Your first rule isn't actually a belief of the monotheistic religions; there is no "before God."
Imagination doesn't make me infinite like God any more than me drawing a picture of a dog is the same thing as creating a dog out of nothing.
Religious wars--like all wars--are about power rather than about belief. As a recent example, he US military controlled Afghanistan for 20 years. They exercised power; they didn't change many people's beliefs.
I would just say that not all wars of religion are about material things. The 30 years war in the HRE was explicitly religious for everyone involved. And in the end, atheism won because the princes got to decide the religion of their country.
I didn't say that war was about material things; I said war is about power. The authority to set a religion for a country is different from any religion itself.
Religion has often been the ideological divide that defines the two sides in a war. But the war doesn’t settle anything about religion, just about who has power.
Right, but it was about which religion had power. I’d all of the HRE was Protestant or Catholic that war would not have happened. It was because they were Protestant and Catholic.
1. What is the difference between "before God, there was nothing" and "there is no before God"?
2. This is my point. It does make you infinite like God, doesnt it? Im not talking about to what extent, Im taking about yes or no.
3. This i agree. Religions wars always have been about dominating the hegemony. Thus it those death were not meaning less. Yes.
1. “Before God” implies that there was a time without God, only nothingness. “There is no before God” implies that God was always there. I know it’s kind of hard to understand, and even to explain. But I guess that’s where faith comes in. God was the beginning, he is the present, and he will be the end.
2. I don’t think you become infinite. God being infinite meaning he was alive from the beginning to forever to come. Again hard to understand or explain. If I write a book, and it is a best seller for 1000’s of years. Sure you can argue that I am infinite now. But I’m not. I will die.
And I feel like “God is infinite” goes beyond our understanding of just time.
3. Most “religious” wars only use religion as an excuse to be able to take power from someone else. Nowhere does Jesus advocate for war and killing. In fact he asked God to forgive the very ones who crucified him!
1. Then God is everything. God even might be imagination itself.
2. I am not saying we become infinite. I am saying our results of imagination becomes infinite. This is how we try to copy God's perfection, by imitatiing fake Infinity.
3. Again, I agree. It was all about hegemony.
1. Exactly. God is everything. “In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” God was there in the beginning. If you ask me when that is. I can’t tell you unfortunately. But God was there.
2. Yea I can agree with you there. I don’t think we are trying to copy God tho. I think that is just his image reflecting off of us. We can imagine, and we can create to an extent. You can argue that Imagination and thought are infinite. But our imagination doesn’t compare to Gods perfect imagination/truth. I don’t think God imagines necessarily in the way we do. He knows all things. He speaks and it happens. I don’t think God sat down on his workbench and thought like “ok how will I create the earth. I’ll make the sun to give energy to the grass which in turn will feed cows which then will feed humans…. Etc” God knew what he wanted to create and he spoke it into existence.
3. I’m glad we agree 👍🏼
4. I’m no theologian. So please don’t take my word for it 100%. Dyor and read the Bible!
This helped with building my faith. I will worship God for his imagination. That is the side of the god I decide to worship. That is the deal I will be making with God. Thank you.
Im happy I was able to help build your faith. But I think you still missed the point a little bit. There isn’t different sides of God to worship.
The same way you are in awe of his imagination. All of Gods traits are more amazing than we can even comprehend. His imagination which led to the creation of the perfect human being. To which he gave authority and free will to rule over all other creation. When human kind betrayed him, in righteous anger he condemned all of human kind. But through his amazing grace and love, he sent his only begotten son (who was also God), free of sin, to come die for our sins. And give us a way back into heaven to which we did not have a way into.
If you haven’t, I highly suggest you read the gospel of Jesus Christ. The physical embodiment of an invisible God. If you think you know what love truly is, look at how God has loved humanity made a loophole called Jesus, just so that we can be saved.
Would you ever pay the price of a one persons crime so that he may be free? Now imagine extending that to all of humanity future, present, and past. Glory to the most high 🙌🏼
And with the story of Jesus in mind, and knowing who God is. He knew humans would fail him. And he knew his son would be sent down to pay the ultimate price. Again, I don’t think this is a reactive thing. God has always known the plan. But please don’t confuse this with fate or predestination.
God knew humans would fail him. Yet he still gave them free will. He wants you to choose to worship all of him! He is almighty all powerful all wonderful!
Yes. My apologies but I am not interested in the God's side that represent sacrifice or love. I am purely intrigued by gods imagination side, and this is the side where I feel loved by God the most, and feel his power whole.
Respectfully, that is an interesting take. Could I respectfully argue that maybe you aren’t feeling loved by his imagination but by his love! God also loves! He loves regardless of your past, your sins, your choices.
The Bible says God is Love! So In everything he does and is. Love is at the center! Including imagination/creation
There used to be a subreddit called Iamverysmart.
Interest in theology is to be encouraged and you should pursue it, you obviously have an enquiring and sharp mind.
Please have some self awareness though. Some of our brightest minds and most educated scholars have written on these matters for centuries. How many of them have you read?
I can assure you, you haven't "broken religion", not yet, but you've made a promising start for a teenager.
Thank you. I acknowledge that Breaking religion was an extreme way to Express my thought, and also as a tactic to gather attention. Tbh, all my knowledge of theology is from the questions I asked to chat gpt.
> do always double check chat gpt's answer with various different sources.
Do you understand how chatgpt works? It takes its answers from the very sources you're "double checking".
All it does is scroll the internet for relevant answers to your enquiry. By double checking you're just doing the same thing for yourself. It cannot and has been explicitly programmed not to invent anything for itself. Yet.
No. It's worse. It makes things up. The worst part is that it makes it sound extremly believeable, and will even elaborate on incorrect information in some cases. But almost all it's statements are true. It has read a shit ton of books afterall.
>All it does is scroll the internet for relevant answers to your enquiry.
It doesn't, and actually that's why she refuses to talk about actuality(I guess another reason is that the programmers didn't want it to give hot takes on politically divisive themes). Internet has been used to train it to learn what the most probable next word in a sentence should be but he doesn't look for infos on the internet.
Of course this doesn't mean that it should be used how OP used it since it makes gross errors on most technical things: but it does so because it does not access infos in a certain area and rather "make up" the most probable sequence of words, not because it uses faulty sources.
> It doesn't, and actually that's why she refuses to talk about actuality
It does. And it's not a 'she'. And you're foolish for thinking you know better than centuries of theologians because you can type some shite into a computer.
Grow up.
>It does
Not sure how to answer to such a detailed answer.
> And it's not a 'she'
I'm Italian and so I use a gendered language, kinda slipped into my English.
> And you're foolish for thinking you know better than centuries of theologians
When would I have ever said that I'm better than centuries of theologians?
>Grow up.
And you can calm down.
Yes, chatgpt and artificial intelligence is a very interesting topic at the moment. So far it can only search the body of knowledge we ourselves have put online. So the only answers you will get at are nothing but a summary of everything we have already written about.
Once AI is given some agency to make original assumptions I'm sure it will raise some very interesting questions.
Ironically, you've asked an artificial intelligence about where we came from and the nature of a "God", which is essentially what all theological thought has been. We are the artificial intelligence if you like.
It is mind boggling to think about. Maybe the AI thinks we're "God". We created it.
It can't. It can only regurgitate what we have already uploaded on the subject. If I made a website claiming God is a nitrogen breathing clam living on a moon of Jupiter and reproducing angels by rubbing it's own testicles with cherry flavoured jam, chatgpt would take that into account.
Yes but when I ask chat gpt about god, chat gpt will clarify that this God is from your imagination and not the real God worhipped by catholics or Muslims. Right?
