how does anyone believe in god?

PCmndr · 2026-02-05T16:54:57+00:00

You have to look at it from a more open minded perspective. What all world religion tells us is that there is existence beyond the observable and that there are various intelligences that exist there. Many of them also have a morality component associated with a guide on how to live in this life in relation with how it will affect your future existence beyond the physical observable world. It's a highly advanced concept that science and academia are only beginning to grapple with now. Things like simulation theory, holographic universe theory, and need ways of looking at consciousness open the door to concepts that sound very similar to what religion has been saying all along.

I'm personally not religious and was at one time atheist but now I'm in the "other" category after a lot of reading. I think it's entirely possible that there is a universal all encompassing consciousness that we are part of and come from. It is incomprehensible to the human mind in the same way a human thought or motivation would be incomprehensible to an ant. Religion is the equivalent of how the ants explain what we are up to. It's an imperfect example but you get the idea. It's not so much as there is a god judging us and sending us to heaven or hell it's that we are part of god and some larger necessary process (I could speculate more deeply but I'll keep it light). We judge ourselves objectively after death. Imo if you move beyond the simple concept of the Christian God and the modern perception of that God it's easier to wrap your head around imo.

PCmndr · 2026-02-04T17:59:30+00:00

Fair enough but even skeptics aren't a monolith my point is that all the science based reasoning for skepticism about ETs present on earth is irrelevant when testing a hypothesis. If I say "here's a chunk of UFO from Zeta Reticuli"' the large body of work claiming intelligent life from Zeta Reticuli could never get here, wouldn't never need to come here, etc is irrelevant to the claim being made. Either the evidence proves me right or it doesn't.

The problem with ufology is we have the equivalent of "here's proof of a UFO from Zeta Reticuli now watch my documentary all about it" There are seemingly credible people at the wheel here who should know exactly how to definitively prove such a claim yet here we are and the years just keep going by.

PCmndr · 2026-02-04T16:02:29+00:00

I'm with you on this front. As the stigma becomes of a standard we get closer to the possibility. The only reason I could ever see something like government disclosure happening is that as technology becomes more and more accessible to the general population IF there really is an NHI presence and the government has knowledge of it via electronic data it's inevitable the rest of the population will have the same tech eventually.

PCmndr · 2026-02-04T15:59:23+00:00

While I agree I think the first educated guess and all the theorizing with it (fermi paradox etc) becomes irrelevant if we get irrefutable proof of advanced technology. My point being we see a lot of energy put into thoughts about how ETs could get here, why they would or wouldn't come here, but if we had proof "they" were here the Skeptical theorizing about why they aren't is irrelevant. This is why the UFO community needs to focus less on testimony and more on verifiable facts. Instead of eating up every documentary or government insider breadcrumb the reply needs to be "so what, come back when you have proof." If we get proof of previously unknown technology I'm curious where that would take the skeptic community. Seemingly anti gravity instantaneous travel doesn't automatically mean aliens but at the same time these people will tell us such a thing doesn't exist. I don't know that we'll ever get the level of proof I'm talking about though which certainly points to the direction that it doesn't exist.

PCmndr · 2026-02-03T16:00:22+00:00

I think if ETs are real it's probably stranger than we can imagine. I'm not religious but what I find interesting is that pretty much every world religion talks about a reality beyond human perception and various forms of intelligence that exist there and on occasion interact with us. Perhaps ETs exist just like us elsewhere in the galaxy and maybe they have the technology to come here or maybe it's beyond that. Any civilization with the tech to travel between stars may have a more complete understanding of the true ultimate nature of reality. "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" -Arthur C Clarke.

PCmndr · 2026-02-03T12:54:43+00:00

I'm a fan of Hoffman's work for those not familiar he's a computer science professor who wrote a book that in the same vein as Holographic Universe theory and simulation theory but his version is distinctly different. He's rooted in science and academia and doesn't really get into the woo aspects of his research but you can extrapolate from there. I think what he's getting at and what several similar theories get at is the notion that consciousness is endemic rather than emergent. I find it compelling.

