If God is omnipotent, can he destroy himself?

[Dontaskme]

I'm an observer and I observe others observing me.

No you are not. There is no you observing. The you is the observed, the looked upon.

No one is looking at you except your own reflection.

People reject this notion, but even science have confirmed it now.

[Arising_uk]

No you are not. There is no you observing. The you is the observed, the looked upon.

No one is looking at you except your own reflection.

People reject this notion, but even science have confirmed it now.

My apologies, I am a sensor and I sense other sensors sensing me.

By the by, if what you say is true how can you use "you" or "own" or "people" for that matter?

[attofishpi]

I'm an observer and I observe others observing me.

No you are not. There is no you observing. The you is the observed, the looked upon.

No one is looking at you except your own reflection.

People reject this notion, but even science have confirmed it now.

You need to stop thinking that you have any insight, you spew continual verbal diarrhea.

[Dontaskme]

By the by, if what you say is true how can you use "you" or "own" or "people" for that matter?

"you" or "own" or "people" are auditory illusions of sound heard as words with attached meaning used to fill in the blanks of silent awareness.

[Arising_uk]

"you" or "own" or "people" are auditory illusions of sound heard as words with attached meaning used to fill in the blanks of silent awareness.

And yet 'silent awareness' is full of sound and the language part confirms that you are not a solipsist. One chatting to itself is not possible.

[Dontaskme]

"you" or "own" or "people" are auditory illusions of sound heard as words with attached meaning used to fill in the blanks of silent awareness.

And yet 'silent awareness' is full of sound and the language part confirms that you are not a solipsist. One chatting to itself is not possible.

One chatting to itself is most certainly possible and the only thing happening. There cannot be two selves. Where would I end and you begin? Nothing is separating us, we are made of the stuff we're appearing in.Can a wave be separate from the ocean?

This is self to self...can the sound be separate from the hearer? can the seen be separate from the seer? ..etc ...impossible. We all see and hear the same things, including animals when sound/light waves are in close enough proximity for the instrument of sound and hearing to detect the waves in locality...obviously there is a range limit to what our detectors can reach...but that doesn't imply separation.
Sound arises and falls from and into silence. Silence being the substratum of all phenomena.

To see, to hear and to know. The eye receives light waves which the mind interprets as the seen or an action. We therefore see light but think the seen or an action. The ear receives sound-waves which the mind interprets as words. We therefore receive sound but hear words e.g., a foreign language is just sounds and not words. We know words, but they are actually sounds.

Every sound in daily life is not heard as words, but only certain human sounds are heard as words. The human mind knows the word 'silence'which is yet again just sound, which means the human mind does not know what silence is and can never know silence. This is because the human ear cannot receive silence for the mind to recognise silence. The human mind has evolved to receive sound as words and not silence. So our daily life is thinking, and this thinking is illusory and not actual meaning real. It only appears as meaning real as appearances only, our true nature is what we are in deep sleep or death or anesthesia.

You have never died, nor have you ever been born.

This is what God is. There is only God.


The words I'm using are only pointers pointing you to you. ...aka Blank fillers.
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[Justintruth]

God is not a creature, He is the creator, and as such lacks the potential not to be.

Indeed. But it is a "lack"?

Remember the Ontological Argument...whichever you take (Anselm, Plantinga, whatever) and whatever you think of that particular strategy, one interesting feature, and one relevant to this question, would be the integral importance of "existing" as a perfection.

In other words, if Anselm et al are right, that "existing" makes an entity greater than the same entity with the property of "not existing," then the Supreme Being cannot cease to exist without simultaneously being the somewhat-less-than-supreme-being. For it then becomes possible to conceive of a greater being than the (alleged) supreme-being-minus-existing -- namely the Supreme Being who DOES have existence as a property.

If that's right, then the only "lack" would be to "lack" existence; and to exist would be a potency and a perfection, not a "lacking" of anything.

Lacking the possibility to not be is a double negative which is a positive.

[Immanuel Can]

Lacking the possibility to not be is a double negative which is a positive.

Not quite what I meant. I meant that a thing is only a "lack" if it would be a positive gain to have it. When I say people in the desert "lack" water, I can only mean that it would be better if they had water, but they don't have it.

To say God "lacks" the ability to self-destroy, one would have to think self-destruction potential was something one could "lack," and it would be better if God had it.

But I think it's pretty clear that to cease to exist is to become less than to be exactly the same entity but with real existence included. Thus, definitionally, a non-existent God would be less than an existent one, and non-existence itself would be a deficiency, not an advantage.

