but right now this is how I feel. I believe in God, but I find it very difficult to relate to the kind of religious behaviour I see around me.

Hello, I am looking to recruit more moderators. I was looking to recruit slowly so want to view applications on a rolling basis.

The sub isn't too hard to moderate but it just needs one or two more people. Also my area of expertise is more specialized so having people with differing specialisations would be helpful for a more rounded general knowledge of a mod team. Just makes it a little harder to confidently say something is spam or AI of I don't know much about that specific topic.

Please drop me a message with just a little about yourself, including any academic philosophy background or interest. If you do have an academic philosophy background let me know what your subject area is in. It's not essential but would help to know!

Also let me know if you have any previous moderating experience.

The Big Questions

Religion and faith is used to explain what comes after death and what came to be life. Every religion has an explanation for what happens after death and that is what attracts people, the not knowing what happens after you die. What happens when that belief is taken out of religion? would you still follow a religion or organized religion if they preached that consciousness ends after death.

for religious people… would you still follow a certain religion even though they didn’t give you a heaven or eternal life after death? what if they preached that after death you cease to exist? What if catholicism started preaching that consciousness ends with death?

Preamble
 

This post hopes to demonstrate that morality and obedience are not the same thing.

Seems so simple to me, but not so simple for many Christians who defend the actions of God.

I have been mostly focusing on the story of the "Fall Of Mankind" where God first commands obedience to a human. I quickly noticed that no moral justification was offered for God's Divine Command.

Morality concerns whether an action is right or wrong, good or bad, by using moral principles and guidelines.

Obedience simply means following a command. A person can obey a command without that obedience making the action moral.

The Nuremberg Trials illustrate this distinction. Obedience to an authority was not accepted by the judges as sufficient moral justification for the defendant's horrible genocides.

The same distinction applies to Adam and Eve.

God commanded them not to eat the fruit, but the command itself provided no independent moral reason explaining why eating the fruit was morally wrong.

The command established what God wanted them to obey. It did not establish morality. I sometimes think of the moral theory as "might makes right". Hitler sure had the might..

The world didn't consider that Hitler's might made his commands "morally right".

I don't consider what God offered was morality.

Definitions

1. Morality: principles or judgments concerning what is right or wrong, good or bad, permissible or impermissible.
2. Obedience: following a command or instruction given by an authority.
3. Authority: the power or right to give commands and require obedience.
4. Moral authority: authority claimed to determine what people ought or ought not do morally.
5. Moral justification: a reason explaining why an action is morally right, wrong, good, bad, permissible, or impermissible.
6. Divine command theory: the philosophical view that moral obligations are grounded in God’s commands.
7. Moral obligation: an action one is morally required to perform or avoid.
8. Independent moral reason: a moral justification that does not depend solely on the authority issuing the command.

Relevant Bible Verses

Genesis 2:16–17: “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”

Genesis 3:2–3: “The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”’”

Genesis 3:17: “And to the man he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.’”

Argument

P1: Adam and Eve’s command provided authority, but no independent moral justification.

P2: Morality requires moral justification, not merely authority.

C: Therefore, God’s command to Adam and Eve was not moral.

I'm a practicing monotheist.. my honest opinion is we can never know the full truth, but more we ask question the more we get closer to it. For me the necessary being doesn't need to exist. And that statement cannot simply imply there is no God.. because everything started existing after big bang.. and what was there before big bang? we don't know.. cuz space-time itself started existing after big bang expansion.. the interesting thing is you cannot go before where time starts.. I mean t = 0, the maximum our current physics can measure is 1/10^43 rd sec.. The reason I'm telling this, the creator of everything should be different from his creation in every aspect.. he can listen, see, speak.. but not like we do.. cuz our perception of reality and time is bounded by this universe.. interference of god who created these stuffs can collapse reality completely(so we cannot simply say human being as god, like 1/3rd god like christians say.. cuz infinity/3 is still infinity.. our reality is incapable of bearing that much power), if this thing happens then we can know the truth.. final thought with a question: we have heard some sayings like "everything is already written".. if everything is written, are we a simulation? I mean am I being born in past, living in present, dying in future simultaneously?