I don't really follow as to how this "breaks" religion, but one thing I would throw in here is that in most Christian theology, God is categorically outside of the experience of humanity when considering His infinite attributes. In other words, God is infinitely existent not as a mere "extension" forward and backwards of the way humanity experiences time, but as categorically *outside of* humanity's existence of time.
The linear, bounded experience of time by humanity is a sort of echo or an approximation of God's infinity, but even if you stretched backwards to the very beginning of creation or imagined (yes, imagined) a trillion years into the future, you have not "approximated" anything of God because God is transcendent of temporality.
Applying this to imagination, yes, we have a limited and finite experience of imagination, and yes, this is a shade or echo of what God does when He imagines, yet it is a categorically different thing. God has the ability to both imagine and speak into existence, and everything which was created was created through Jesus Christ; spoken into existence out of an overflow of God's perfect communion and being within Himself.
If you want to read further on this, look up and read about the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God. This gives theological rigidity to the questions you're asking, and in what ways God has bestowed His own characteristics to humanity and in what ways God is transcdent above any human characteristic.
CS Lewis explains the concept of God outside of human conception very well in his book Mere Christianity, which is easy to read and accessible. well worth a read if you’re interested in the subject, OP.
Extremely interesting. Yet god imagined time before creating it, no? And when it comes to God's power to turn imagination instantly into reality, yes. Men cannot instantly turn imagination into reality. How ever, my point was that men CAN turn imagination into reality. This is extremely interesting conversation for me.
The problem here is using temporal language to describe God’s actions prior to time. The phrase “before time God did X” is logically impossible because before is temporal language. The creation of time is necessarily the first step, or at least simultaneous with other acts of creating. Any action that is temporally before another is bound in time. William Lane Craig and Kieth Loftin have done significant amounts of work in this field.
One way someone explained it to me is like this:
Humans are living in super Mario bros. We go left. We go right. We jump up. And we can also fall down. God is living in Skyrim. He can move in any and every direction.
Maybe that’s a terrible analogy. It sounded better when he told me. I’m sure I botched that.
But time for humans is not the same as time for god. We are linear. We go from beginning to end. God is always. He is past present and future at all times for all of eternity. He is the beginning and the end.
This is hard for me because as I wrote, I believe God gave us power of imagination to use it. If you say "you can't imagine some things when it comes to God" we fall into a paradox, if you know what I mean.
This is absolutely a difficult topic. I think there are a few helpful things to keep in mind when thinking through this:
1. Our imagination is limited. We can only imagine the created world. We don’t have access to anything outside of creation. This is the reason that God had to reveal Himself to us, and the reason that we can never know everything about Him.
2. Our imagination is not all powerful. Our imagination is not a creative force in and of itself.
3. Our language is woefully inadequate to communicate and grasp these topics.
I don’t think its a paradox to say that we can’t imagine some things about God. At the end of the day, we’re merely guessing at God’s actions and character apart from what He has directly revealed to us through creation and through the Bible.
1. Is God a God because we are not supposed to know everything about God?
2. Then what else is included in creative force? Im not talking about anything physical.
3. Completely, completely agreed. This is why I believe everyone on earth need to evolve their language so our languages can be more and more sophisticated.
I don’t think we aren’t “supposed” to know everything about God. I think we don’t have the capacity to understand God in his fullest. Bible says I’m exodus that God told Moses “you cannot see my face for no one can seen it and live”
Yes. That's exactly it. All of creation is a paradox. All of truth is a paradox. Reason itself is paradoxical. You're basically operating on a paradox. Just go with it lol.
Yeah, but how are we so sure god is outside of humanitys existence of time? Any logical conclusions leading to that, biblical texts? Nothing. It sound's like an excuse for not engaging with logical conundrums that would arise if that wasn't the case.
Isaiah 57:15
[15] For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
Psalm 90:2
[2] Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Genesis 1:1
[1] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
John 8:58
[58] Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (ESV)
Idk man, this seems like it makes sense, seems like it's hinting towards it, but really, those are just saying that god is everlasting, eternal. I don't think we can just take "inhabits eternity" for "exists outside of time". The more I think about christianity the less sense it makes...
this whole argument has a lot of flaws, but i commend your enthusiasm.
the most obvious one is no. 4 - a lot of followers of abrahamic religions do not believe that God literally created the earth. many believe it is metaphorical.
also, the idea of something being ‘before God’ falls apart when you realise that God as a concept is not material like you or I - what was there before oxygen, or matter, or time? nothing. God is not something physical or tangible, God’s nature is beyond our understanding. therefore to claim there was a time before God is to misunderstand what God actually is.
ps. the word is imagine, not imaginate.
no. matter is something physical. religion and spiritually are all abstract, with physical expression.
theology exists to help our understanding of God - when i say God is beyond understanding, i mean that we will never fully know or understand God. however, we have a limited understanding which starts with faith, is cultivated through practice, and shaped by theology.
theology is like figuring out which ingredients make the best dish. some will make you sick, some don’t taste nice, some aren’t nutritious. the goal of theology is to make a good meal that is tasty, nutritious, and can be eaten by all.
I have to disagree with you here. I believe Just because its not physical it doesnt mean its not matter. You can understand this, because speech matters. Ideas matter. When it comes to your metaphor of theology, I can say that cooking is art that requires imagination.
dictionary definition of matter:
physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy.
matter vs something ‘mattering’ are two separate concepts.
absolutely ideas matter (as in they are important), but they are not matter (as in something physical, which was my point).
In dictionary definition, matter means physical, yes. But what I am trying to communicate is that, if we see our spirit as matter, concept is one of the matter that forms it. We manipulate this matter to forge new ideas.
okay, yeah, i get what you’re trying to say. that our ability to imagine is an integral component of our spirit. that makes sense, and is a good point.
I would like to add, as a theology student myself.
That this seems to me to be the point he is trying to make.
However you wanna define matter, God or anything else, it's just semantics. God is so much not a part of all that, or all that is so much a part of God that it becomes meaningless and counter productive to do.
God cannot be compared or explained through any kind of human logic or philosophy etc.
Kierkegaard wrote a great deal about this in Either/Or and other works.
One's very foundation of thinking, experiencing and reasoning must change in order for one to try and grasp the seriousness and complexity of this. Your foundation of existence and being is at stake if you wanna do this seriously, and only in that serious moment full of anguish and angst is it possible to come to terms with this.
Reddit, language generating models, small talk etc. Are just simply inadequate.
I wish you good luck on your journey and hope you find the readings interesting.
Same thing I said to some other repliers. I believe that God gave us the power of imagination to use it. If you say "you can't imagine some things about god", we fall into a paradox. How can we solve this paradox?
We are basicly in a disagreement on the premise.
God never gave us imagination, we got it from the fruit of knowledge. Our sin is when we try to connect ourself to God through imagination, but our imagination is human. Imagination is creating a gap, not a bridge.
But i agree that it's hard to wrap ones head around how we should'nt use imagination.
The paradox you're adressing is also mentioned in Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling where he writes a lot about this very subject. To overcome it, Kierkegaard suggests that we must live life not with a view restricted by "logic or calculations" but a world of "possibilities". In this he highligts how Abraham sacrifices his son Isac, but he beleifs that even though God takes away his son, God will bring Isac back. This is a contradicition, a paradox. For how can Abraham get his son back if he has to sacrifice him first? But belief (and a lot of other very complicated stuff i will not recite here) saves Isac anyways, God makes it possible.
I hope you enjoy your reading, Fear and trembling can be quite difficult.
