Can God create another God?

I think it might be a little enlightening to some of you to hear what the Jewish perspective on G-d is. The idea of G-d is a Being that contains all means of perfection. This does not mean that G-d can do anything imaginable by human beings. Every action that will lead to a defect in G-d's perfection "cannot" be done. Creating another G-d will necessarily limit G-d, and undermine His perfection. Therefore, such a thing is not possible even for G-d. Just the idea that a human can think of something that G-d cannot do does not limit His perfection. This is because all of the things that humans are thinking of are limiting by there very nature. This question is, therefore, an example of the general question: Can G-d limit himself? The answer is that G-d cannot limit himself. The ability to limit one's self is not a perfection. Therefore, G-d is not capable of doing certain things, but this does not yield any imperfection. This is the Jewish idea of G-d. I don't know what your god can or cannot do, but that is only a problem with your conception. I hope this was helpful. Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.Edited by Open MInd, : Most of these edits were for spelling and grammar issues. Some sentences were added in order to make the point a little more clear.

Hi, BluejayThank you for pointing out some unclear points in my post. With regard to your first point I must explain why G-d will be limited by another being that has exactly the same attributes. You are correct when you say that G-d is only all-powerful if He is the only one. This is explained through many of the other previous posts in this thread. Someone mentioned that it would be funny to watch the two gods fight it out. This line of reasoning makes my point clear. G-d is not all powerful or perfect if there is another being that will have equal control. Anything that one being wishes to be may be contradicted by the other being. Since the creation of another god involves creating a being equally as powerful as the first being, the first being is now limited by the second and the second is limited by the first.With regard to your second point, I am sorry for being a little too unclear. I meant to say that most of the questions that human beings ask along the lines of "If he is so great can he ...?" usually involve some sort of limitation. Therefore, the underlining question in most of these questions is: Can G-d limit Himself? The answer to this question is no. Similar questions are: Can He destroy Himself? Can He make a rock that even He cannot lift? Can He create a competitor? All of these questions are answered in the same manner. G-d cannot limit Himself. And this is not a limitation of His perfection.

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 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.

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.

Hello Bluejay,
Thank you for your response I understand what you were trying to say. I actually tried to start a whole new thread with relative logic as the topic of debate. Unforetunately, it was not promoted. You must understand that the concept of sound does not really exist without organisms with ears. This does not mean that sound waves do not exist. There is a disturbance that can be measured by a computer without being heard by an organism. This, however, is not the concept of sound. In fact if no living being would exist in the entire world, or no being had what we call ears, the idea of sound would logically not exist. Therefore, we can make the same argument for logic itself. You can not seem to get off the notion that logic is something that absolutely exists even without the existance of humans, space, time, or matter. But you must understand that this is just an assumption. You have no way of proving that an absolute set of logic exists. The reason for your not being able to imagine another system of logic stems from the fact that what you have to think with, the human brain, is using this system of logic in order to make you think the way you do. Your fealing of "that is absolutely logical" can be correlated with some chemical or electrical process in your brain. If this process was different, you really would feel that other things are logical, when average humans will call them illogical. It is absurd to think that our brain is producing absolute logic. That is exactly what I am saying. It is interesting to point out that there is a mathematical proof for 1 + 1 = 2, and it is not a mathematical postulate. The mathematical postulates are not possibly proven, and they are considered the most basic and logical concepts. However, these concepts are just that, postulates. This means that there is no proof of their correctness other than saying that this is the most simple building block of human logic. It is an assumption based on the chemical processes of the brain. Sorry, I honestly do not understand this. Please clarify.

No, the definition of absolute truth is the word of G-d. No, you have to realize that what may seem bad to you is not necessarily evil. A good example is a person who does not make an airplane flight. He thinks it is evil. But then, the airplane crashes. Was this event evil. Similarly, if you believe in an after life, even is not evil. G-d does NOT do evil. If you are well versed in the Torah, you may bring me some verses that seem to say that G-d created evil. This however, means that G-d created man with the free will of doing evil. Yes. However, all of these things are actually written in a manner that humans can understand. Nothing can understand the true attributes of G-d other than G-d himself. How do you explain the verse in the Torah that talks about the hand of G-d or the mouth of G-d. It is written that way so that people can understand it.

I think it is simple to say that if two gods did exist, and both were omnipotent, theoretically speaking they could each "kill" the other one. If you can create it you can destroy it. Not only will the first god be limited it would be completely destroyed. Now out of your two choices I choose (b). With regard to your rebuttal: All you have done with this statement is proven that it is not possible to have two omnipotent beings. Following your line of logic, we may have an infinite amount of omnipotent beings. Included in that infinite number may be yourself. You would be completely omnipotent. But, since everything else in the world is also completely omnipotent, you cannot limit anything in the world. In fact, you cannot act at all since you would need permission from all the other beings before you would be able to act. This would be exactly the opposite of omnipotence. I hope you see through this example that the definition of omnipotence is completely lost when another being may have the same thing.

I will tell you what I have told others: READ THE REST OF THE POST.
I already explained and answered your problem. You have a different understanding of bad and good. Your definition of good would sound something like: Good is anything that I think is good, and bad is anything that I think is bad. Now I hope nobody here goes as low as doing something like this: This is kind of what you just did, but that is a side issue. My point is that if G-d does something it is by definition good. The evil that exists is the result of human beings. When a human acts vengeful or is jealous, he is doing something that is bad because G-d said that it is bad for humans to do such things. Obviously there is a big difference between the vengful or jealous nature of humans and that of G-d. Otherwise humans would be doing nothing wrong. As a side issue, I would like it if you would clarify where you see vengence or jealousy in G-d. I may have answered your question in the previous post, but I may not have if you are thinking of something else.

Either you are not understand my point, or you are chosing not to listen to it. Let me clarify, your arguments are just proving that the existence of two omnipotent beings is not possible. You are only helping my arguement by showing how a paradox would exist if there were two omnipotent beings. Also, I want to know what you have to say about the rest of my post. It made perfect sense, and you did not comment on it. I show that according to your principles of what omnipotence is, everyone in the entire world can be omnipotent. This is of course absurd. Try to see it from my point of view and I think you will understand.

Hi Agobot,
I hope you see how I have answered your question. On a side note I would like to point out that your topic question is a very common one. It has been answered years ago in the manner that I have shown you, and just asking it again as a means of disproving G-d, shows that you have not been doing your homework. Regarding your latest question, first read my reply to Straggler. Next, I must add that you have no knowledge of G-d other than what you have thought of on your own. Unforetunately, your god is a strawman, and I have made that point already in this thread. You create a version of god that is disproven with baby logic. This only shows that your understanding is flaud, it does not make any proof.

Think of G-d as a life machine, not a killing machine. Every moment of your life exists because of G-d's will. Therefore, G-d does not have to kill anyone because nobody is alive without the will of G-d. If He stops willing your existence, you will cease to exist. This is not even death. This means you completely disappear. "Tried" is not even a real thing when you are refering to G-d. Furthermore, who gave you your children? Who sustains their lives? Your question shows that you have a wrong perspective.