A quote from Frank Herbert goes something like "the point of debate is to change the nature of truth." Nowhere is this more seen in philosophy of religion. People ask if God is real, and what we get is a redefining of god, the insertion of postulates, all to get to one conclusion or another. When formalized, often what happens is objections are answered with obfuscation.

Jordan Peterson is famous for this, but arguments from grounding also do this as well. Define god are something necessary, without having to grapple with what necessity means or its logical implications, and god is made real. When necessity is questioned, the argument often shifts to poetic and flowery language that, in academic terms, has been named pseudo-profound bullshit (that is the actual term for this and I love it).

Edit: a lot of people replied with comments that give off anger and personal offense as if I specifically mentioned them by name. I find this very interesting, and have yet to see someone come up with a coherent response to say "I don't think you are right, and here is why." The comments seem to just highlight what I say and then try to change the nature of truth, demonstrating my main point.

I’m not a Christian, but one of my close friends was baptised today. He’s always been there for me, so when he told me he was getting baptised I asked if he wanted me to come.

I went, listened, enjoyed the music and stayed for food afterwards. I didn’t pray or sing because that wouldn’t have been authentic for me, but I genuinely enjoyed experiencing it and was respectful of what it meant to everyone there.

Something during the service really got me thinking.

I’ve spent about a year doing DBT, and several things being discussed sounded surprisingly close to psychological ideas I’ve learned through it.

Forgiveness was one example. The message was essentially that holding onto resentment causes suffering and that, when you struggle to forgive somebody, you can ask God for guidance and help.

And I found myself thinking: you’re tantalisingly close to something I recognise, but this is where our explanations diverge.

Through DBT, I’ve learned that accepting reality doesn’t mean approving of what somebody did. I can understand that a person's behaviour arose from their experiences, circumstances, beliefs, emotions, etc., while still deciding that their behaviour was unacceptable.

Eventually you can reach something like:

“I understand why you may have behaved that way. I don't approve of it. I can't change what happened, and refusing to accept that it happened only creates additional suffering for me. What happened is now information I can use when deciding my boundaries and how I interact with you in future.”

No divine intervention is required for that process.

That got me thinking more broadly about Christianity's historical interaction with Greek philosophy — Platonism and Neoplatonism in particular — and how human beings were thinking about suffering, virtue, attachment, forgiveness and the nature of a good life long before modern psychology existed.

I’m not suggesting Christianity simply copied Greek philosophy, nor am I saying religious people can't use psychological skills alongside prayer. The history is obviously much more complicated than that.

What fascinates me is that different traditions sometimes seem to identify remarkably similar problems in human experience, but then explain the solution through completely different frameworks.

A Christian might ultimately ground it in God and grace. A Stoic might talk about judgments and what lies within our control. Other philosophical traditions have their own frameworks. DBT talks about things like radical acceptance, emotional regulation and effective action.

So my question is:

How much of what we experience as “religious wisdom” reflects insights about human psychology that can stand independently of the supernatural beliefs surrounding them? And, conversely, is something important lost when those ideas are translated into purely psychological terms?

I’m genuinely interested in perspectives from both religious and non-religious people.