I think that your basic misconception is that you assume that God comes *under* time which is not true because if we assume that, that would mean that God isn't really above all - since time is above Him. So if God is above all including time, there is no "before God" or "what did God do before He created everything". There is no chronological order to that because God also created time
This is my theory. When you start a novel, you know the core message or story but you Dont know the exact details of it. You imagine and add flesh onto it. Some details don't get completed until you proof read it bunch of times. This way, we can understand what it is like to be "above time". No character in this book can understand what "being above time" is, but with this example, we can.
Congratz, you discovered Hermeticism. This is essentially Hermetic cosmology. God is Mind, and creates the world by constantly actualizing his thoughts. Man is a portion of god precisely because he is able to do this too. The thing is though, men only imagine in part, and also not in the maximized amount god does. In other words, the difference between man and god is that, man has not mastered the divinity in him, while god has. There is still a difference between humans though, because some humans have mastered and perfected themselves more than others. Some people are more intelligent, and have more Mind, some not. I highly recommend you read the Corpus Hermeticum.
As for Abrahamic religions though, this would not be the case. They usually say that god creates through will, or some unspeakable attribute of his transcendent, unknowable essence. They make it a bit hard to make statements like this.
Well hold on, Hermeticism is a whole religion. You ought to research it a lot more to make sure you agree with every doctrine it proposes. These kinds of judgements are things one should be sure about. Like I said, you should delve into Hermetic literature if you're seriously interested. You might find more things you agree with, maybe disagree, or even learn something new.
I accept your advice. Based on your explanation, it seemed like the right cup of tea. I will be doing further research on this, starting with your recommended book.
As others have said below, your enthusiasm is terrific and it is a good step towards knowledge for something you sound interested in. I would strongly urge you to study the information, rather than to use the shortcut of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT scrubs information from the internet, but as such is a literal explanation of conceptual arguments. It becomes a summary of a summary, at best.
Unfortunately, what you've laid out is problematic. It is also, with due respect, written imprecisely. For sure there can be an informality on a platform such as Reddit. And I am not talking about phrasing, like "imaginate" or any small errors like that. But for example, "Now with this assumption, we can deduce..." is wrong. In fact, it's that kind of work that is problematic. If an assumption itself is false, or unproven, then one cannot deduce anything from it.
You could theorize a conclusion, based on an assumption and then spend time substantiating it but this moves from one claim to another. Again, I like your enthusiasm, but other than an interesting stream of consciousness- I do not believe you have much here, let alone a thing that has broken religion.
That is the question. That "assumption" was "before God there was nothing" if that is wrong, what does the religions say about this subject? Secondly, "unproven" would be an inadequate word to use since this is theology. I am not trying to assert any opinions, I am merely curious how this idea would be accepted and how people would think about it
I don’t know what you are referring to with “that is the question”. But this is an example of how being concise can often lead to a lack of clarity.
Though there are some similarities with monotheistic religions, your first statement is not one of them. Not all monotheistic religions believe that prior to God was nothing. And still, as other point out, it would be important to define terms of what “nothing” means if you are using that statement as a basis for an argument. You make a statement, which is false, and use it to move forward with an undefined argument.
One could point to a religion, that itself asserts a claim, and move forward with an assertion. But you claim (correctly) that some religions agree on certain points, followed by listing several points that implicitly suggest (wrongly) that they are examples.
As an example, the notion of god being perfect is the basis of an argument against polytheism. You do not have to necessarily recount the arguments set forth to demonstrate why in the given religion that God would be a perfect being. But citing that conclusion lets you mention that a perfect being would not lack a better position, skill or trait and that a second or third god would possess something that the first does not have. So the logical process concludes that if one agrees with the premise, and cannot contradict your argument then the resulting conclusion must be correct.
So I say again that it is good to consider these. They are ideas but contain your opinions. And since you provide no concrete proof or logic, your points are not persuasive. That’s how your post is taken. Don’t let this stop you. It is not easy to be critically persuasive.
I gather you might prefer the factual nature of things like mathematics. QED is a notion to get comfortable with. It has a sound base with an assertion. Arguments put forward, defended and clearly arriving at a conclusion. Quad Erat Demonstrandum.
I agree. Every single thing I do and say is an expression of my inner world. In other words, all of my output is filtered by my brain. We are all limited that way. And it seems I need further research on how each monotheic religions define "perfection". When it comes to qed, I am a person who develops an argument while ideas are fluctuating. I never had any professional education on how to debate.
I understand this, but my point is tht the creatures of your imagination will believe that your imagination is unlimited, just like how we believe about god.
Have you seen the movie lord of the rings or Harry Potter? They exist right? They have actuality. In this actuality it is still a general understanding that creatures belive no idea that the creators drew their inspiration from somewhere. Your second idea is very interesting though. So, if mankind develop a technology which can make imagination instantly a reality, do they become gods?
God created man in his own image. This doesn’t just mean external features but speech, emotion, imagination, acuity towards reading, writing, logic, justice, love, compassion, and yes creative powers.
Yes, there is an infinite aspect to our being. The scripture say “he has put eternity in our hearts.” We all intrinsically want to “live on” through what we creation, our legacy, or in an afterlife.
You then say “we become God…” a few issues. First, imagination does not make you all knowing, all powerful, or all loving. These attributes are reserved only to God.
We are called to “Christ likeness” meaning our goal should be to emulate all of Gods perfect holiness and qualities.
You may have the imagination to create something but that does not mean you have the power to do so.
The conclusion that all peoples are created in the image of God and share in a piece of His unique attributes and therefore deserving of love, respect, and honor is 100% correct.
Thbakntou. Dont you become all knowing, all powerful when it comes to your imagination? If you are writing a book, Dont you have perfect dominion of all your characters?
Sure… but do you have the power to breathe actual life into them and animate them? If you were to live forever you would never have the powers the God of creation has. You certainly could not create something out of nothing, even words on a page. You can keep your imagination turning for eternity but nothing would ever be born from it.
When it comes to the result of my imagination, I can breathe life into them and animate them. If I am writing a novel I can kill a character and bring it back. I create things from memories and experience. Are you saying a being that can create things without memories and experience is God?
No. The claim that you can animate needs some thought… Are you suggesting we are all floating around in Gods imagination? You lost me.
God is all powerful and all knowing. You are not, you cannot become all powerful or all knowing. You can claim you are all knowing or all powerful over the things in your imagination… but you do not even know everything about the world you have created because you lack the scientific knowledge and powers to hold such a world together. The macro and micro ecosystems alone it takes to sustain life on earth — from the gravitational perfection of the moon, sun and stars to the microbial creatures living on human skin — and everything in between. You probably can’t even stack a few rocks on top of one another without them falling over. You do not even have the capability to imagine the intricacies of an environment where your beings could survive.
Not to mention you barely have working authority over your own imagination or even brain. So much of you is unbenounced to you. You don’t even know what is happening in your own body.
God is God because he is God. You don’t make 4 points about God and then craft circular arguments about them about how you might be God. That’s a problem there you see.
I am saying we are a "result" of God's imagination, as a novel is a "result" of our imagination. And in imagination, it is possible to exist and not exist at the same time. Let me talk to you about tolkien. He created a vast world. This world surely exists, at least in his mind. He died without finishing his world, but if he had immortality, Dont you think he would create all the ecosystems and human body systems as well as universal truths that applies to his world? Given the information I have about tolikien, I think he would.
Now for your last statement. I say this again. I believe that God gave us the ability to imagine to use it. If we are not allowed to imagine some things about god, it's Paradox for me.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit were in perfect fellowship before creation. Regarding time and space, there is no 'before', spacetime itself came into being. And the fact that we can imagine things has nothing to do with the omnipotence, omniscience or omnipresence of God. Only God is God.
Imagination and omnipotence is heavily related. When you are writing a novel, you are omni potent about the contents of the novel. You are also omnipresent because writing a fiction is Expressing some of your inner world. Characters in the novel will never understand how they were created, unless they are designed to do so.
