The Terror of God

[Diogenes]

The Terror of God
or Why He is not Here

In the beginning… there was no beginning. There was just God. He was alone and he was perfect. He knew everything. He knew everything that could ever be, would ever happen. And he was alone.

Because he knew everything he knew what he would do and what would happen. He wanted to create, he wanted company, he wanted there to be worlds and worlds of people. He wanted life.

But he knew that he already knew what would happen, what he would create and what every thought of every person would be. Because he already knew it was as if it had happened and was deep in the past. There was no future, no past, there was no point or purpose in creating what he already fully understood because it had already happened. The Past, Present, and Future were One.

This awareness was his terror and his reason for doing nothing. He knew he was to live an eternity alone, that there was no purpose, there was no reason to create that which already fully existed in his memory. He was alone and could create nothing to surprise himself, nothing he did not already know as fully as he new himself. He was alone with nothingness and no reason to create.

He could not even enjoy a joke because he knew the punchline before the joke began.

Proposition for Debate:
There is no God, because if there were, he would not have bothered to create the universe or us. Therefore, does not our very existence prove there is no God?

[William]

I am not God. My memory is not perfect. If he wanted to see something he knew would happen, he need do nothing; the thing would just be there, unbidden and as fresh as when he first imagined (without actually creating) it.
Therefore:
Proposition for Debate:
There is no God, because if there were, he would not have bothered to create the universe or us. Therefore, does not our very existence prove there is no God?

Since you are not GOD you cannot say for certain that GOD would be in terror or bored or lonely etc as these are human ideas which are encouraged in no small part, by the human condition of not knowing what GOD would know.

Speculation at best - it anthropomorphizes human emotion and superimposes that into the reason why a Cosmic Mind would NOT want to create this universe

Forgetting oneself in order to bypass the static structure of being all-knowing, by creating form and occupying oneself within said form, having designed said form to limit conscious awareness of everything...being the ants rather than the all-knowing...such forms would be useful to that purpose.
Thus, it explains why the universe exists as it does, rather than explains why GOD cannot exist.

It is noted that my previous comments in this thread have not been answered by the creator of the OP. Is that avoidance or perhaps what I argued is still being though over?

[Diogenes]

Since you are not GOD you cannot say for certain that GOD would be in terror or bored or lonely etc as these are human ideas which are encouraged in no small part, by the human condition of not knowing what GOD would know.

Speculation at best - it anthropomorphizes human emotion and superimposes that into the reason why a Cosmic Mind would NOT want to create this universe

This is a valid criticism, but problematic.
Two related issues immediately come to mind regarding God and anthropomorphism.
The first is that the Abrahamic God is anthropomorphic.*
The second is related to the frequent challenge of theists, "You can't understand the mind of God, so "'X' thought process is irrelevant or inapplicable."

I agree it is insufficient for me to argue "Since God is in fact an anthropomorphic human invention, I can posit how such a god would think." This claim assumes God is anthropomorphic. Nonetheless, even assuming God is much more than what humans can imagine and not bound by human imagination, with what other mind can we contemplate God? Our human minds are the only tools we possess.

So, back to the OP. All I can do is to put myself in the position of a god as defined by the Abrahamic religions. Such a god is omniscient and omnipotent. So, when as a thought experiment I add those qualities to my own consciousness, the result is the OP.
______________ ~~~ ______________

A personal story:
While alone in a friend's house I used his deep walk in bathtub. As I floated, weightless I wondered what it would be like if the room was completely dark. I turned out the lights. It was silent and total darkness, like a sensory deprivation tank. I imagined what it would be like to be in that state for eternity. That is when the terror of nothingness hit me. All I am able to do is to apply this same human imagination to an all powerful all knowing consciousness, alone in the universe forever. Thus the genesis of the original post.


________________________
*A debater here once posted that there was a single profound verse in the Old Testament that argued against the anthropomorphic nature of God:
When Moses asks God His name so Moses could tell the people who He was, the voice from the burning bush says, essentially, "[I have no name, I am beyond naming,] I am that I am" [I just 'am'] I AM."