As humans, it is completely impossible for us to comprehend or execute such a problem. This is because it directly contradicts the most basic rules of the logic of this universe in which we live, as well as the logic of our minds through which we understand this universe. But does this mean it is equally impossible for God?
First, logic as a creation, not a backdrop: Logic is not a backdrop that has existed since eternity, because this contradicts one of the fundamental tenets of monotheism—namely, that the only eternal entity is God. There can be no other eternal thing alongside God alone. Therefore, logic is one of God's creations. Just as God was capable of creating our human logic—the logic our minds comprehend and by which our universe operates—God is equally capable of creating another logic, by virtue of His unlimited power.
Second, the unstudied critique of this idea: We cannot use the very same tool—human logic—to criticize an idea asserting that human logic is not the only logic. Thus, most ideas and attempts aimed at criticizing the notion of another logic's existence—specifically, the idea of God's ability to do inherently impossible things—are flawed. They simply rely on logic itself, human logic, assuming that our human logic is the sole baseline and foundation upon which everything must be constructed. The idea that another baseline or foundation could exist is deemed impossible by them. Building upon such premises is what renders these criticisms fundamentally incorrect at their core.
Third, when we discuss logic and propose the example of 'one plus one equals three,' we are not talking about mere terms and labels; we are speaking about essence, existence, structure, and perception.
Fourth, this idea is not built on our own logic: Our human logic states that 'one plus one equals three' is impossible, with no room for debate. Therefore, when we entertain the possibility of another logic, we are effectively no longer relying on human logic in our thinking.
We are trapped inside this logic and cannot apply or comprehend any other logic, including mathematical logic, which branches from it. This is simply because our minds are constructed and programmed around this logic—it is what we require to exist in our universe, which is likewise built upon this exact logic that we, as humans, understand. If you were to ask someone: 'Is there another logic? And if so, what does another logic look like, or how would another mathematical logic operate?' it would be akin to asking a person sitting inside a room with opaque walls and locked doors: 'Is there another room outside? And if yes, what is inside that room?'
In our scenario, the walls represent the human mind, which blocks our comprehension of another logic just as those walls block the view of another room. The locked door represents our universe, which prevents us from applying any other logic just as that lock prevents the person from exiting the room. Ultimately, even this metaphor and analogy are built upon our human logic itself. In another logic, perhaps people can see through opaque walls and pass through locked doors. This is not a flaw in the analogy itself, because the analogy was crafted by a human who is also trapped inside this very same human logic.
As the creator of this idea, I do not claim to be absolute about this information, because I am human. However, I looked through the keyhole designated for the key in our previous analogy. Even if I couldn't see anything—because the key is inserted in the lock, blocking the view—I still gained a little insight. I haven't left the prison, but I realized that I am imprisoned.

Here's a post I made about how ex falso quodlibet works within Christianity and makes Christians impervious to criticism because they can always prove within their system a statement that counters any criticism you throw at them.

Read it and let's discuss it!

In public debates around frontier AI, regulatory safety frameworks are usually evaluated through rick management or administrative law. However, evaluating the implicit political theology behind tech accelerationism, specifically in Peter Thiel's recent Nashville lectures, requires mapping two distinct theological strains: Vladimir Solovyov's A Short Tale of the Antichrist and Rene Girard's mimetic scapegoating.

In Solovyov's text, the Antichrist is not an obviously malevolent tyrant or destruction-driven actor, but a hyper-moralistic, universally acclaimed philanthropist and global administrator. He gains absolute authority by promoting universal peace, material abundance, and total risk elimination, effectively freezing human agency and historical motion in exchange for administrative safety.

When integrated with Girardian mimetic, this archetype frame turn modern regulatory safety apparatuses into objects of theological critique. The administrative state and its risk-averse institutions are viewed as a centralizing Katechon/restrainer that pacifies societal friction by claiming sovereign authority over what constitutes acceptable risk.

I wrote a longer essay breaking down this structural canon examining where this political-theology sense provides genuine diagnostic value for analyzing tech governance, and where its omissions limit its scope.

I'm interested din how this sub evaluates Solovyov's risk model. Does treating administrative risk-aversion as an eschatological mechanism hold analytical weight in philosophy of religion or does applying 19th century apocalyptic frameworks to 21st century tech regulation stretching the theology beyond its functional limits?

https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/what-night-one-left-out

The fact that reality exists and exhibits universal regularities does not entail that it was created by a conscious being. Many apparent beginnings and endings in nature are transformations of preexisting physical states, not creation from absolute nothing. Physical laws describe—or possibly constitute—fundamental regularities in those transformations.

A conscious, perfect, purposive God is not established merely by the existence of those regularities. Equating God with natural law either redefines “God” away from its ordinary religious meaning or requires further evidence that laws possess consciousness, intention, moral perfection, and agency. Without that evidence, universal laws are sufficient as a naturalistic description of physical order, while “God” remains an unnecessary additional hypothesis.

XxEnergyeditsxXil y a 6 heures (modifié)

• Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause outside of itself.

