[Out_of_Characte]

That's where correlations of random events and placebo end and where discovery begins.

There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others. Even if the principle of what you/people believe goes against what you find scientifically relevent, or factual, or sensible. There still is something to be said about a group of people following a strange set of rules that could be demonstrably better than other sets of rules and beliefs. May it be enviromental, genetic, placebo or a tiny edge over what gives life meaning. We ended up with the gods we have today, not by coincidence, but because all the other ones failed their followers.

[jenadine]

> There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others

I don’t think that’s valid. Gods usually come with a set of values or a specific worldview, and these are inherently subjective. You can’t really rank them as "better" or "worse" in any meaningful way.

Let’s take an example: imagine I believe in a paperclip-god. The core value here is producing as many paperclips as possible, and I’d argue that anything that doesn’t serve this goal is inferior. Under this belief system, it might be okay to enslave or even kill humans if it leads to more paperclips. I could use logic and even scientific reasoning to defend this idea as a "better" system for maximizing paperclip production.

Now, you might object and say that humans are more valuable than paperclips, but we'll never agree. The value of the goal itself, whether it’s maximizing paperclips or valuing human life, is subjective. There’s no objective reason why one goal is inherently superior to the other.

[ajuc]

> Under this belief system, it might be okay to enslave or even kill humans

This is actually what most christians believe (see Abraham's sacrifice). God is the ultimate source of morality, so if God wants you to kill your son - it's the morally good thing to do.

Which shows nicely that morality does not, in fact, come from God or Bible (if it did - we wouldn't care about Isaac - we'd consider it good that he'll get killed by his father). Instead we can't help but feel it's wrong to kill your son.

It's the conflict of the actual "natural law" vs the artificial religious "natural law" nicely wrapped up in one short story.

[BrandoElFollito]

I wonder if this was inspired by Universal Paperclips (https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html)

[ajuc]

Religions compete by "virality", like viruses they evolve towards encouraging reproduction.

Even if you measure "better" as "more viral" - it's not "gods" who are better - it's cultural memes (for example there's 1000 versions of christianity believing in the same gods with vastly different cultures and virality outcomes).

[Out_of_Characte]

I'd guess there is a significant language barrier, for lack of better words, on the meaning of 'god' and 'virtue'(which might have been more descriptive, but I'm not willing to edit my comment for the clarity that it lacks out of respect for the other posters/readers)

Its true that many things co-evolved with us, like viruses and blood types(yes, we're somewhat on topic again) and even though we share many similar characteristics, like blood type, mayor, minor. Its also true that discovery of new things doesn't always invalidate the old way of thinking. Usuallyit just adds to what has already been existing. Like how multicellular life is a true breeding ground for single celled organism.

Similarly, the ABO+- blood type system was good enough to not kill patients, which is quite the improvement. Though only a fool would treat that system as gospel and align personalities with it. Now we're classifying the minor types and we're getting closer to rediscovering the uniqueness of everyones blood just as everyones beliefs,god or no god, is unique if you are willing to look.

I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god. I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are. I definitely wouldn't want our economy to become a paperclip maximiser but any perceived missteps should be dissected with a good blogpost on how we got here in the first place.