Talking To God (story a friend linked me to)

Good read. First thing I did was scroll to the bottom to check for evidence of it being fictional. Which it clearly was - linking to a play the guy wrote

Still, interesting and actually what I have always believed in. See, I have no problem believing there is a "god" but I've never understood why such an incredible being would want us to live our lives tied to a draconian set of rules laid down and have no sense of humor about it/him - as illustrated by the people crying "blasphemy" in this very thread.

a good work of fiction in my opinion. There's no way, unless you were recording the conversation that you'd remeber all that.

Plus even if all that was said, unless you have an AMAZING memory, which is especially hard in a circumstance like this, I'd have to think you just wrote what you remeber to the best of your ability. and if 40% was accurate, that'd be a feat.

But back to the meat, you had the oppourtunity to ask so much better questions, Especially being an athiest, yet you didn't. I guess no one would know how they'd react if they met THE God. But I think you coulda came across with some more hard lined questions. Being an atheist and all.

Not a single mention or question about heaven or hell or angels or the devil or ghosts, or 9/11. I guess the latter seem trivial but, Heaven/Hell woulda been my first questions.

Unless you asked thoseand I missed it; then forgive me for my poor reading comprehension.

Am I the only one who read the play, also? Clearly the god interview intertwines and correlates with the play. Actually, I thought both reads were good. Both are good science fiction, but isn't that what the bible is, if not fantasy? We are imprisoned by our own minds.

reply to post by hautmess

Trying hard not to sound rude, but the writer of this piece of fiction, walks like an atheist, talks like an atheist comes across like an atheist and judging by his total lack of understanding, remains an atheist regardless of his fictional encounter with God.

In my opinion, the person who wrote this piece has no real concept of what spiritual growth actually means. We are not judged in this universe by our materialistic development, but by the degree that our species attunes with advanced civilizations through our collective mind.

A race of people living in caves could just as easily attain that harmony.

He can't see past the idea that we are so much more than flesh and blood. Our higher selves living just a breath away, are already living in harmony with other advanced civilization.

It was never meant for us to live in this piece of meat for long, this is just primary school. There is nothing in your wildest dreams that could be achieved in this dimension, that we don't already do so much better at home where we come from.

Over time our physical reality is improving and the scale of technology that makes our classroom a new learning experience is getting bigger, but that is all it is.

In a nutshell, we already are an advanced civilization. The limited perception that comes with the limited senses imposed on us through our physical bodies means the best we can achieve though our physical sciences is to repaint the classroom walls.

Once we have shed the meat, (graduation day) it all becomes clear.

reply to post by hautmess


Having a science background makes it very clear to me we don't know everything, certainly when it comes to life and death moments. But we can learn, albeit to a very limited degree how different points tend to shatter the glass of the ststus quo Consider this truth. Were in ca'hoots with some of this of this technical data. Keeping the details of how we got there and to what extents scares the hell out of a lot of people. Who knows.

But a change in perspective, not just our pereception of world view, may be needed to affect someone's else's perspective on these events. Thats what I hope for.

We once thought the Earth was flat.
We once thought the sun revolved around us.
keep an open mind and this work of fiction will hit a few bells

[edit on 18-12-2009 by genma]

Great read....and liked his followup story about the life after death question.

God, I pray that this becomes the new religion...a religion of self responsibility over diety worship...perfect.

Of course, the prayer will be unanswered if indeed that was God..but thats sort of the point I guess (so therefore the unanswered question is the best answer to push the self control issue...brilliant, yet annoying).

Anyhow, nice find OPs, I actually bookmarked it and should anyone ask my religion, I will simply point to that verses a stumbling agnostic answer.

reply to post by hautmess


we've already mastered fusion power. i call shenanigans on this guy.

Oh, and incidently, I know this is fiction, knew it from the initial title, but I find it the same level of fiction as the bible, science books from 100 years ago, any and every philosophy book ever written, etc.

This writer found himself a fan I guess.

After skimming and studying through me I have deemed this as fake. Although I did take a little bit of info for the better of man. The complete oneness of us. Thats good. Sounds like philosophy to me.

reply to post by hautmess



I just wonder how he remembered all that information word for word?? None the less rather blah, I would've thought of some more realistic, futuristic questions to run by him.

reply to post by hautmess


Dear hautmess

What an excellent read. It has all the Christian jumping about as usual with anything that upsets there tenuous belief system.

Why would God introduce him self to an atheist??? Simply because a Christian or indeed any other religious person would not accept him.

The religious have found there God and therefore have stopped looking.

The only ones looking for God are the boffins and the agnostics.

I just loved the concepts.

Lets see who would burn me at the stake for this.

The thing is this is not important. Sure some of us can grasp a bigger picture and learn something from it. But the main thing we need to do today is to understand ourself. That is all we need to do, to change the world, to evolve. We think we need to change the society in some way, but everything is up to you. I also think that this story is very interesting, dont know if I buy it all. But hey, thats the point.