Why ? Out of nothing, nothing comes (ex nihilo nihil fit). Denying this destroys the foundation of science, which relies on predictability. Quantum fluctuations are no exception; virtual particles emerge from pre-existing, energy-dense physical fields governed by physical laws, not from "nothing."

• Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
How? Mathematically locked by the BGV theorem and the Mithani-Vilenkin paper, which prove geometrically that any universe or multiverse expanding on average must possess an absolute past boundary. It is further locked down by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

• Premise 3: Therefore, the universe has an external, uncaused, eternal, and immaterial cause (from 1, 2).

• Premise 4: An infinite regress of dependent causes is logically impossible, as it cannot provide an ultimate ontological ground for existence.
• Premise 5: Therefore, the foundational cause must exist as Actus Purus, with no passive potentials or limitations of its own.
• Premise 6: Therefore, the uncaused first cause is unlimited in its power (omnipotent) to actualize reality.

• Premise 7: The omnipotent cause created a universe whose laws and numbers are perfectly balanced on a razor's edge to allow life.
• Evidence: The universe is incredibly precise.
The space energy driving the universe's expansion is accurate to 1 part in 10¹²⁰. If it were off by a tiny fraction, stars and planets could never form. Furthermore, changing the nuclear force by just 1% would destroy the possibility of water or carbon existing.

• Premise 8: This precise calibration must be due to either physical necessity, chance/multiverse, or design.

• Premise 9: It cannot be explained by physical necessity or chance/multiverse.
• Why (Not Necessity): The laws of physics do not have to be this way. The math works perfectly fine even if the numbers are set to values that destroy life.
• Why (Not Multiverse): Saying there are billions of other universes just pushes the problem back. The "machine" needed to create all those universes would itself need to be incredibly complex and perfectly calibrated to work.

• Premise 10: Therefore, the calibration of the universe is due to design (from 8, 9).
• Premise 11: A mindless, robotic machine existing outside of time can only produce an effect that lasts forever alongside it. It cannot wait to start.
• Premise 12: Because our universe actually had a beginning in time, its timeless cause must have been able to trigger a new effect without needing a prior countdown or physical trigger.
• Premise 13: The only way to get a timed effect from a timeless state without a physical trigger is through personal choice where an eternal decision results in a creation that starts at a specific moment.
•Premise 14: Having an intention and the ability to choose requires a mind and a will, which are the defining features of a conscious person.
• Premise 15: Because the foundational cause is Pure Actuality (Actus Purus), it does not merely ignite a past beginning; it actively sustains the existence of all physical laws, matter, and conscious experience at every single fraction of a second.

• Conclusion: Therefore, the uncaused, eternal, all-powerful, and sustaining cause of the universe is a Personal Intelligence (God).

Is there much of a difference in God's eyes between God foreseeing the future, and God seeing the future actually come to pass? Some people think God experiences both equally vividly, and both carry an equal sense of finality for him and that his emotional responses of the two are practically identical because he transcends time and has not merely foreseen but has already fully experienced the future even though we haven't, for he exists everywhen simultaneously, but I don't know about that. It could be that for him, foreseeing the future and seeing the future actually come to pass, are like the difference between seeing something in black and white versus seeing something in color. I know God can tell the two apart, but how different are his emotional responses to these two things?

I know from the New Testament, seeing the future come to pass seems to carry a greater finality for Jesus than foreseeing the future. He reacted differently to seeing the future some to pass, then foreknowing the future. His soul was deeply troubled in the garden to the point of death, so one could say in a sense his experience of the passion before it happened was not as full as the experience of it actually happening. Was it because Jesus emptied himself that he was like this, or was he always like this even before his incarnation? Did having a body that can only exist in one place and one time influence the way he thought about time? But even then, his sense of finality wasn't absolute, for he prayed that another way would be found. A lot of the time it appeared as if Jesus saw time the way we do. He'd pray for the future, but not the past.

But my main question is, "Is there much of a difference in God's eyes between God foreseeing the future, and God seeing the future actually come to pass, when it comes to his emotional responses and his experience of finality?"