Is God actually just Mother Nature in disguise?

[flobadob]

I find the idea of a God, above us watching down on us, quite hard to believe. However I feel that nature as a force has the power to do whatever it takes to keep the earth safe, even if it meant wiping out humans. It's a weird feeling, as how can I poo poo the idea of a guy up above controlling the world, yet freely accept the idea of an invisible force, actually present on the earth, controlling the world? Does anyone else feel like this, or have an opinion?

[Ankou]

i believe in the force of nature. but not that 'it' has any conscious thought process or ultimate aim, it just happens due to a number of natural, geological, biological and lots of other ical reasons from a coimbination of lots of factors.

there is no god and there is no 'mother' nature. just nature.

[jake-the-peg]

A lot of people do

One sense of it called Spinoza's God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza

another pantheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism

James Lovelock's Gaia principle is also similar in some ways although this does not relate to a concious force
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

This last one is particularly interesting. Lovelock first proposed that the life forms on the planet it were able to adapt the planets environment to optimise the conditions for life.

Richard Dawkins gave him a lot of stick about it particularly for the lack of a model of how this could occur. Lovelock eventually came back with the notion of "Daisy World" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_world (I know wikipedia again!) that provided a model.

Daisy world gave Gaia scientific credibility.

Whichever of these notions you feel closest too (Einstein was a fan of Spinozas God) rather depends on how much conciousness you want to ascribe to this "force"

[Ankou]

and you jake....... ?

[jake-the-peg]

Well I'll go with Gaia plenty of evidence for that but it's a bit specific to biology.

For me this is rather tied up with the anthropic principla and the fine tuning problem (Goldilocks effect) where many of what we see as seperate fundamental constants are finely tuned to produce a Universe capable of life.

One explanation is multiple Universes but this is an explanation created to fill a problem with no predictable tests and that rather worries me.

Personally I feel that to even begin to get a grip on this we need an understanding of how the particular laws of physics come to be.

That is a science that we barely have a first inkling of and one where the factors may be fundamentally beyond our observation.

But one of the most disturbing ideas is that perhaps *we* are mother nature.

The Strong Anthropic principle is an idea that states that a Universe *must* come into being capable of being observed.

This sounds like abject nonsense at first and ceryainly when I first encounterred it I rejected it out of hand. However as you come to understand some of the effects that we see in Quantum mechanics you learn that you can't just reject illogical things out of hand.

You also come to see that time isn't just the simple thing that we see day to day and think we understand.

I'll let you google the strong antropic principle if you're interested. I won't say I believe it or that I don't but I accept that it is possible.

It is possible that the entire Universe fell into existance with all time mapped out in one on the few possible ways resulting in observers and that we follow predefined threads of existance that look to us like free will.

How could you ever prove it? Does the notion of proof even make sense in this concept we are straying far from the traditional notion of science here - far from what is into what could be.

[Ankou]

i am content to believe that we came from and go to the great 'nothingness'. everything came from nothing.

as you say the science around that itself is often quite beyond the realms of our comprehension. but i find it easier to believe that - like the old life of brian adage (you know, you come from nothing, you're going back to nothing. what have you lost ? nothing !).

believing that an unseen 'being' has a hand in all this might well be a possibility (lets be honest), but that is something beyond my comprehension and acceptability levels. it could easily be a great gient alien keeping the planets like marbles in a controlled environment fishtank type thing, is that any more/less likely ?

[naomi24]

The religious see nature as God, but that's because they want to believe they're are unique. They cannot accept that they are just one tiny creature created by nature and inhabiting a minor speck in a vast universe. I don't think nature has any intention of keeping anything safe. Nature is nature. It has no thought, and it has no plan - it simply evolves.

Having said that, I think nature encompasses an enormous variety of facets, and I believe that includes a spiritual element. Whether that spiritual element is confined to rational (debatable!) beings like man, who knows?

[123everton]

Sounds suspiciously like Taoism.

[flobadob]

There's a heck of a lot of reading in those links jake, think I'll hafta peruse it over the weekend. naomi, do you not feel like nature uses viruses etc. to regulate population and the like?

[birdie1971]

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” - Douglas Adams

[jake-the-peg]

One last point.

I don't necessarilly believe that a lot of this has to be beyond our powers of comprehension.

I think it may be beyond our powers of experiment and observation.

Some of these things may well have been set when the Universe was in an effectively opaque state and that information about that lis lost to us.

The energy levels required to recreate that stae even on a small scale in colliders are so far beyond human capacity as to be laughable

I might be surprised yet - few people would have predicted the microwave background observations - but I'm not holding my breath.

I think that we may get to a point where the best that we can hope for is a number of plausible theories that "work" but no way to determine which is correct.

[naomi24]

flobadob, you asked me 'do you not feel like nature uses viruses etc. to regulate population and the like?' No, I don't, because that would mean that nature 'thinks', and I don't believe it does. I think all species are concerned only with their own survival, regardless of the effect that survival may have on others. Whether or not that is detrimental to some, nature evolves to accommodate any changes.