I was one of the few that agreed with him even though I think that approximates the Jewish interpretation of that passage.

[William]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #42]

All I can do is to put myself in the position of a god as defined by the Abrahamic religions.

This is a mistake often made by non-theists, getting them to focus upon one idea of GOD as if that is the only one available. It becomes a favorite target - acting in much the same way as a strawman argument is designed to act as - a distraction. Straw-battling.

Such a god is omniscient and omnipotent.

However, not always portrayed that way, as the biblical contradictions support.

So, when as a thought experiment I add those qualities to my own consciousness, the result is the OP.

The problem with this reasoning is that you cannot add those qualities because you, me and every other human are incapable of understanding what those qualities will produce...because our own subjective experience of only ever being human, superimposed into such thought experience, only produces fear, and - while the fear may be real, one cannot take from that - that the fear would be real in the same way, for GOD.

There is also omnipresent involved...did you experiencing being - not only the human, but the bath tub and the water, and the darkness, and the room etc...

If not, then your thought experiment was incomplete and the horror felt was something conjured from your self - something which I think also has consequence in the next phase, [given the reams of information available regarding near death and out of body experiences] coupled with the notion that what an individual consciousness experiences in that phase, is largely of their own making, whether they are aware of it or not.

You can read more on this concept in the thread "The Three Biblical Interpretations About Afterlife"

Having said as much, I certainly can identify with you re the fear experienced as I have experienced similar. However, I learned that the source of the fear was my self placing a shadow upon something that doesn't have a shadow upon it. Like jumping at one's own reflection in a mirror - something to chuckle about but also something to show me there is work to do internally.

eta:

You may also find this helpful: The Almighty and Fear

QFD: If an All Mighty Entity [AME] could frighten itself, how would it go about doing so?

[Diogenes]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #42]

All I can do is to put myself in the position of a god as defined by the Abrahamic religions.

This is a mistake often made by non-theists, getting them to focus upon one idea of GOD as if that is the only one available. It becomes a favorite target - acting in much the same way as a strawman argument is designed to act as - a distraction. Straw-battling.

Such a god is omniscient and omnipotent.

However, not always portrayed that way, as the biblical contradictions support.

So, when as a thought experiment I add those qualities to my own consciousness, the result is the OP.

The problem with this reasoning is that you cannot add those qualities because you, me and every other human are incapable of understanding what those qualities will produce...because our own subjective experience of only ever being human, superimposed into such thought experience, only produces fear, and - while the fear may be real, one cannot take from that - that the fear would be real in the same way, for GOD.
. . . .
You may also find this helpful: The Almighty and Fear

QFD: If an All Mighty Entity [AME] could frighten itself, how would it go about doing so?

You might find it helpful to actually read all of the post you responded to, in which I acknowledged the issues you lectured on, and dealt with them. I have no need to repeat them.

Part of the problem is the Christian theology that claims god is absolutely perfect:

"His essence is actus purus et perfectus. This follows from the fivefold proof for the existence of God; namely, there must be a first mover, unmoved, a first cause in the chain of causes, an absolutely necessary being, an absolutely perfect being, and a rational designer. In this connection the thoughts of the unity, infinity, unchangeability, and goodness of the highest being are deduced."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Theologica

When a being or state of existence is defined in such terms of perfection and includes absolute and complete foreknowledge of the past and future, nothing can be added to it. Thus it is not me, but Christian theologians who have fashioned the outcome I described.

Not all Christian theologians fall into this trap, or at least not in the same way. Paul Tillich in his three volume Systematic Theology says that God is not a being at all; rather that he is "the very ground of being."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich#cite_note-37
In fact Tillich observes it is "atheistic" to call God a mere "being."

[William]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #44]

Can I assume by your response then, that you are not arguing the universe cannot have been created?