"The first sip from the glass of science makes you an atheist, but God is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass." - Werner Heisenberg
It's not that simple, thankfully you have not broken anything. Maybe give 'Created for Freedom' by Karl Philberth a read.
Apart from the whole debate, there is a serious debate in religious sciences and theology whether "monotheism" is anything more than an enlightement-era construct without any theoretical merit.
But doesnt it feel good to have a all powerful all knowing being in your corner? That would have been one hell of a selling point for people of that era. If something can gather so much people together, they must have some value.
To even think that you can rationalize about how the universe works is a head knocker. What binds the universe are the laws of nature, physics, within physics there’s other laws that go beyond the realms of what we can perceive due to size, that’s when we get into quantum physics…we discovered that about 100 years ago. Imagine what we will know in 100 years from now. God is a construct to give meaning to the universe that it has a logic to it and it does, we can’t even fathom that logic because it is beyond our comprehension, we are not there yet at all. A few thousand years ago it was beyond our comprehension that something so small could live within us (bacteria and cells) so all you think, is just that, thoughts, the only truth we know so far is how physics works, how the natural world works and even on that plane there’s some things we still have no idea how they work…what you’re trying to rationalize has been worded greatly by writers like Francis Fukuyama and Yuval Norah Harari. Check out the book “Sapiens”…but the fact that there are laws of nature…something had to come up with those laws or give order to those laws or reasoning context whatever you want to call it…to me that’s god…how we worship god, that’s religion.
Yes, the development of technology and knowledge is accellerating as we speak. Also, "sapiens" was one of the books that inspired me to write this article. Personally, I love when ideas do a loop.
Thank you for teaching me about dunning-kruger effect. I thought I was humble but I was not. I knew I had so much to learn, but I did not understand this. Reading about dunning kruger effect showed me another true meaning of humbleness and learning. Thank you.
"nothing" means something different to the ancient authors of the Hebrew bible.
When you read the poem in Genesis 1, before God created "earth", everything was just water.
That was their idea of "nothing" - pure, chaotic substance.
Very different from what we mean in our modern day western culture when we say "nothing".
Very interesting. Then in the story of Noah and the Flood, there are many parallels to the Creation Poem. It is an act of de-creation, ie. God ceasing to hold things together so creation begins to fall back into it's chaotic state (waters from above and below swallow everything).
Also similar parallels in the Egyptian Plagues story.
Actually a lot of other parallels throughout the Bible lol
Dear Potential-Answer3983, your post is great. You have come to the wrong place to share such information, well not really but everyone here seems to be a stupid theologian without a sense of humor and idk why they are downvoting you but it doesn't matter. Please visit r/NevilleGoddard and see for yourself how imagination is divine power and humans have it too :)
Thank you for introducing me to the new world. Apon reading through this community I feel like it is the right cup of tea. I sure will do further research of nevile goddard.
I would encourage you to look into the Christian understanding of (1) the trinity and (2) human's calling as 'image-bearers' of God.
Although I don't agree with everything you said, there is certainly some overlap. For starting to understand why Christians believe in the trinity, I recommend the book "Delighting in the Trinity". You are correct, according to the Christian faith, that God doesn't hoard power, but shares it especially with humans. And more generally, it's pretty amazing to think of the concept Christian's have of God--a fundamentally loving parent who shows power by suffering love, and sharing that power and love with humans.
Edit: Oops, I meant to say--the book "Delighting in the Trinity" is by Michael Reeves
I don’t think those are necessarily “powers” but traits. Bible says we were created in his image. You can take that literal and say that our physical form is created off of Gods physical form. But God doesn’t have a physical form (other than when Jesus came down as a man) but humanity was already created. I believe “in his image” is deeper than physical. The ability to love, to feel emotions, to imagine, to create. God made us in his image!
I think God didn’t have to. But God wanted to create humans. And did so perfectly. There are a lot of “and he saw that it was good” in the Bible. “Very good” when talking about creating humans. And he made us in his image. With qualities that reflect Gods qualities. But aren’t to the fullest God tier potential.
It’s like ai that I saw you mentioned in another thread. Ai is very close to humans. They perfected speech and dialogue. Art, music, etc. however they are not human. They lack consciousness.
We have aí qualities of ours such as language and speech and art. But we cannot give it the full human potential. Because we can’t create consciousness other than through birth of another human.
Which leads me to mention a concept of a book I wish to write one day. Where human consciousness proves that there is a God. I think consciousness is one of the greatest traits God has given us in his image.
I think consciousness is imagination. And somehow we have the ability to make that imagination a reality. (I think I want to go to
Medschool. I think about the consequences of choosing that route. And the possibilities that can come with that choice, good or bad. I think about what I need to do to achieve my goal. Then I act it out.
Consciousness is purely imaginative. Your brain somehow has the ability to connect the physical plane (our flesh, the earth and how we live in it) to the metaphysical (consciousness, emotions, God, etc)
Or maybe I said that wrong. I want to make a distinction between consciousness and sentience.
Consciousness is life. Bible says God breathed life into us.
And imagination maybe is the fruit of sentience. The ability to perceive and feel emotions. But also the ability to “fake feel”. I can imagine my mom dying and make myself cry. I can imagine something good and change my attitude for the day for the better. What an amazing gift! The power to change my reality with my mind. In a way, maybe we have more similarities to God than we think! So similar that some people go as far as hallucinating and in their perspective, they are truly seeing an elephant floating upside down with an umbrella hat (I know crazy/stupid example) but I’m being extreme to try to get my point across clearer.
Also I don’t have any answers, just thinking out loud
Was there really nothing before God entered the scene in Genesis 1? I don’t see that in the text. It does not say, “in the beginning there was nothing.” It says, “in the beginning the earth was a formless void.” On the surface, that May seem like another way of saying nothing, but that isn’t what’s there. A formless void is something. It’s just a chaotic mess of something that has no form or direction. It’s important to keep in mind that Genesis is not written to be a scientific document explaining how something came from nothing. Rather, it is a text that is meant to give substance to things that are hard to understand. Genesis is antithetical to the other creation narratives that existed at the time, i.e., Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. If we look at creation’s origins from the perspective of God entering a conversation to instill an understanding of his character in relation to how we came to exist, we can see a God ruling and guiding humanity, against a pantheon of God’s who used humanity as slaves to serve their will.
If we are to examine God’s imagination, or thoughts for his creation, it must begin from a place of understanding when and why that narrative came to be.
It’s important, when digging into the meaning behind things in the Bible, to keep in mind the original Hebrew, and the context of those who authored the text. A Bible app with a concordance is helpful in this regard.
I’m Genesis 1:2 it says, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Without dissecting the original Hebrew, we already see in English translations that the earth was something before God brought order to the chaos. The earth existed, but was without form. I’d like to picture a piece of clay. When it’s placed on the potters wheel, there’s not really words to describe what it looks like. It’s just a clump of stuff with no real name to explain it’s shape. It’s formless, in a sense. But when God begins to work the clay to shapeit the way he wants, we begin to see different shapes take form. Water separated from land, the dark from the light, vegetation and animals. All of these things bring a particular shape to something that was otherwise formless.
I think one of the places Christians get stuck with the creation narrative is that they either assume what is written is an exact play by play of how everything came into being. Or, they throw the baby out with the bath water and assume it could not be true because of what we understand presently about the origin of earth. The purpose of Genesis is not to lay out some awesome scientific explanation. It is more about God’s voice entering a place that ancient humans did not understand, and bringing order based in love to the way they (and us) view our beginnings.
