Can God create another God?

In that case Galactus serves as your archetype for what I am describing.

Hi, Open MInd. Well, I didn't say that. At least, not while sharing my own opinion. Okay, this makes perfect sense. I can understand where you're coming from now.Personally, I still disagree. I think the problem is resolved by the addition of free agency, which prevents any being from actually controlling another without the other's allowance.I also see all possible Gods as being united at least in principle, so that conflict is minimal. Further, each God could easily be given His or Her own domain, in which only He or She has the capacity to rule as Lord or God or Father or whatever. So, I don't see multiple Gods as being competitors at all.Obviously, I don't believe in a perfectly unlimited God, so I guess that makes a difference when considering the limitations of His hypothetical actions. To me, this is more interesting than just that. It implies that God is a God of order, as opposed to a chaotic God, because there is a structure and a system that defines His character. If He were completely infinite in all ways, we could essentially know nothing about Him at all.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Double Post.?Edited by Bluejay, : Double Post

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Rahvin. Oh yeah? Well, my God existed before the dawn of the universe, and besides, my God could create a God who could blow up Galactus with one blink of His eyes. So, there!

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

I think you would be touching on some of the logical continuations of Judaism, if you would agree that G-d is not comprehendible. You see, the idea of G-d which I have given you is a Being that is necessarily not understood by anything other than Itself. If it were possible for anything to "fully understand" the nature of G-d, it would be a limiting factor. This is of course not the case if the Being that understands G-d is equally unlimited with an infinitely perfect intellect. Therefore, the true nature of G-d is not possibly understood by any other being. This means that it is not possible for G-d to create another being that will truly understand His own nature unless that other being is another god. Since this is not possible, G-d cannot create anything that would truly understand His own nature. This may explain why G-d is not comprehendible to human logic. This is because human logic was given to humans as a tool to realize G-d's existence, but not as a means of understanding G-d. I personally find it simple to understand that certain things are not comprehendible by logic. This is because if humans would no longer exist, human logic would no longer exist. The idea that everything in the Universe must be explainable through the logic of one species is not only arrogant but absurd. Just as humans have physical limits, they have an equally impassable logical limit.

Hello open mind, I just have a question about your veiw of god. You say that god can do anything so long as it does not place a limit of what god is. Isn't this statement contradictory to itself however? You are placing a limit on god by saying that, god can not do anything that limits himself. Not being able to do anything to limit himself is in fact a limit. So god would not be able to do that either.

Hello again, Bluejay If you analyze this statement closely you will see what is wrong with it. When you add the "free agency," you have just added another limiting being into the picture. The definition of G-d cannot allow for such a being. You yourself make this clear when you use the word "prevents." This definitely implies limitation. What you are doing is using different words to describe the same idea. If these two beings are completely "united," then you have only one being. If they are not completely united, they are by definition in conflict. You have to think: What makes these two beings seperate if they always agree on everything, always let the same things be done, and never limit the other one? Your personal beliefs have nothing to do with the Jewish beliefs. All I am doing is giving you a system of understanding G-d in accordance with the Jewish perspective. I would also like to point out how the discussions in this thread seem to point to the problems with other people's imaginations of gods. This threads topic question underlines the way many people are using strawman arguments. They create a dubious understanding of what they consider to be a god, and then they disprove it using very simple logic. This does not mean that G-d does not exist. It just means that their fairy tales do not exist.

I am glad you are asking this question because it has a very nice answer. Consider a limit as a negative. It is something that a being cannot do, and it can be understood as -capability. Now when I say that G-d cannot limit Himself, I am saying that he lacks this negative. Since limit is viewed as -capability, cannot limit can be thought of as -(-capability). Another way of saying this is unlimited. In short saying that a being cannot limit itself is the same thing as saying that the being has no limit. This is the nature of G-d's perfection. Any problem with this understanding is purely involved with the language used to explain the concept.

Hi, Open MInd. How would our ability to understanding Him change what He is capable of doing? If He is able to throw fire from the sky, and we learn how He does it, does this prevent Him from being able to throw fire down from the sky? Sure, it rules out all the other possible mechanisms by which He might have done it, but the only things that are pared away were erroneous before we pared them away, and thus, had no explanatory power anyway.The only limit that it could conceivably have would be in the mind of the viewer, because the viewer no longer sees the event as a spectacular show of incomprehensible magic. But, the actual ability is not diminished in any way. In this, I also disagree. Logic isn't something that arises from human sensibilities: it's something that attempts to divorce human sensibilities from the process of problem-solving, and dealing purely with causal analyses that arise directly from the physical world. It is, in fact, a beautiful method by which humans can find solutions to problems that are really beyond their capability of understanding.General relativity and cosmology are good examples of this: without logic-derived mathematics, physicists would never have been able to understand these processes in nature. But, with logic, they were able to explain what no human brain is really capable of accurately visualizing or comprehending. So, I did not believe that any limits there may be to the power of logic are not directly correlated with the power of the human brain.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

You are probably correct in your statement that it is a language problem in understanding. However when you same that god can not not limit itself, than you are saying that god can limit itself. Which you said it can not do. It is contradictory to itself. It does not imply unlimited power or else you wouldn't be able to place any qualifiers on god in the first place. I believe that no human can place any qualifiers on god since no one can know god, but that is my personal opinion.

