Who would win a war between God and man, and how?

In your scenario you state that a God who created the universe, but was subject to the laws of the universe; I would imagine that God could just destroy it as simply as he created it. We are doomed.

Doesn’t the concept of a God who created the Universe require said God to be above the laws of the Universe? A God who created the universe would only be subject to its laws if He willingly made them apply to Himself. Therefore, God is either not all powerful or cannot exist. I just made Him lose with logic. Humans win.

Oh, and if he did turn out to be subject to the laws of the universe, he’d be in trouble if you shot him enough times. If something is alive and it has mass, chances are you can kill it by poking a lot of holes in it.

It’s like a mutiny of sorts I guess. Humanity wants to take over because God seems to find pleasure in torturing people with the excuse that it is for our own good.

But, @AmWiser makes a good point that if God has the doomsday button, we might be in big trouble.

But, He will be reluctant to destroy his creation, so we have that on our side. We have to mount a surprise attack, so there is not time to destroy the universe.

If God has the technology to create a universe, then wouldn’t he have technology that might make it a bit hard for humanity to beat him in a war? Further, I don’t see how having the technology to create a universe implies having the technology necessary to destroy a universe.

Man will definitely win since God is as full of forgiveness and compassion as he is of wrath and he eventually would restore defeated man to life. ( if only so he could tell man, “See I told you, you’re gonna looose! Loser.” )

Wait, does my answer fall into the realm of religion? Scratch it then.

Don’t you know? We’ve already won.

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science §125

We declared war on a whole class of nouns, drugs, and lost. We declared war on poverty and have succeeded in making it worse. Now we’ve declared war on a tactic, terrorism. Not much chance of wiping that tactic from the minds of all humanity. What’s left but to declare war on something/someone that doesn’t even exist. It should be interesting trying to figure out how to prevail in that battle.

It’s pretty easy, just tell God about the babel fish and he’ll disappear in a poof of logic. Just don’t go trying to prove that black is white.

Gods generally derive their power from their worshipers; without followers, they are nothing. With that in mind, there are many paths to a human victory.

Fluther is overrun with dirty atheists lately =/

Phillip Pullman already wrote this book. :)

The question needs to define God.

I think we could take Yahweh as he is described in the Bible, the guy who couldn’t beat iron chariots and seemed to have very limited knowledge about biology, cosmology, and earth sciences. He seemed excited about killing a few thousand people at once—small fry compared to what we could do with nuclear weapons.

But if your’e defining God as some vague universal force, or even as powerful aliens, we’d lose. Any being who could destroy our planet from orbit would win easy.

@FutureMemory Not so. I just showered.

Chuck Norris. ‘Nuf said.

God. Someone who was intelligent/powerful enough to create the universe would surely have a “Plan B” if all went wrong.

As @Qingu points out, it would depend on what you thing the nature of God is. My entries:

1. God would kick our asses. If god wanted to and had the power and desire to, God is the ultimate Uber Smiter, and we the smited.

2. Maybe God turns the other cheek.
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Not much of a story in either of those though. God wipes us out very quickly or God surrenders.
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3. God is the God of Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. 
   And what does the LORD require of you? 
To act justly and to love mercy 
   and to walk humbly[a] with your God.

Maybe God just wants a relationship with us, wants us to be a just and merciful species, doesn’t want to fight us but sees that we want to fight him. I’m not sure what would come of that.

4. Maybe we take the fight to God and God actually shows up, shows his, her or it’s face and everyone is just … fuck! It’s God! Whoah! Hold your horses. It’s… God!!!!

5. God doesn’t exist outside the universe but is the universe and we discover that if and when we fight him,etc. and if we defeat him, we will only destroy ourselves and the universe in the process.

@lillycoyote If GOd exists, I suspect something long #5 is correct.

@ETpro Me too.

In war there are no winners, for it is written & this shall always be the way of things.
Hare Krishna…..baby! ;¬}

Isn’t this how the whole “Satan” thing came about?

I believe that some theorize that within each black hole is another universe. Further, that if you create a black hole, you are spawning a new universe that may or may not be attached to this one.

So if God was responsible for creating this universe, and then managed to find a way to insert himself into it, he could easily have created it, but still be subject to it’s physical laws.

