Re:100k Stars
by indianconan on Wednesday October 07, 2020 @08:07AM
(#24707365)
I have had the same exact analogy of of God -> Humans -> Ants in my head for so long, that I can no longer remember if it was my own thoughts, or something I've read.
I was literally taken aback when I read this comment.
Did you read it somewhere?
It's a pretty common analogy. I got it from https://youtu.be/rhFK5_Nx9xY?t=238
I've had a vaguely similar experience, but over a longer period, not a single "moment", and not entirely to do with the physical sciences.
They way I look at it is this: To ants, we are gods. We can provide an unimaginable bounty to them by simply dropping the remains of a sandwich. We can destroy their entire world with callous indifference. A step in the wrong place is all it takes to crush an anthill.
But do we care about an individual ant's good behaviour? No. Not in the slightest. I don't meet out punishment on one particular worker ant because it failed to respect the queen, or move enough seeds one day.
Simply put, we are so far removed from ants, so far above them, so much greater, that there can be no meaningful interaction of this type. The UN general assembly does not give a flying fuck about the misdeeds of a particular ant in some particular ant-mound in some particular forest, in some national park, in some country far away. Conversely, an ant can have no concept of the latest UN resolution's effects on international tourism and its side-effects, such as the likelihood of an increased number of dropped sandwiches in national parks. There is no though that an ant can possibly have that can encompass even a fraction of such concepts. They're simply too abstract, too advanced for such tiny brains.
Any God that could possibly have made a Universe as vast and complex as ours would be similarly far removed from us. We would be ants to such a God. Personal, individual communication of any type would be hopeless. A "relationship", as Christians like to say, would be absurd in the extreme. Ants don't have relationships with senators, or kings, or generals. It's simply unthinkable.
Science could study such a God, if it existed, but it wouldn't be entirely clear if it would be possible to actually gain a truly meaningful understanding. A superficial, surface knowledge, perhaps, but that is all. Prayer would certainly be an utter waste of time. Holy books could not have possibly be written or inspired by such a God. Rituals would be meaningless. Rites and celebrations would also be embarrassingly pointless.