Ants are a bad example though as ants lack the physical capabilities to feel emotions, they don’t have self awareness and may not even be able to feel pain. Also we didn’t create ants and their properties.
It’s an analogy, not an example. We are significantly further from a theoretical, all powerful, all knowing god than we are from ants. The scale of sentience from “inanimate object” to “all powerful god” is likely to have us mistaken for inanimate object. So the analogy serves its purpose, but of course the specifics are different.
The analogy is not good then. If we are talking about the Christian god, it is specifically told that he created humans and their properties. That is equivalent to us creating our own species of ants through genetic manipulation. Ants that feel pain and sorrow, plan for the future, form meaningful bonds with each other, make art and so on. Then we also (on purpose !) make it so some of them are depressed enough to kill themselves because they can’t take the pain anymore. Make some die of cancer in a week-long, painful battle.
No ethics commission would ever let that experiment pass. Either god has nothing to do with the christian one or doesn’t exist.
Ants are a bad example though as ants lack the physical capabilities to feel emotions, they don’t have self awareness and may not even be able to feel pain. Also we didn’t create ants and their properties.
It’s an analogy, not an example. We are significantly further from a theoretical, all powerful, all knowing god than we are from ants. The scale of sentience from “inanimate object” to “all powerful god” is likely to have us mistaken for inanimate object. So the analogy serves its purpose, but of course the specifics are different.
The analogy is not good then. If we are talking about the Christian god, it is specifically told that he created humans and their properties. That is equivalent to us creating our own species of ants through genetic manipulation. Ants that feel pain and sorrow, plan for the future, form meaningful bonds with each other, make art and so on. Then we also (on purpose !) make it so some of them are depressed enough to kill themselves because they can’t take the pain anymore. Make some die of cancer in a week-long, painful battle.
No ethics commission would ever let that experiment pass. Either god has nothing to do with the christian one or doesn’t exist.