[edit on 19-12-2009 by InOurNature]

This reminded me of The Hitchhiker's guide
Okay, now, the longer the sections get the more implausible the story gets, however the arguments are pretty valid. Some things struck me, one is that maybe the whole purpose of life as a whole is autoperpetual, just to further perpetuate life. Some of the ideas expressed here also match Xtraeme's "Scarcity - a theory of everything" on the psychology board. However I found it strange that nothing was explained about how (just now I think I remember how insane the fact that my conciousnes exists is and I'm kinda proud of that) everything came to be in the first place. Also, there's that thought that came to me recently where I imagined god as a manta-like black and white squared sheet that is alone. Like, I thought about panteism and the all-is-one-stuff and I thought well if we share one conciousnes, maybe then god is aware of emotion or desires? Kinda strange, but you might specify that the creator of *this* universe, however concious or sentient this cause may be, probably must've had some sort of reason for this all and maybe we're just a byproduct but also maybe we can actually return some favour, I don't know. It's all kinda wild and unorthodox.

The matter of either subjugating yourself for some deity or just digging the # out by yourself is a really intriguing one. But it's cool to see religious people who share the same idea.

//edit: The sun's hidden behind a narrow layer of clouds, completely visible, with snowflakes falling. Marvelous.

[edit on 19/12/09 by thricearound]

Great read....and liked his followup story about the life after death question.

God, I pray that this becomes the new religion...a religion of self responsibility over diety worship...perfect.

Cool idea, Saturn. But may I suggest that you follow the author's example, and make your own story, rather than adopt his story?

There's an awful lot of the author's frontal lobes here. His God panders to his waking ego, prejudices, and opinions. His God, by an amazing coincidence, talks just like him.

Maybe yours would, too, but at least it would be you, not somebody else's ego, prejudices, and opinions.

There are also too many recycled memories of the science fiction the author loves so much. For example, the notion of thresholds of technological achievement for a species to become "interesting" - even interesting in the specific sense of being ripe for a visit - is a sci-fi staple. Flying machines in this story, nuclear weapons here and in The Day the Earth Stood Still, warp drive in Star Trek's prime directive, ...

The story's best wordpicture (IMO, obviously) is that of the species, any member of which can destroy the whole species at any time. Which, of course, is the back story of Forbidden Planet.

There's nothing wrong with borrowing, especially borrowing with reworking. It was great to be reminded of Forbidden Planet, and its roots.

I don't know how to write this post without sounding "critical" of the author. I admire him for performing this exercise. I think his results he achieved are good for him. I just think there is a lot of room for other people to do better, for them.

[edit on 19-12-2009 by eight bits]

The Author of this piece appears to be portraying his own philosophy through the medium of a story about a so called conversation with God.

What he's actualy doing is asking himself these big questions and then answering them in the guise of his ideology of God.

This in my oppinion is little more than self promotion. He believes he could hold all the answers. Thats probably why he seeks to become a philosopher.

Theres no denying that he does all this very intelligently, in his answers everything fits quite comfortably. The perfect marriage of the religiouse, Scientific and historical intertwined in one epic drama.

This would make a great Film or addition to any library Fiction section.
But fiction is all it is at the end of the day.

Enjoyed reading it though it was very interesting. Great post.

Originally posted by Jordan River
After skimming and studying through me I have deemed this as fake. Although I did take a little bit of info for the better of man. The complete oneness of us. Thats good. Sounds like philosophy to me.

Thanks for your input genius. The author calls himself 'The Ragged Trousered Philosopher' and it's on the page of his site entitled 'Fiction?'.

Perhaps a little less skimming and a little more studying in future?

it was a nice read. not sure why you posted it on ats rather than bts because the writer end it by saying:

(If you've enjoyed this and, in particular if you're wondering why we didn't touch on the issue of "Life After Death",
you might like to try my play - Resurrection Part 1 - Primary Species)

soo.... nice story then?

reply to post by eight bits


OMG really.. alright lets quibble cause that's all this site is turning into.

Fake is a term used to describe or imply something which is false. A document or other object that is not real. "Fake" means false.
Fiction(Latin: fictum, "created") is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events (events that are not true or false at the time of writing).

And lets look at what the definition of contrafactual

con·tra·fac·tu·al (kntr-fkch-l)
n.
A statement or other linguistic construction expressing an idea that is presupposed to be false

So you gonna go argue with Webster dictionary as well. What was the point of your post besides trying to attack a fellow member, and argue what words mean what. The only purpose of my post was to inform those who didn't know it that it wasn't real. So my friend, WHATS UP NOW

[edit on 20-12-2009 by JcOg323]

After reading it all...I do think it's just a work of fiction...but the guy has some very good ideas going on...almost exactly how I've always thought about "God" and the evolution of species...the ideas expressed in the article definitely resonated with me...especially the parts about technological advancement and self-destruction...very good read...