Jill's entry got me a' thinkin', and I don't know if she read the entry I wrote the other day.
Last week, my sister bought this computer game called "Black and White" which she pulled out of some bargain bin at K-Mart for $5. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, in the game, you are a god whose job is to recruit as many followers as possible by performing various miracles. Which miracles you perform are up to you, and change how your worshippers view you. You can give your people free food and resources, or you can rain fire and brimstone upon them - either way, they'll recognize your presence, whether you choose to be a god who is black or a god who is white.
Hypothetical situation: in the beginning, there's this dude named Lucifer, a loving and merciful god who creates the world in seven days, and makes the garden of Eden, et cetera and so forth. He believes that his creations will make the best of themselves if they are instilled with the value of competition - all animals, therefore, including man, are instructed to do everything to the best of their ability so that they may continue to rise up above their peers, indefinately, even after Lucifer has made them, and ultimately become the best they can possibly be, without their creator's assistance. Lucifer also makes angels to sing all day and make him feel special. One day, one of the angels, named God, gets all uppity, and decides to overthrow Lucifer, and succeeds. He proceeds to rewrite all of the history books, takes credit for everything that Lucifer has accomplished, and banishes him to another realm. God does not have the power to undo all that the more powerful Lucifer has done (although he can do smaller things, like flooding the entire earth), but he has a different philosophy in his way of ruling (kind of like Republicans and democrats), and decides that all of the creatures of the earth could become much greater if they helped each other; unfortunately, God can't undo the instinct of all of the animals created by Lucifer. However, man alone is still shapeable due to his lack of instinct and focus on reason, so God does all within his power to effect the future course of mankind.
"Ridiculous! How would such a thing go unnoticed?" you say? What if Hitler won World War II? Would the history books have made such a big deal of the Holocaust? I'm not saying that the death of six million innocent people have been forgotten, but it certainly wouldn't have been difficult to downplay. Consider, for a moment, how little we think of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who died in a flash of light in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the hands of the US.
I'm not entirely sure of what I'm trying to say... but what if all of our life has been a lie? What if our creator intended us to act selfish and greedy and bad, and we simply don't because we have been incorrectly raised otherwise?
Of course, everything I'm saying may very well be bull shit.
But how would we know? Should we simply resign and accept all that has been taught to us with blind faith?
Is it really that good to be "good"? Is it really that bad to be "bad"?