Thus a Supreme Being could not be said ever to "lack" power to make Himself not exist. The principle clause of the question above is logically contradicted by the hypothetical clause, because the latter contains the word "God" (Supreme Being), and the former contains the predication "destroy himself." Essentially, it's the same problem, therefore, as the one inherent in the old question about God and the big rock.

It's self-contradiction. As C.S. Lewis put it, "Nonsense is still nonsense; even when we use it to speak about God."

[uwot]

Remember the Ontological Argument...whichever you take (Anselm, Plantinga, whatever) and whatever you think of that particular strategy, one interesting feature, and one relevant to this question, would be the integral importance of "existing" as a perfection.

This exposes the Platonic source of the ontological argument, and pretty much nails what is wrong with it. The only things that unambiguously exist are (the phenomena that give the impression of) physical objects. None of those are perfect. A conceptual triangle can be perfect, the same is true of gods. For all I know, there are as many gods as there are triangles, but in either case one that 'exists', other than a concept, cannot be perfect.

In other words, if Anselm et al are right, that "existing" makes an entity greater than the same entity with the property of "not existing," then the Supreme Being cannot cease to exist without simultaneously being the somewhat-less-than-supreme-being.

Clearly you are unimpressed by Kant's assertion that existence is not a predicate.

[Justintruth]

Lacking the possibility to not be is a double negative which is a positive.

Not quite what I meant. I meant that a thing is only a "lack" if it would be a positive gain to have it. When I say people in the desert "lack" water, I can only mean that it would be better if they had water, but they don't have it.

To say God "lacks" the ability to self-destroy, one would have to think self-destruction potential was something one could "lack," and it would be better if God had it.

But I think it's pretty clear that to cease to exist is to become less than to be exactly the same entity but with real existence included. Thus, definitionally, a non-existent God would be less than an existent one, and non-existence itself would be a deficiency, not an advantage.

Thus a Supreme Being could not be said ever to "lack" power to make Himself not exist. The principle clause of the question above is logically contradicted by the hypothetical clause, because the latter contains the word "God" (Supreme Being), and the former contains the predication "destroy himself." Essentially, it's the same problem, therefore, as the one inherent in the old question about God and the big rock.

It's self-contradiction. As C.S. Lewis put it, "Nonsense is still nonsense; even when we use it to speak about God."

I think I see what you mean but the value comparison between there being a god and there not being one presupposes that a situation in which God exists and one in which he does not exist are both conceivable.

My understanding is that a situation in which there is no God is not conceivable and that God is necessary to be conceived of whenever any potential situation is projected as possibibly being. This is because of the relation of God to being.

A situation with no contingent existence would be interesting to look at as a counterexample but it looks like the existence proofs of mathematics might defeat it.

The relation between god and good that founds the arguments you ably describe is very deep and surprising. I think there is a deep relation between our sexuality and ontology - probably due to the effect of hormones on neurology - that causes the exctasy that is reported in mystical understanding of god.

Don't get me wrong. I am not reducing the experience to the doped neurology just hypothesizing its presence and causal efficacy in the sense of natural causality.

The idea is that to be is rooted deep in our survival and reproductive instincts. It can be frustrated - and we should study how suicidal motivations form, (especially before we corner someone in North Korea) but the dominant reality is an association of good with being and even an identification of the terms "good" and "god". You frequently hear not that "God is good" but also that "God is the good" or phrases like that.
It comes too from those who have actual religious experience of god.

I think that the experience of alienation in the existential sense - perhaps even the madness of Nietzsche - occurs in individuals that actualize purely objective ontologies because by definition the exclude the being of the subject and therefore frustrate the desire of the subject to experience it's being. That is a damn crude way to say it but perhaps you will get my point. Nietzsche tried to replace the theist with the ubermench but I think it fails technically because once god is dead so is the access to the genuine experience of being that, because of this relation to "the good" relieves the anxiety and provides the ectasy.

I do understand I think where that point Andelm an the others is coming from experientally. But there is a kind of flaw in those proofs. The meanings of the terms - the correct meanings - are so inaccessible themselves requiring mystical union to experience that the proofs really fail on accessibility of the premises. Worse, the common understandings of these terms -God, good, etc- provide a purely logical misinterpretation of the proofs.