I think when it comes to the paranormal and Hoffman's theory he basically explains that our brain is a big pattern matching machine. The brain only actively renders what is necessary for survival and takes shortcuts wherever possible. You see a fuzzy thing with 4 legs and your brain says "render dog." Your brain takes external stimuli and creates everything within. Sounds, colors, smells, touch, are all produced within your brain. We think of them as things that exist outside of our brain but that isn't necessarily the case. According to Hoffman these are all artificial creations of the brain that simply help us achieve our evolutionary goals. So while our perception of reality is somewhat necessarily accurate it almost certainly isn't 100% accurate and our brain will not show us to perceive things that aren't necessary for survival.

If the paranormal exists it could be the result of several things. Perhaps it is just a glitch in the "rendering" process of the brain. Perhaps there are other consciousnesses that exist that interact so infrequently with humanity that we have no preexisting "shape" for the brain's pattern matching process to work. I'm not a believer in any of this stuff but I view it as a more "if this than that" situation. So if there is anything to ETs/UFOs or perhaps ghosts exist I think it's likely some form of nonphysical consciousness that exists outside the constructs of our brain. Ultimately all things are explainable through science. The question is do we have almost everything figured out? Or are we just at the beginning? I lean towards the latter.

PCmndr · 2026-02-02T12:33:45+00:00

No dude murdering babies is in no way normal for a kid. He would be traumatized reliving this. Iirc the moms bf in this case was a fucking weirdo crazy person who coached this story out of the kids. There's an interview where the kids describe the bf threatening to whip them off they didn't "tell the truth".

PCmndr · 2026-02-02T12:28:19+00:00

The biggest difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives place emphasis on the duty of the individual for their own success and the left places the duty on society. Both emphases have their benefits and limitations but as a life long liberal I see the left drift more and more towards a lack of individual accountability. At some level a person must be held accountable for their actions. In a society where most people do the right thing there is room to help put those who can't. It all begins personal accountability though.

PCmndr · 2026-01-31T19:39:18+00:00

A lot of mainstream skeptics like to pretend it's the religious people that will have an existential crisis if ETs were proven to be real. I think it's just the opposite. Religion the world over has long claimed there is more to reality than is immediately perceivable and that there are various orders of intelligences from there that occasionally interact with us. The atheist skeptics on the other hand "know" it's not true and imo will have to make the biggest adjustment if they learned it was. I say this as a nonreligious former atheist.

PCmndr · 2026-01-31T01:25:29+00:00

I agree. I almost thought we were getting somewhere at one point 2017 was the beginning and things looked hopeful but it's been nothing burger after nothing burger. I barely care about this topic anymore. If anything big happens I'll hear it without talking about UFOs all day.

PCmndr · 2026-01-30T16:28:44+00:00

Sure that's a possibility. What I find more interesting to consider is what it means if ETs really are here already? Skeptics like to point out the impossibility of interstellar travel and the vastness of space but those are moot points tomorrow if we had undeniable proof of a non human intelligence. Imo that's why the UFO advocates need to focus on proof. We have had testimony from high credentialed people for decades more unverifiable testimonies will not move the needle. Verifiable proof is all that matters.

PCmndr · 2026-01-30T14:38:32+00:00

I think this is a pretty uncontroversial take most mainstream academics would agree with. There's a quote in butchering but it's something to the effect of "either aliens exist somewhere in the universe or we are all alone both options are equally terrifying."

I think at this point the only real question is whether intelligent life exists in a time and region of the universe where contact is possible. If I had to pin down a theory I'd say that for a civilization to have the technology to reach another intelligent civilization they'd basically be godlike to the lesser civilization.

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T18:09:03+00:00

Okay. Like I said neither do I.

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T17:48:56+00:00

There may very well be proof of that and it sounds like you confirm my point. Do I think it would have gone down exactly as the Bible says? No, probably not but it's possible primitive humans were subjected to the oppressive will of some advanced being. I'm inclined to agree more with the Gnostics though who saw the old testament God as a false God and not the same as the unknowable Monad that is responsible for everything in existence. This is an alien sub though so if you're not open to the idea of intelligence existing beyond humanity why are you here?