Hi, Open MInd. Your definition of God cannot allow for such a being. But, there is a problem, because free agency does exist.Consider:If agency exists, a God fitting your beliefs does not exist (at least, as long as we assume that your logic is correct). If agency does not exist, then we must conclude that I am being compelled by God to argue that your definition of God is flawed, and that you are simultaneously being compelled by the same God to argue that my definition of God is flawed. We know that the compulsion for both me and you would have to come from the same God because you have said that no other volition can co-exist with an unlimited God.So, either there is free agency, or God has a serious multiple-personality disorder. If God can control our minds, why would He put Himself through the agony of making us disagree with each other and go to war and torture people that He decided to make into heretics?Of course, agency isn't the topic here.----- What definition requires that conclusion? Do you believe that rational, intelligent beings are physically incapable of agreeing with or tolerating one another? Do you also believe that rational, intelligent beings are physically incapable of staying out of each other’s business? I would say it is because they are, in fact, two beings. If I were to agree with somebody on all issues that we ever discussed, always came the same conclusions, and stayed completely out of each other’s business, this would not turn us into a single person. Why should this turn two Gods into a single God? I don’t think this thread’s intention was to discuss Jewish beliefs, so it’s a little unfair for you to say that anybody else’s arguments are dubious strawmen because they don’t line up with your beliefs. In the realm of religion, everybody’s belief is considered a strawman in relation to everybody else’s.My rebuttal to your argument could easily have been, “You’re wrong: that’s not what God’s like at all,” and I could use dozens of scriptures from the Book of Mormon to support my case.You’ll notice that I didn’t do that. You’ll also notice that I didn’t even refer to any scriptures at all.I asked why you think it’s impossible for two all-powerful beings to co-exist peacefully, and I offered a possible way in which such beings could co-exist peacefully. I think it’s a fair and legitimate question.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

First of all, if G-d is infinite in His capabilities, it is not possible for anyone to understand Him without a similar infinite capability for understanding. You would not be limiting G-d by understanding Him, if you were infinite yourself. Since this involves creating another god, it is not possible. I thought this was explained in the next few sentences which you did not quote. With regard to your second point, if logic is not relative to human beings then it is not possible for a god to exist. This is probably the reason for your not "fully" believing in a god (at least it seems to me from your posts). You must realize that logic is a result of chemical and electrical processes in the brain. If these processes were changed to create another system of logic, you would think completely differently. And guess what, if every human brain was altered to fit this new system of logic, the idea of logic will be completely different. Once one system of logic is present, that system will be assumed to be an absolute truth. However, if this is only a result of chemical reactions in a constructed framework, it is obvious that logic itself is dependent on what kind of brain an organism has.Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

I will approach this topic from a different perspective. I will disprove any kind of god that you can think of that does not fit with the one that I have presented. To start, why not assume that every human being is really a god. If you find something wrong with that, try to think of how your version of god fixes that problem. If you give this debate a fair try we may actually get somewhere. I must also admit that I have not fully explained the Jewish idea of G-d, so you may not have a clear picture yet. Just as an additional note, when someone creates a version of a god, and then destroyes it with simple logic, he has created a strawman because it is obvious that he never really believed in what he proposed as truth. Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

I did not say cannot not limit itself. If I did it was a typo. Also please use a logical reason for your personal opinions otherwise we cannot have a debate.

The logical reason for the belief I stated is quite simple. It is also one that I belive you would agree with. It is very much similer to the first message you posted hear in which you describe that nothing that humans can concieve of is able to limit god. I believe, same as yourself (from what I take from your posts) that no human can understand the nature of god. It would be like a single ant being able to understand quantum mechanics. So any argument we can concieve of, as to the nature or limitations of god pail in comparison to what god is. It is an argument strictly from the standpoint of humility. I was merely trying to point out that I believe even your statement that god can not do anything that takes away from his perfection is still a limitation that you are placing on god. It is possible that god may function in a logical and illogical manner. What seems common and logical to us today, would have appeared to be miraculous and to defy logic in the past. So we do not have ultimate athority on what exactly is logical and permitable and that which is illogical and forbidden.