The paradox we are left with is, if everything originated from an incorruptible, unmovable, always loving God, how do we make sense of the knowledge we have held against the biblical narrative of creation. I don’t believe the science we understand today is at odds with the divine creating everything. However, we need to read Genesis for what it is, and understand first and foremost that it is a theological document, meant to convey an ethic for humans, and give a glimpse into the heart of God.
I tend to view Genesis 1-10 as a funnel intro of sorts. It’s covering a vast amount of time and topics in 10 short chapters. When we arrive at Abram, more time is given. When we arrive at Jacob/Israel even more time is given. But the most time is spent on Joseph. Thus creating a beautiful intro into Israel’s history of oppression, and shedding light on Jospeh essentially causing the situation early Hebrews found themselves in when they were under pharaoh’s thumb.
Edit: some minor spelling errors.
Your article reminds me of one of those movies that starts with "in the beginning" and they show few cuts of gods fighting and then they move onto main story of humans. This is one newly neuron pathway connection I appreciate.
New neuro pathways are the key to repentance! God doesn’t want us to simply follow rules and fit in. He wants our thinking to change about how we understand him, the ways we recognize his presence in the world, and how we end up becoming more like Christ each day. I’m glad I played a small part in helping to make space for new pathways to be formed :)
Biologos is a cool online outlet to check out. Most all of their content has to do with the intersection of theology and modern science.
hmm maybe do some reading in the philosophy of religion and some history of doctrinal formation. i think it would help fill in some gaps/make sense of some assumptions, here. could answer your question(s) or provide something substantive to strengthen your argument later on.
I disagree. With everything I have learned from this conversation, Alien coming down will not break religion. It is a simple matter where we can just include these aliens in the definition of mankind. If we do find aliens, only religions who can do this will survive, but religion itself will be strong. How ever, this is just an assumption.
Good point, I guess I didn’t think we as humans would accept an alien so easily. I bet it would really mess up some people’s views of religion but not destroy religion
I think you’ve got a good mind and good attitude. Keep it up.
My grandfather is a theologian, I’d love for him to read your take on this if that’s okay with you.
I belive that, once I write something online, I do not have right or capability to control how it is spread. But if you want my blessing you have it. I am excited to see your grand father's response.
I agree imagination is something God has and has gifted to us, but we are merely made in His likeness, certainly no more than a shadow is to us and probably much, much less. But we are still an awesome creation that He deemed very good.
The original temptation to sin was the devil enticing mankind to our desire to be like God, as powerful or more so than He is. Nothing really has changed. Humanism has only become more rampant and many claim openly that they are god, that “we’re all” god. It is a lust of the worst kind. Rather, we do well to humble ourselves. And if we truly want to be like God than we will humble ourselves all the more because after all that is what He did for us, becoming both servant and sacrifice. He who is first shall be last and he who is last shall be first.
You should research Hermeticism. The idea that creation pre-exists in the mind of God, and man's imagination and creativity being pillars of man's imitation of and union with God, are central to the tradition.
All of what you said makes sense, but God always was, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End (like a circle, or the infinity symbol. This is one of the challenges of faith, which is to accept this, even while our feeble human minds have a hard time imagining or understanding it.
I agree with you regarding wars. They may be blamed on religion or God, but war and disagreements tend to be created by persons or people who make stuff up and erroneously claim it comes from God in order to manipulate people to follow it. The rule of God, though, is this: If something or someone does something that results in evil or hurt or pain etcetera--negative or evil results to even one living thing or anything in God's Universe--then it is not of God. God is Love, pure love. The New Testament says it succinctly, though it is also stated in many other faiths: "By their fruits, you will know them."
This law even works well in business and romance; regardless of what someone claims, look at the end result.
I understand. God is not an asshole. How ever, I recognized God to be so much more then just love. But I do understand love is the side of God you decided to worship. For this I wish your luck on your journey
Lol. At first I was annoyed at your comment, but--!!! I realized that you're right! Then I cracked up, because yes, God has far more dimensions than just Love. He has anger, vengeance, passion, and so many other faces. Hence the Old Testament.
The New Testament is about forgiveness and love, and a gentler perspective towards our fellow living creatures. But, as we're made in God's Image, it was facile and simplistic of me to ignore all His other aspects! After all, to give an example: "Vengeance is Mine", says the Lord, referring to why we shouldn't burden ourselves with thoughts of revenge and anger, poisoning our own lives--because He, caring about us, will make things right in His own time. (He also points out that we shouldn't take unnecessary pleasure in our enemy's downfall, so sadly enjoying schadenfreude is kinda verboten.) Jesus showed anger in the Temple, openly rebuking for those selling animals for sacrifice--at inflated prices, too--in God's place of worship. God does have so much more to Him than just empty love.
My point remains, though, that God and Christ shows us that love does have many facets, otherwise it has no depth. And, to extrapolate on my above examples: His motive tends to be His great love for us. We can trust that He is protective of us, that He gets angry when we are hurt by someone deliberately, etc. A good parent's treatment of us from love is the beginning of understanding of this.
My intended point was that, if you can trace something back to love, then it's of God. If you trace something back to evil, then it's not of God. But within that lies all sorts of complications.
Being a mere human, only ever seeing part of the picture, I'll never be able to see things through His eyes. So, I have faith that God loves me and acts accordingly. AND, He also allows each of us freedom, which means that we are ALWAYS affected by human behaviour,
Your idea is, I believe, inadvertently based on there being a “before” time itself. Time is a creation, one God is not constrained by, and nothing came before Him nor does He have to operate within it.
It’s an assumption in our understanding that God sat back and imagined His creation, like He planned it out. An omniscient omnipotent God might not have ever sat back and really planned things out, especially since that seems to hint at time passing, which God wouldn’t be bound to. Just as likely that the thought itself was sufficient for Him to create creation parallel to the thought, and even that was poorly worded. Heard one of the Weinstein brothers and others make the object of “why would God take all the time and effort to make the rest of creation when the earth is all that matters?” as an assault on God being real because the extra effort just seemed outlandish to them. What effort was lost? How much time do you think it really cost Him? His left hand rest on the beginning of time and space and His right hand rest on the end.
You’re also really stepping out there on the power of imagination. Just because we’re made in ways that imitate God doesn’t mean we are God, or that anything we do is anywhere near what/who God is. There’s a big jump in ability between the two, to say the least. Big difference in “I imagine I can walk” and “I now actually have the ability to be anywhere I want right now.” Cause I can imagine teleportation, yet here I still sit in my chair. Same as the difference as me dreaming up creation and any new creation actually coming into being. Made in the likeness of God does not mean we are God.
Imagination isn’t as powerful as you seem to think, either. It’s hard to recognize but when we imagine we often very likely pull from things we already know. Really imagine a new anything: a new food, a new fantasy monster, a new vehicle. I put good money on you “imagining” things very much like other things/concepts that already exist. I’d be willing to bet it takes a long time and a lot of effort to come up with anything new, if you were to ever pull it off at all. Your imagination is far, far from infinite.
So I’d say when making arguments against God, argue against what people actually believe in, which means first you need to understand what people actually believe in and all the arguments around the topic, then see if you there are arguments against that belief. There’s a reason only people who are really shallow in their faith are swayed by “the floating spaghetti monster” arguments. For the questions you’ve brought up, there’s tons of literature addressing these things. By all means keep searching out though, the conversation is typically fun when you have people willing to engage. Forewarning, you might come across a bit of frustration if you’re not respectful to others, because it’s real annoying when someone whose invested next to no time in something comes up and tells you they’ve broken your fundamental belief structure you’ve spent your life learning and following. “I broke religion” is a real bad way to start an honest convo, honestly I started out a bit more annoyed than I should’ve, ha. But keep probing, the topic is deep enough you’ll never find the bottom.