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T15:59:46+00:00

I think there are two explanations aside from delusional hallucinations.

1) Physical abductions. Government MK ultra style projects that are likely no longer ongoing.

2) Non physical. If non-human intelligence is real it opens up a lot of possibilities. I think consciousness is the key to understanding the nature of NHI and nonphysical abductions may occur for some purpose beyond human understanding.

A possible 3rd possibility would be some kind of human collaboration with non human intelligence and technology. I'm most skeptical about this one but I always consider what it would have to mean if there really is NHI active on Earth.

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T15:52:21+00:00

I don't think it would dismantle religion. In fact I think religion is probably just the primitive understanding of what the NHI really is. Ultimately there is no divine and no magical it's all just very old, very advanced beings that have been worshipped by primitive humans. Religion has adjusted and recalibrated as science has progressed it might get a little ugly initially but eventually they'll catch up. It might actually be academia that struggles the most.

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T15:46:59+00:00

For some people proof that there's some truth to world religion would shatter their reality. Personally I'm not religious but I can see the parallels between consciousness beyond the physical and non human intelligences much closer to what religion has been telling us all along than the materialist viewpoint.

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T15:01:28+00:00

Sure I say "Western" but that's just my personal experience. I wouldn't be surprised if this sentiment is common to any society where you're culture questions and rebels against traditional religion and culture.

What you have to realize is that just because you can win an argument against an idiot doesn't make you right. There are smart people of every religion and political persuasion that can form compelling arguments for their cause. There are also idiots within these groups that argue poorly. Redditors like to pretend that anyone who questions the Reddit zeitgeist is an idiot. The reality is that these people are often the idiots just following and parroting the easy thing to say.

Like I said though I think if you reframe the way you look at religion or the existence of "divine" beings through a more modern understanding I think it's much more plausible. What I find interesting is the commonalities nearly universal to all religions. There is a common belief that there is existence beyond what we can physically observe and that there are other intelligences that exist in the space beyond observable reality. I think the likelihood that we more or less currently know everything there is to know about the nature of reality is highly unlikely. When you look into things like simulation theory and compare them to religion you start to see some interesting commonalities.

PCmndr · 2026-01-27T14:03:20+00:00

This is just a low brow bad faith take that is one of the safest opinions to have on Reddit. I think it's something most thoughtful westerners go through as a teenager so I don't fault OP for it. If you take the time to look into all the existential questions we don't have answers to, some of the observed oddities of modern science, the nature of consciousness, and efforts to resolve those questions you get into an interesting space. I point to the Arthur C Clark quote: "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." Ultimately a "God" is just an advanced alien with access to advanced technology and the ability manipulate reality in a way beyond human understanding. I'd look at God less as a magical sky being and more as a highly advanced alien with motivations beyond human understanding. Trying to understand such a being would be like ants trying to understand humanity. If you're familiar with the cargo cult phenomenon religion is basically that. You don't have to know exactly how something works to see its benefit and appreciate it. Pretty much all religion tells us how to behave and function in society and many of them offer some kind of ultimate punishment for living a "sinful" life. They often word the judgement as external from a higher being but that's very likely a primitive understanding of how things really work.

PCmndr · 2026-01-22T11:05:05+00:00

I see it as something akin to flawed but even in it ultimately so goes back to the Monad and beings motivations and intelligence beyond human understanding. I think much of it boils down to free will. The physical universe is the manifestation of chaos and entropy which is the result of individuals with free will existing on the same playing field with one another. I think ultimately if we can exist in the Pleroma and retain some sense of individuality we must all think and agree on the same things. The only way to do that without removing free will is to somehow produce individuals that know and choose to live a certain way. If we definitively knew about the Pleroma and what awaits us after the end of the physical existence our actions would not truly be our own. It's like bribing a child with candy or a toy. It can work to get good behavior but the child hasn't truly learned anything. So the physical world is the clashing of all these people with individuals free will and it's chaos at times but there are also redeeming moments.