So God becomes this entity with some pretty sophisticated knowledge and technical capability, assuming he has the resources to leverage that knowledge. The problem is that there is just one God and there are gazillions of creatures in the universe (big assumption, but one I’ll make).

If God is subject to the laws of the universe, he, too, can not travel faster than the speed of light. Although I suppose he could have the ability to use wormholes. It’s still not clear whether he’d be able to use that without proper resources.

So he’s stuck in this self-repairing space ship travelling at near light speed, visiting as many intelligent civilizations as he can find, to visit and perhaps get access to resources that will enable him to escape the universe back to whence he came. But none have very advanced technology until he comes to Earth.

So he gets here maybe 5000 years ago. And he’s been meddling ever since, in hopes of creating a civilization with the resources he can take advantage of. He has all kinds of information and skill, but the one thing he does not have is labor and technology. He has to build the technology from scratch, along with the people who can use the technology.

But he has to keep the true purpose of the technology from the people. He also has to hide the physics of the universe somewhat. If the people catch on, they will surely use it for themselves.

It is a race to the finish. The closer the technology comes to reality, the closer the people come to understanding what it is for and the more likely it is that they will not surrender it, even to God.

In the end, as God is coming down to get his extra-universal engine, a few scientists realize what is happening and alert the armed forces and the political leadership. God picks up the technology, but before he can get away, the armed services of the world are on his tail.

It is an epic space opera with God seeking to hook the tech up to his space ship, and humans harrying him with old Soviet Soyuz space ships, while the American seek to get the old shuttles out of mothballs and make them ready. Meanwhile the Chinese and various private space companies rush to weaponize their spaceships and get them into operation.

At the same time, various fundamentalists are seeking to acquire their own space vehicles in order to try to aid God. They predict the end of days is nigh. Indeed, fundamentalists of all stripes across the world start banding together, led by a very charismatic young Pakistani Muslim who was educated in the States. The problem with this guy is that, even though he is brilliant, his attention is constantly being distracted by his two wives, who fight for his attention.

Our hero is not a military leader, but some kid who manages to stow away on one of the shuttles. This kid is not from a disadvantaged background. His father is one of the wealthiest men on the planet, but he has only said hello to his son maybe five times in the son’s memory. The kid is driven by a need for recognition and love, but he pushes so hard, he misses it when it is there. Tragic.

Well, I’m sure ya’ll can figure out a bunch of other characters to fuel the opera. Probably need a grayhead to pontificate on philosophical issues and the impact this will have on the meaning of life. Preferably a woman. A biblical scholar who has her own mishegosse to deal with.

Well, you saw it here first. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if it ended up in the movies some day? Or on TV? If you like it, it’s yours. Writing isn’t my thing.

@Blondesjon Pretty much, though that business was between the fallen angels and God, not humans I believe. Still not a very good idea, with the hubris of it all the whole problem of there generally being unintended consequences when humans get too big for their britches so to speak.

Biblically, there’s already a celestial “civil war” going on. We’re in the endgame now.

In a lot of video games, you end up fighting ’‘god’’ in the end. But usually, it’s something immensely strong, but not invincible. It’s usually mistaken as a god, but can be destroyed.

As for the Biblical god, I guess He’d win, if the battle uses the Bible’s rules as an arena.

@Nullo Define the parameters of “endgame.” In how many years can we declare you wrong if the world is still around?

@SavoirFaire I’m no Harold Camping.
Admittedly, chess isn’t quite an appropriate metaphor. By “endgame” I’m referring to the period from circa 33 A.D. (where we see the most decisive move) to an undetermined point in the future The enemy king is wobbling into and out of check while his pieces are being picked off of the board. Eventually we’ll have checkmate.
Not being a perfect analogy, it will break down if you try to push it past this point.

@Nullo I don’t see the point of saying we’re in “endgame,” then, since the decisive move of a game can come quite early. If the world doesn’t end in the next 5 million years, for instance, calling the present part of the endgame would seem rather excessive.

@SavoirFaire * shrugs * What do you want from a limited metaphor?

@Nullo I don’t want anything from the metaphor. I do want something from the people employing them, however. When you say “we’re in the endgame now,” that means something fairly specific to me.

@SavoirFaire @Nullo Very off topic…