In other words the problem is not to see how the ordinary meaning of the terms - God as a contingent being whose existence would be a fact requiring evidence, good as an adjective that can be ascribed or not to that being etc - can be logically manipulated to prove that in fact God exists, but rather to experience God mystically so the necessity of his existence and the identity of god with the good can be experienced and then - subsequently communicated through these "proofs" which are unlike other proofs designed to frustrate a certain kind of logic

it might seem crazy and it is speculation but seeing how good trips and bad trips play out neurologically may shed some light on the relation between "the good" and what Huxley called "Is-ness" in The Doors of Perception

I really appreciate the quality of your response. In the end I think there is an equivocation between god being the good and it merely being good - better to be exact - for god to exist.

Early Wittgenstein would conceive all of this as nonsense. Nonsense can be spoken about god, sure. The real question is whether the term god itself is nonsense and if not what are the implication for herenutics and the philosophy of language. Only at that level can these issues hope to be parsed.

My own opinion is that the term is not just nonsense in the ordinary sense. If in some sophisticated sense philosophically beyond my ken, it is appropriate to call all speech of god nonsensical, then that account will have to avoid explaining away all of the intellectual and experiential content that is its legitimate reference.

[Arising_uk]

One chatting to itself is most certainly possible and the only thing happening. ...

That would make it necessary not possible?

There cannot be two selves. ...

Sure there can, there's you and me for a start.

Where would I end and you begin?

I end at my knuckles you start at the tip of your nose.

Nothing is separating us, we are made of the stuff we're appearing in. ...

Well I agree it might all be one substance but you appear to not be able to move then.

Can a wave be separate from the ocean?

Are waves even of the ocean?

This is self to self...can the sound be separate from the hearer? ...

No but the source better be or you're talking to yourself.

can the seen be separate from the seer? ..etc ...impossible. ...

More like incoherent.

We all see and hear the same things, including animals when sound/light waves are in close enough proximity for the instrument of sound and hearing to detect the waves in locality...obviously there is a range limit to what our detectors can reach...but that doesn't imply separation.

No but it implies that they are not the same thing.

Sound arises and falls from and into silence. Silence being the substratum of all phenomena. ...

Given you like to quote science as proving what you say have you not noticed that they say it's always noisy?

To see, to hear and to know. The eye receives light waves which the mind interprets as the seen or an action. We therefore see light but think the seen or an action. The ear receives sound-waves which the mind interprets as words. We therefore receive sound but hear words e.g., a foreign language is just sounds and not words. We know words, but they are actually sounds. ...

Actually they're sensations. But I get your point and on top of that we talk to ourselves and think a thought but it's not, it's a think.

Every sound in daily life is not heard as words, but only certain human sounds are heard as words. ...

They it's not every sound then?

The human mind knows the word 'silence'which is yet again just sound, which means the human mind does not know what silence is and can never know silence. This is because the human ear cannot receive silence for the mind to recognise silence. The human mind has evolved to receive sound as words and not silence. So our daily life is thinking, and this thinking is illusory and not actual meaning real. It only appears as meaning real as appearances only, our true nature is what we are in deep sleep or death or anesthesia.

Then how do you know that silence is the "... substratum of all phenomena"?

You have never died, nor have you ever been born.

Well I haven't died yet but sure as eggs is eggs I was born and my mother has the scars.

This is what God is. There is only God.

And the odd seven billion people and trillions of insects, etc.

The words I'm using are only pointers pointing you to you. ...aka Blank fillers..

Which I fill with the memory of the representations from my senses.

[Immanuel Can]

I think I see what you mean but the value comparison between there being a god and there not being one presupposes that a situation in which God exists and one in which he does not exist are both conceivable.

That might be true: but it was not I who conceived it. It's conceived in the question itself. The words "destroy Himself" pretty much establish that.

I agree that such would be impossible. It would be incoherent to speak of a "Supreme Being" as a real entity, but also as one who also "did not exist." That's precisely the point, I would say. There's inherent contradiction in the question -- not in my suppositions in answering it.

I do understand I think where that point Andelm an the others is coming from experientally. But there is a kind of flaw in those proofs. The meanings of the terms - the correct meanings - are so inaccessible themselves requiring mystical union to experience that the proofs really fail on accessibility of the premises. Worse, the common understandings of these terms -God, good, etc- provide a purely logical misinterpretation of the proofs.

I confess that I can't follow your reasoning there. You've lost me.

I really appreciate the quality of your response. In the end I think there is an equivocation between god being the good and it merely being good - better to be exact - for god to exist.

Thank you...I think. But I was not positing quite what you attribute to me. I was only speaking of the illogic of claiming a "Supreme Being" as a coherent concept, but then positing "non-existence" of it at the same time. For that concept could only be inferior in greatness to the same concept with "existence" posited as an additional perfection. In other words, if, as per Anselm's proof, we have conceded that Supreme Being is a coherent concept, we're logically bound to have to accept "existence" as part of the package of Supreme Being.

