November 27, 2020
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I had some more thoughts. It’s not a different stream. Yes, there are different stream of thoughts. I think that is a stream of thought, which is more precise.
So, I think the vague notion that people who are in the non-religious communities or people who are in a Freudian state of mind. They see the Gods as projections of human limits. Okay, cool, I think that’s limited though, because it’s not very precise.
Rick Rosner: What projection of human limits?
Jacobsen: That human limitations or needs, those are the Gods, are projections of those.
Rosner: You mean, God is the creation of or is the solution for a human limitation. Is that what you’re saying?
Jacobsen: Yes. Not necessarily a solution for limitation, but a projection of that, of the fulfillment of that need. So, in some ways, it is a solution, yes. In other ways, it’s simply a manifestation of that lack.
Rosner: So, people feel fear because they suck, basically. They have limitations. So, they create the gods. Out of that fear, you have the creation of Gods.
Jacobsen: Yes. So, I think that’s like the whole notion with the anthropomorphization of the divine. But that’s redundant because the divine are characteristically anthropomorphic.
The polytheistic Hellenistic pantheon are all just human characters, but they have more capacity. So, they’re superhuman.
Rosner: They were the superheroes of their time.
Jacobsen: I think the Marvel DC Universe, same deal, the Hindu Gods, same deal. They have more arms or they have more sex or they have a longer lifespan or they have the power to do something like have control of nature; humans don’t.
Zeus’ control over lightning, things of this nature. So, there is this notion, but I don’t think it’s that precise because it’s just a one-step. Humans have a certain set of identities and we project that outwards.
Then we call those te Gods and then atheists, materialists come around and say – or skeptics come around and say, “Look how stupid these people are.” Neither conversation is very helpful.
Because I think you have to be precise about it and take it as an operation, not surgery. Unless, you’re taking it as a dissection analogy. But I think you can make an operation to how that happens.
Rosner: How the creation of gods happen?
Jacobsen: Yes. So, not in a historical sense, not in a cultural sense, but how you can operationally define how this reasonably could happen in most cases. So, the Abrahamic God is in modern terms omni-infinite.
So, omniscient, knows everything, omnipotent can do everything, with aseity, which is to say self-existent. It is contingent or dependent upon nothing, and it is eternal. So, it’s a-temporal. It’s imminent. It’s, in and of, reality while being outside of reality. It’s everywhere.
In other words, these sorts of things. So, it’s infinite in all these different capacities.
Rosner: Basically, what you’re saying is that, it’s a more sophisticated solution to the problem. If you’re going to design a God, you might as well make the God Superman in all ways.
Jacobsen: I think this isn’t more sophisticated necessarily. I think it’s the nth degree of what is normally happening. So, is that more sophisticated?
Rosner: Gods that are just like you, that have specific functions like the pantheon Gods that are you can imagine. They’re ad hoc.
Jacobsen: Yes. So, these other ones, you can take them as like superhuman finites, like a pluralism. But when it comes to these modern gods that are most dominant in the world. Typically, they’re taking them as a singular, infinite identity.
So, it’s not more sophisticated. It’s just “mash them all together” and then sayin, “You can’t measure it.” Is that more sophisticated?
Rosner: Really, it’s more efficient and harder to argue against. I’d say it’s more sophisticated. It feels the God who is all powerful, all knowing, the monotheistic God, feels simplistic. At the same time, that idea is more powerful.
I say it’s more powerful and sophisticated. If you look at it, half of the people on earth, at least nominally, subscribe to a religion with that one most powerful God. So, you can’t argue with success. Except for science, which is even more successful than that one God.
Jacobsen: So, I would take this then that you just take Christians and Muslims of all denominations. These become over half the population or near half the population of the planet. So, I agree with you. That is successful by the numbers.
But if you just take this process of just saying, “It’s anthropomorphizing with these polytheistic versions or these monotheisms, but these monotheisms with a limited God as opposed to these monotheisms with one infinite God, who is personal.”
I think they’re all about same category. Although, typically, they’re characterized as the former ones. They’re taken as anthropomorphic. They have human attributes. The latter ones taken as more objective and scientific.
That’s why its harder to refute in your words. However, I think, in either case, they’re all still anthropomorphic in different framings around that orb.
Rosner: Yes, they all exist to solve human problems and questions and all that. Yes, sure.
Jacobsen: So, here’s the process that I’m proposing: First, you can name a psychological lack. I’m not saying people that believe in these Gods are doing that now, explicitly. But you name a psychological lack.
You objectify it as a property, goodness, spatial limitation, temporal limitation, etc. Externalize it as out there in the universe. You make it infinite and personalize it once more. So, it becomes an omni-infinite personality based on that human lack. So, it’s in the new version, externalization.
Rosner: More simply you’re framing the universe in human terms and then buttressing your framework by claiming that the universe is explicitly framed that way.
Jacobsen: Yes. So, I characterize it this way. Internal made external, finite made infinite, personal psychology made “defined” psychology. I think that basically all the pantheons of limited gods would be a self-limiting formulation going through this process.
Rosner: It’s just like first attempts when people weren’t really or they hadn’t got down to the essentials of what their spiritual concerns were. Creating a whole bunch of little Gods, each in charge of some aspect of life for survival, speaks to people who are less dominant over their environment.
Appealing to the weather gods and hunting gods, there is still a bunch of stuff to work out, both theologically and in terms of building a civilization. They’re like almost preliminary Gods.
Jacobsen: So, in this sense, I think, and I wrote in this argument in an article, the end point, the end result of theology, which is grounded on these ideas, is simply to die out. Due to the fact that this is the process that’s ongoing, it’s just bound to unravel the more and more we understand about the world.
Rosner: I don’t know why the process that created these gods is the thing that guarantees they’re going to die off. They’re going to die off because they’re contravened by the more and more stuff we know about the world.
Jacobsen: Maybe, that’s a dual process. The fact of this inversion externalization is also happening alongside those findings about the actual world given by science, hypothetically activism, whatever you call it.
Rosner: I think you can make that argument if you also argue that the will towards science has a lot of things in common with the will to create gods.
Jacobsen: I like that phrasing. Question. Does teleology mean final purpose or end of something? Like the reason for it.
Rosner: I was thinking about this, but in different terms. Last night, we were spending a lot of time talking about possible worlds, how actual possible worlds; worlds that you could argue pretty much have to exist, because there is nothing about them that’s inconsistent with existence.
As an example, I was using worlds in which Abraham Lincoln survived being shot and how he can’t magically survive being shot. There has to be something within causality to explain how that might happen.
Anyway, I was thinking about that, not in terms of in a physics or philosophy or whatever, but in terms of what makes a decent science fiction story. I was thinking about two stories that I’ve seen recently that have annoyed me.
It’s a mark of bad science fiction, where you create like a future in which there is this thing that has been there. Something has been invented or something’s happened. Then your whole story is about all the problems that this thing has caused. I have two examples.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
American Television Writer
(Updated July 25, 2019)
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.*
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (ISSN 2369-6885). Jacobsen works for science and human rights, especially women’s and children’s rights. He considers the modern scientific and technological world the foundation for the provision of the basics of human life throughout the world and the advancement of human rights as the universal movement among peoples everywhere.
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
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Rick Rosner 