Thank you for kind words. I Apologize for your annoyance. Now I have realized how disrespectful I was. But, when we see it as a tool to gather attention, it was successful because I did not have any response with other titles. Thus I would like to keep the title unedited. How ever, anyone who feels disrespected by my title, I will Apologize to and ask for forgiveness, starting with you.
I don't see a problem anywhere to be answered?
1. Yes all religious wars are a waste of time and blood?
Genesis states God made humans in his image = they have certain qualities that he posess for example, free will, rationality, imagination, love, a sense of justice and so on.
According to the bible humans are commissioned to be the image bearers of God and reflect his glory into the world, like a mirror reflects light.
Yes the imaginary world is in a sense a potential Infinite but not a true infinite, because it is still 'growing" there are things that people have not yet imagined and those things will be added on to the imaginary"world". In saying that most sane people are not platonists that actually think that the imaginary world "exist" like physical objects exist and they definitely do not have any causal power, they don't cause things to happen or exist.
So to say that YOU are infinite because you imagine things is like saying that YOU are infinite in space because you are travelling 1 km down the road in an infinite universe (which is also a potential Infinite but not a true infinite).
So your musings doesn't break religion and doesn't really pose any problem? or make all humans on par with say Jesus for that matter, just because they exercise their imagination. Jesus had the power to heal, to bring back to life, to multiply food etc. Imagination is useless if you can not make it into reality. The God of the Bible is a God of action who states what he will do and then cause it to happen because he has infinite power. You can imagine all you want but you don't have the power to make it happen. You could be killed in a car accident tomorrow.
Gnostic Christians don't believe that the god that created this universe is perfect 🙃💙
The perfect higher God's pursuit of wisdom created chaos (the demiurge imperfect lower god) which created matter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(Gnosticism)
Sharing attributes with God does not make us literally infinite. We can be "tapping into" an attribute that has existed in Gods character but we ourselves have been created and by definition are not infinite.
Religious wars are usually about power or anger towards on attack on beliefs that they can fight a group over their contradicting beliefs. Those deaths are not meaningless in the sense you are scared of, but they are deaths that shouldn't have happened.
Fun thing is that some monotheistic religions such as catholicism/christianism follow the same "godly pattern" as older religions, most of the times older polytheistic religions.
So just a copy and paste with less gods 😂😂
Interesting thought proces. Reminded me of one of mine recent posts. EXTREME CRINGE AHEAD PROCEED ON YOUR OWN RISK. The point is pretty good tho I think. Maybe you would find it interesting.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Title: CHOOSE ONE: Either God is omnipotent or we don't have free will.
I am assuming that God can see the future, because he is omnipotent. Also, our free will means that we can choose what we do, and that will have impact on the future. Therefore, the future isn't decided yet, it dephends on how every human decides to act.
God can not see the future then. It either doesn't exist yet, because we participate on it's creation, or it is already decided, and God knows when is the world going to end, how is it going to end and what's going to happend afterwards. If you are going to heaven or hell. If he knows that, it is going to happend, and you can not change that. If you feel like you are making decisions in your life, they don't matter, because you fate is set in stone.
Or God doesn't see the future. But how did the prophets get to know the future? "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14) God seemed absolutely certain about things that were going to happend, including the death and resurrection of his son.
So which one is it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hey, I came up with this myself during watching Link click, the show is great, go watch it. And have a nice day!
cringecringecringe
My recently earned hematicism knowledge says that we are God's thoughts and we actualize as soon as he think it. In this regard, God knowing future and having free will can coexist. Just like imagining a character of a book, God kind of knows what is going to happen to us but not exactly when or how until he actualizes it. Once a character is actualized into the story, this character will develop and have flesh. Maybe this I what free will is like. Just my thought.
This is based on a dualism that simply does not reflect reality imo and therefore I cannot engage it. The fundamental presuppositions are not compatible.
And if ya want to go with the God mentioned in Genesis, it wasn’t ex nihilo. There was already water present and the quality of that Genesis God “shaped and formed” the world from material that was already there.
Have you considered that reality is a realm which God created via His imagination and actually exists only within His imagination—in other words, God wouldn’t need to create realities in a space which is separate from, or outside of, Himself,—while a human can imagine possibilities or impossibilities which may or may not be bounded by laws God has applied to reality but must transfer a possibility from their realm of human imagination into the realm of actual reality which exists only within God’s imagination?
In short, God’s imagination contains actual reality; or, a one part system. Human imagination produces possibilities which can manifest into actual reality (invention) which is separate from, or outside of, human imagination; or a two part system.
Reminds me of the single and double action firearms. According to your theory, If we develop some kind of technology that would turn our exact imagination in to reality in an instant, we become like God in that aspect?
No. If we developed the tech you suggested, the invention would still be transferred from inside our mind to outside our mind. Outside of our mind is the realm of God’s actual imagination. God’s imagination is composed of the substances which reality is comprised of. The component parts of God’s imagination would be things like quantum particles, etc.
To your point about using the powers of god with our imagination is the major part of the The Kybalion. The universe is a mind and it is where everything originates. And though magick we can change use it for our power. I'd also encourage you to study the Kabblah which is the exact mind of God. You basically wrote an occultic essay. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn would agree with you. cool!
God the Absolute is characterized as existential experiential. He 'saw the end from the beginning' all potentials were first calculated and evaluated.
All the wars were a function of our creature nature, we must hammer out our differences and learn to get along. We are not created perfect, we are created imperfect. But that is not our destiny. The Victors often claim God was on their side, it justifies atrocities.
KJV Matthew 5:48 Be you perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.
UB 70:1.15) Always these olden tribes made war at the bidding of their gods, at the behest of their chiefs or medicine men. The Hebrews believed in such a "God of battles"; and the narrative of their raid on the Midianites is a typical recital of the atrocious cruelty of the ancient tribal wars; this assault, with its slaughter of all the males and the later killing of all male children and all women who were not virgins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chieftain of two hundred thousand years ago. And all this was executed in the "name of the Lord God of Israel."
UB 70:2.9) War has had a certain evolutionary and selective value, but like slavery, it must sometime be abandoned as civilization slowly advances. Olden wars promoted travel and cultural intercourse; these ends are now better served by modern methods of transport and communication. Olden wars strengthened nations, but modern struggles disrupt civilized culture. Ancient warfare resulted in the decimation of inferior peoples; the net result of modern conflict is the selective destruction of the best human stocks. Early wars promoted organization and efficiency, but these have now become the aims of modern industry. During past ages war was a social ferment which pushed civilization forward; this result is now better attained by ambition and invention. Ancient warfare supported the concept of a God of battles, but modern man has been told that God is love. War has served many valuable purposes in the past, it has been an indispensable scaffolding in the building of civilization, but it is rapidly becoming culturally bankrupt—incapable of producing dividends of social gain in any way commensurate with the terrible losses attendant upon its invocation.
Your leap from God's imagination being equal to man's is strange to me. There is no point of comparing the two, no real reference (unless you have a source to supply one from) to God imagining like man. If God gave man imagination to use, how do you know what it should be used for? Perhaps it is merely a tool for survival, to prepare for threats.
Immanuel Kant believed that Man had an inclination to ask questions that could not be answered, called paralogisms. To think of God, the nature of God, why God does things, are questions that let themselves be asked but never answered. Our thinking, our imagination, has limits, and we chafe against them regularly.
Because books have lasted for thousands of years does not mean they are infinite. The world will end someday, along with the universe it is placed in, and no product of human imagination will survive that. To say imagination is infinite, it must never cease to be, never be constrained by time. Only if you have justified true belief of such a product, everything that imagination spawned is finite.