Of course, the Atheist can always retreat and claim the concept "Supreme Being" is not coherent: but then he'd have to show why it's not coherent, and that seems quite unlikely for him to achieve...certainly counterintuitive...and perhaps impossible in itself.

...it is appropriate to call all speech of god nonsensical,

Lewis and I will both disagree with you about that, I fear. We would see God as a God of reason, not merely of unreason.

...then that account will have to avoid explaining away all of the intellectual and experiential content that is its legitimate reference.

I don't think so. Some people could consider God by way of reasons, and another person by means of experience. There might be many routes into the question. Of course, at some late point in the encounter, experience must be involved too, for only by that means can a relationship be established. But up to that point, reason can do a lot of good work. If nothing else, it certainly tills the soil for an experiential faith to grown in good ground.

[Dontaskme]

DAM: The human mind knows the word 'silence'which is yet again just sound, which means the human mind does not know what silence is and can never know silence. This is because the human ear cannot receive silence for the mind to recognise silence. The human mind has evolved to receive sound as words and not silence. So our daily life is thinking, and this thinking is illusory and not actual meaning real. It only appears as meaning real as appearances only, our true nature is what we are in deep sleep or death or anesthesia.

Then how do you know that silence is the "... substratum of all phenomena"?

The whole universe is a single aware living organism including the sub atomic particles like quarks, leptons, bosons, neutrinos etc. Awareness enables atoms and molecules to interact with environment and form life. Life being a self sustaining feedback loop of constant interaction. The substratum of all phenomena is the noumenon in which all phenomenon arises and passes within..the substratum of all experience and existence. It's not an experience, nor has it been seen..it is this self evident ''knowing''...one with the knowing. It knows because it is interacting with itself only.

Whatever exists is experienced as the sublime awareness which is ones very nature. All things are identical with ones own innermost awareness. Everything that exists is of the same nature of non-dual knowingness which is the great potential, the space of potential. Ultimate Reality is Immanence...aka Tacit...otherwise known as God.

[Dontaskme]

DAM: Nothing is separating us, we are made of the stuff we're appearing in. ...

Well I agree it might all be one substance but you appear to not be able to move then.

What you are Awareness does not move. Movement is a mental distinction, only the mind is moving within stillness. Nothing could move without stillness, although any movement is an illusion of the senses, awareness doesn't move, it is everywhere at once, therefore all movement is within itself only, not outside. There is nothing outside the dream of awareness ...just as no character ever moved in a nightly dream, all characters were contained within the dreamers awareness....there is nothing outside of awareness...in the same context there is nothing outside an ocean, the waves cannot separate themselves from the ocean, waves are moving only within the ocean itself, therefore the waves are nothing but the ocean waving to itself.

That's Nondual reality in a nutshell, and there is only Nondual reality. People are waking up to this truth now...all thanks to the internet.

[Dontaskme]

Whatever exists is experienced as the sublime awareness which is ones very nature. All things are identical with ones own innermost awareness. Everything that exists is of the same nature of non-dual knowingness which is the great potential, the space of potential. Ultimate Reality is Immanence...aka Tacit...otherwise known as God.

When Jesus Christ walked the earth back in the day...he too taught to anyone willing to listen the Non-dual nature of reality. And is why Jesus was the only true living God...all other God's pale into insignificance compared to Jesus. The truth is, there can only be one truth, and Jesus told the truth and died for that truth... and it is up to each one of us to decipher the truth for ourselves.

The life of Jesus was an exemplary lesson for all of us... his life is well documented recorded in the gospels of M.M.L.&J. ...even though the life of this man was written 30 or so years after he left the earthly plane for good. Paul is said to have wrote very accurate historical documents containing 100% true & precise evidence through Ist hand eyewitness accounts that Jesus did exist and that he was killed on the cross and was indeed resurrected ..some reporters at the time were willing to die for what they had witnessed, for they had come to know the truth first hand and were not afraid to lose their life, for they trusted what they saw with their own eyes.....some witnesses were still alive at the time Paul wrote his testimony for the resurrection ..therefore, the claim could never have be refuted.


If no one believes this, but wants to believe it then research it for yourself, but you will have to do some deep digging, truth does not want to be heard...but the gospels are the most reliable authentic historical documents ever recorded in living history......and just like any PHd student ..one has to do their research first before becoming a master of their knowledge.All Knowledge regarding history is found in a history book....The Bible was the ultimate His-Story book....see for yourself, the proof is in the pudding.


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