As a male I have a few interests: weapons, meat (preferably prepared by women), cars, war, sports, guitar riffs that melt your face, blood and sweat, tattoos, gambling, fight clubs, blowing things up, and rational thought and discourse.

Today, I have a post about the latter.

I finished reading Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman a couple weeks ago.

The book is different from the usual “self-help” book bullshit in that Seligman uses his decades of work as a researcher and psychologist to dissect a very fuzzy concept - happiness and how to get it.

Anyway, the end of the book had a little blurb on God. Seligman looks at God in a way I’ve never thought about. He talks about how people think of four main characteristics to describe God:

1) God knows everything.
2) God has unlimited power.
3) God is good.
4) God came before everything and he/she/it was the creator.

Seligman then goes on to say how most agnostics and atheists seem to have the most trouble with number four, and he offers an explanation for it which he thinks agnostics and atheists will find easier to believe.

His argument has three parts:

1) Organisms are gradually becoming more complicated through evolution.
2) It is beneficial for organisms to become more complicated because that creates opportunities for more win-win situations (think of trade, technology, culture, and other forms of cooperation). Therefore, organisms are gradually moving toward perfection.
3) So, thinking extremely long term, it is probable that a “perfect being” will evolve.

Essentially, we are part of what will become God.