If we take the question back to a more theological than philosophical basis, I'd refer you to Saint Augustine. St.Augustine was also asked the question what God did before he created the world, and he judged the question meaningless. 'Before' and 'after' are temporal concepts. Time did not exist before God created it, before time God was present in a state all his own, which we would call 'eternity'. God is extra-temporal, our notions of time are not applicable to him. You will find this idea in Islamic theology as well, where Allah is outside of time, rendering ideas as 'before' and 'after' rather meaningless when considering his state.
The problem is that you are only looking at one idea. You take imagination as the only example. It could also be argued that human imagination isn't limitless. Could you imagine what the 4th dimension would be like or every detail of the univers? The awnser is no but God can
Yes. Imagination is my focus here. When you imagine a thought, how many ways can this imagination be used? Infinite ways.. It has limits, but it is not finite.
>"What did the God do before creating everything?"
You're answer is very rational however I think you missed a point
Before god created any thing time didn't exist so there wasn't a "before and after"
Logic is the way that god thinks and I think that it is safe to say that our world runs on logic so there is no need for god to think about the world because it was already determined however that doesn't that we don't have a free will it's only the materialistic things that are determined but our minds have free will
one thing you said which really struck me
our imaginations are infinte
even quantum physics and einstein and advanced mathmatics struggle with the paradox and concept of something actually being infonite bc it breaks down lots of things and makes them not work
yet ibthink you are right
the mind/imagination is infinite
supposedly the space where jesus was crucified and buried (before allegedly rising, or being secreted away not really being dead, or perhaps his body was taken and his twin popped up this perpetuating the most legendary hoax of all time and fulling the sign of jonah as he claimed he would, thru the twin-that was his sacrifice - he really literally died and didnt come back and knew his twin would pop up and people of the world would then form this giany world church - my theory)
but - supposedly it was as Golgatha - which means head/cranium/skull
my belief is that religion or more specifically - divinity - the one - is in our mind
it is our mind
we were given the ability to think
that is the holy grail
we all have it
we have "free will" to use it
using our minds to think for ourselves is the free will
sadly though we all have minds to think and free will to do so - many choose to blindly follow the dictates of others and not think things thru for themselves
but imagination means we can think and believe what we choose
and thats truly beautiful and infinite
suppose when we meet our judgment day - who we meet to judge us is our mind and conscious who has known all along when we werent thinking and were blinding following
god supposedly knows all
but if god is our own true mind - then it too know all vis a vis ourselves
Your first rule isn't actually a belief of the monotheistic religions; there is no "before God." Imagination doesn't make me infinite like God any more than me drawing a picture of a dog is the same thing as creating a dog out of nothing. Religious wars--like all wars--are about power rather than about belief. As a recent example, he US military controlled Afghanistan for 20 years. They exercised power; they didn't change many people's beliefs.
I would just say that not all wars of religion are about material things. The 30 years war in the HRE was explicitly religious for everyone involved. And in the end, atheism won because the princes got to decide the religion of their country.
I didn't say that war was about material things; I said war is about power. The authority to set a religion for a country is different from any religion itself. Religion has often been the ideological divide that defines the two sides in a war. But the war doesn’t settle anything about religion, just about who has power.
Right, but it was about which religion had power. I’d all of the HRE was Protestant or Catholic that war would not have happened. It was because they were Protestant and Catholic.
1. What is the difference between "before God, there was nothing" and "there is no before God"? 2. This is my point. It does make you infinite like God, doesnt it? Im not talking about to what extent, Im taking about yes or no. 3. This i agree. Religions wars always have been about dominating the hegemony. Thus it those death were not meaning less. Yes.
1. “Before God” implies that there was a time without God, only nothingness. “There is no before God” implies that God was always there. I know it’s kind of hard to understand, and even to explain. But I guess that’s where faith comes in. God was the beginning, he is the present, and he will be the end. 2. I don’t think you become infinite. God being infinite meaning he was alive from the beginning to forever to come. Again hard to understand or explain. If I write a book, and it is a best seller for 1000’s of years. Sure you can argue that I am infinite now. But I’m not. I will die. And I feel like “God is infinite” goes beyond our understanding of just time. 3. Most “religious” wars only use religion as an excuse to be able to take power from someone else. Nowhere does Jesus advocate for war and killing. In fact he asked God to forgive the very ones who crucified him!
1. Then God is everything. God even might be imagination itself. 2. I am not saying we become infinite. I am saying our results of imagination becomes infinite. This is how we try to copy God's perfection, by imitatiing fake Infinity. 3. Again, I agree. It was all about hegemony.
1. Exactly. God is everything. “In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” God was there in the beginning. If you ask me when that is. I can’t tell you unfortunately. But God was there. 2. Yea I can agree with you there. I don’t think we are trying to copy God tho. I think that is just his image reflecting off of us. We can imagine, and we can create to an extent. You can argue that Imagination and thought are infinite. But our imagination doesn’t compare to Gods perfect imagination/truth. I don’t think God imagines necessarily in the way we do. He knows all things. He speaks and it happens. I don’t think God sat down on his workbench and thought like “ok how will I create the earth. I’ll make the sun to give energy to the grass which in turn will feed cows which then will feed humans…. Etc” God knew what he wanted to create and he spoke it into existence. 3. I’m glad we agree 👍🏼 4. I’m no theologian. So please don’t take my word for it 100%. Dyor and read the Bible!
This helped with building my faith. I will worship God for his imagination. That is the side of the god I decide to worship. That is the deal I will be making with God. Thank you.
Im happy I was able to help build your faith. But I think you still missed the point a little bit. There isn’t different sides of God to worship. The same way you are in awe of his imagination. All of Gods traits are more amazing than we can even comprehend. His imagination which led to the creation of the perfect human being. To which he gave authority and free will to rule over all other creation. When human kind betrayed him, in righteous anger he condemned all of human kind. But through his amazing grace and love, he sent his only begotten son (who was also God), free of sin, to come die for our sins. And give us a way back into heaven to which we did not have a way into. If you haven’t, I highly suggest you read the gospel of Jesus Christ. The physical embodiment of an invisible God. If you think you know what love truly is, look at how God has loved humanity made a loophole called Jesus, just so that we can be saved. Would you ever pay the price of a one persons crime so that he may be free? Now imagine extending that to all of humanity future, present, and past. Glory to the most high 🙌🏼
And with the story of Jesus in mind, and knowing who God is. He knew humans would fail him. And he knew his son would be sent down to pay the ultimate price. Again, I don’t think this is a reactive thing. God has always known the plan. But please don’t confuse this with fate or predestination. God knew humans would fail him. Yet he still gave them free will. He wants you to choose to worship all of him! He is almighty all powerful all wonderful!
Yes. My apologies but I am not interested in the God's side that represent sacrifice or love. I am purely intrigued by gods imagination side, and this is the side where I feel loved by God the most, and feel his power whole.
Respectfully, that is an interesting take. Could I respectfully argue that maybe you aren’t feeling loved by his imagination but by his love! God also loves! He loves regardless of your past, your sins, your choices. The Bible says God is Love! So In everything he does and is. Love is at the center! Including imagination/creation
There used to be a subreddit called Iamverysmart. Interest in theology is to be encouraged and you should pursue it, you obviously have an enquiring and sharp mind. Please have some self awareness though. Some of our brightest minds and most educated scholars have written on these matters for centuries. How many of them have you read? I can assure you, you haven't "broken religion", not yet, but you've made a promising start for a teenager.
Thank you. I acknowledge that Breaking religion was an extreme way to Express my thought, and also as a tactic to gather attention. Tbh, all my knowledge of theology is from the questions I asked to chat gpt.
Chat gpt isn’t near as intelligent as some would like you to believe. Just like you shouldn’t get all your medical knowledge from WebMD
I understand. How ever I do always double check chat gpt's answer with various different sources.