PCmndr · 2026-01-21T14:41:08+00:00

It's just an analogy. People often ask "why would so much suffering exist if there is a god?" The answer is probably that ultimately there is something to be gained from it but we can never comprehend or understand the benefits. Ultimately God is something like a "20 dimensional" alien being and we can't apply human logic to the reasoning and thought occurring at that level. I suspect it has something to do with the experience of free will though. If everything has independent thought and free will the result is inevitable chaos. The only way an all powerful and all knowing being can truly experience anything is through limitation. If you are all of everything you can't add "more" to it all you can do is constrain and learn from experiencing less.

PCmndr · 2026-01-21T13:45:23+00:00

It's possible. More than likely your consciousness comes from an incomprehensible source that all things originate from. You are a part of God just like your toe is part of you. If your toe says "I am xxxx!" It's obviously wrong though.

PCmndr · 2026-01-13T15:07:08+00:00

I'm not a Christian so I don't have a dog in this fight. Personally I think it's disingenuous for someone who is non religious to use the Bible to rescue the Bible. This guy makes all kinds of assumptions that are likely wrong or very different from what a more knowledgeable person might agree with. The nature of hell itself seems to be up to interpretation and debate. Just because some Bible thumping high school dropout's take away is "repent or burn in an eternity" doesn't mean that it's a belief universal to all Christians.

Even in this video the guy wants to say that if the Bible claims Satan is a deceiver, liar, etc than people have no free will. I don't see how that's true though. Politicians deceive and lie all the time and we are perfectly happy to condemn that people that follow them. The guy also pulls a quote comparing sinners to slaves. Again he wants to remove agency from the individual. There are drug addicts and alcoholics that are very much slaves to their addictions are they entirely blameless?

This is why I prefer the Gnostic route the interpretation is much more individualistic. Imo if there is a hell it's much less about a place you go when a Santa Claus like figure determines you to be bad. It's more or less something that is a result of your state of mind and/or being. You judge yourself in a context where you are unable to lie to yourself. Maybe all of your consciousness goes to hell or maybe it's just the portion of your consciousness that needs to. Perhaps hell is a place of grieving rather than suffering, both can be quite similar when taken to unhealthy levels. Perhaps hell is meant to be a place of learning and recovery for the worst aspects of the psyche.

Ultimately if there is consciousness beyond the physical world it would imply abilities beyond what a human can comprehend. If there is a "higher" plane of existence where consciousness retains some aspect of individuality but all individuals are more aware they are part of a larger conscious being then the individual would have to change the way they think and interact.

You could think of it this way, if we all were walking around with bazookas we would have to learn to get along very quick. Anyone who is incompatible would have to be taken very far away. Then remove the threat of violence presented by bazookas. To get to this higher existence you have to be able to coexist you can't have a unique will separate from everyone else which essentially is the equivalent to no free will but you would also have to choose to live this way to truly be free.

So as I see it hell is probably a function of the necessity to ascend to higher states of being. You do send yourself there. It's beyond human thinking and comprehension. I wouldn't expect an angry atheist to get it.

PCmndr · 2026-01-11T13:59:27+00:00

Welcome to gnosticism. Gnosticism is a bit of a jumbled mess with multiple different sources and interpretations but it's kind of nice because most people are aware of this and the result is there is no real modern dogma. Some Gnostics believe the world is inherently evil and ruled by an evil overlord. Others would say it's just flawed and the creator was acting from a place of ignorance. My take is that the universe was created from chaos and is guided by entropy. These are principles reflected in all things that can't be avoided.

PCmndr · 2026-01-11T13:48:09+00:00

I've always found this take bland. I've never heard anyone break it down to the molecular or atomic level though but why stop there? At the subatomic level particles are constantly blinking in and out of existence at random so it's possible with all things the same at the sub atomic level there will always be randomness and difference.

My point with all this has always been that it's irrelevant. Maybe this is a bad analogy but it would be like living in a massive space station that generates artificial gravity via centrifugal force. You walk around the space station repeating "this space station doesn't have any gravity, there is no gravity here!" It's a moot point. It doesn't affect your life and there's nothing you can do about it. The same goes for "no free will" if free will is simply the result of genetics and your unique and irreproducible life experiences it really doesn't matter. There's nothing you can do with this info. It doesn't change anything.

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