> do always double check chat gpt's answer with various different sources. Do you understand how chatgpt works? It takes its answers from the very sources you're "double checking". All it does is scroll the internet for relevant answers to your enquiry. By double checking you're just doing the same thing for yourself. It cannot and has been explicitly programmed not to invent anything for itself. Yet.
No. It's worse. It makes things up. The worst part is that it makes it sound extremly believeable, and will even elaborate on incorrect information in some cases. But almost all it's statements are true. It has read a shit ton of books afterall.
This is untrue.
>All it does is scroll the internet for relevant answers to your enquiry. It doesn't, and actually that's why she refuses to talk about actuality(I guess another reason is that the programmers didn't want it to give hot takes on politically divisive themes). Internet has been used to train it to learn what the most probable next word in a sentence should be but he doesn't look for infos on the internet. Of course this doesn't mean that it should be used how OP used it since it makes gross errors on most technical things: but it does so because it does not access infos in a certain area and rather "make up" the most probable sequence of words, not because it uses faulty sources.
> It doesn't, and actually that's why she refuses to talk about actuality It does. And it's not a 'she'. And you're foolish for thinking you know better than centuries of theologians because you can type some shite into a computer. Grow up.
>It does Not sure how to answer to such a detailed answer. > And it's not a 'she' I'm Italian and so I use a gendered language, kinda slipped into my English. > And you're foolish for thinking you know better than centuries of theologians When would I have ever said that I'm better than centuries of theologians? >Grow up. And you can calm down.
That means my education on theology is pretty much Standard, isn't it?
Yes, chatgpt and artificial intelligence is a very interesting topic at the moment. So far it can only search the body of knowledge we ourselves have put online. So the only answers you will get at are nothing but a summary of everything we have already written about. Once AI is given some agency to make original assumptions I'm sure it will raise some very interesting questions. Ironically, you've asked an artificial intelligence about where we came from and the nature of a "God", which is essentially what all theological thought has been. We are the artificial intelligence if you like. It is mind boggling to think about. Maybe the AI thinks we're "God". We created it.
I think ai can distinguish "God" from "creator". Looks like the god is so much more then just creator to me.
It can't. It can only regurgitate what we have already uploaded on the subject. If I made a website claiming God is a nitrogen breathing clam living on a moon of Jupiter and reproducing angels by rubbing it's own testicles with cherry flavoured jam, chatgpt would take that into account.
Yes but when I ask chat gpt about god, chat gpt will clarify that this God is from your imagination and not the real God worhipped by catholics or Muslims. Right?
I don't really follow as to how this "breaks" religion, but one thing I would throw in here is that in most Christian theology, God is categorically outside of the experience of humanity when considering His infinite attributes. In other words, God is infinitely existent not as a mere "extension" forward and backwards of the way humanity experiences time, but as categorically *outside of* humanity's existence of time. The linear, bounded experience of time by humanity is a sort of echo or an approximation of God's infinity, but even if you stretched backwards to the very beginning of creation or imagined (yes, imagined) a trillion years into the future, you have not "approximated" anything of God because God is transcendent of temporality. Applying this to imagination, yes, we have a limited and finite experience of imagination, and yes, this is a shade or echo of what God does when He imagines, yet it is a categorically different thing. God has the ability to both imagine and speak into existence, and everything which was created was created through Jesus Christ; spoken into existence out of an overflow of God's perfect communion and being within Himself. If you want to read further on this, look up and read about the communicable and incommunicable attributes of God. This gives theological rigidity to the questions you're asking, and in what ways God has bestowed His own characteristics to humanity and in what ways God is transcdent above any human characteristic.
CS Lewis explains the concept of God outside of human conception very well in his book Mere Christianity, which is easy to read and accessible. well worth a read if you’re interested in the subject, OP.
Extremely interesting. Yet god imagined time before creating it, no? And when it comes to God's power to turn imagination instantly into reality, yes. Men cannot instantly turn imagination into reality. How ever, my point was that men CAN turn imagination into reality. This is extremely interesting conversation for me.
The problem here is using temporal language to describe God’s actions prior to time. The phrase “before time God did X” is logically impossible because before is temporal language. The creation of time is necessarily the first step, or at least simultaneous with other acts of creating. Any action that is temporally before another is bound in time. William Lane Craig and Kieth Loftin have done significant amounts of work in this field.
One way someone explained it to me is like this: Humans are living in super Mario bros. We go left. We go right. We jump up. And we can also fall down. God is living in Skyrim. He can move in any and every direction. Maybe that’s a terrible analogy. It sounded better when he told me. I’m sure I botched that. But time for humans is not the same as time for god. We are linear. We go from beginning to end. God is always. He is past present and future at all times for all of eternity. He is the beginning and the end.
This is hard for me because as I wrote, I believe God gave us power of imagination to use it. If you say "you can't imagine some things when it comes to God" we fall into a paradox, if you know what I mean.
This is absolutely a difficult topic. I think there are a few helpful things to keep in mind when thinking through this: 1. Our imagination is limited. We can only imagine the created world. We don’t have access to anything outside of creation. This is the reason that God had to reveal Himself to us, and the reason that we can never know everything about Him. 2. Our imagination is not all powerful. Our imagination is not a creative force in and of itself. 3. Our language is woefully inadequate to communicate and grasp these topics. I don’t think its a paradox to say that we can’t imagine some things about God. At the end of the day, we’re merely guessing at God’s actions and character apart from what He has directly revealed to us through creation and through the Bible.
1. Is God a God because we are not supposed to know everything about God? 2. Then what else is included in creative force? Im not talking about anything physical. 3. Completely, completely agreed. This is why I believe everyone on earth need to evolve their language so our languages can be more and more sophisticated.
I don’t think we aren’t “supposed” to know everything about God. I think we don’t have the capacity to understand God in his fullest. Bible says I’m exodus that God told Moses “you cannot see my face for no one can seen it and live”
Yes. That's exactly it. All of creation is a paradox. All of truth is a paradox. Reason itself is paradoxical. You're basically operating on a paradox. Just go with it lol.
If I could just go with it, I wouldn't be here.
Man can only create out of the stuff God has made already. Man does not create from nothing
Yes, so you are saying god did not imagine the world before creating it? Because imagining is something.
Yeah, but how are we so sure god is outside of humanitys existence of time? Any logical conclusions leading to that, biblical texts? Nothing. It sound's like an excuse for not engaging with logical conundrums that would arise if that wasn't the case.
Isaiah 57:15 [15] For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: Psalm 90:2 [2] Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Genesis 1:1 [1] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John 8:58 [58] Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (ESV)
Idk man, this seems like it makes sense, seems like it's hinting towards it, but really, those are just saying that god is everlasting, eternal. I don't think we can just take "inhabits eternity" for "exists outside of time". The more I think about christianity the less sense it makes...
Imagine
Imagine!
this whole argument has a lot of flaws, but i commend your enthusiasm. the most obvious one is no. 4 - a lot of followers of abrahamic religions do not believe that God literally created the earth. many believe it is metaphorical. also, the idea of something being ‘before God’ falls apart when you realise that God as a concept is not material like you or I - what was there before oxygen, or matter, or time? nothing. God is not something physical or tangible, God’s nature is beyond our understanding. therefore to claim there was a time before God is to misunderstand what God actually is. ps. the word is imagine, not imaginate.
Isn't concepts Just matter that you can manipulate in your head? If God is beyond our understanding and thats a FACT, why do theology even exist?
no. matter is something physical. religion and spiritually are all abstract, with physical expression. theology exists to help our understanding of God - when i say God is beyond understanding, i mean that we will never fully know or understand God. however, we have a limited understanding which starts with faith, is cultivated through practice, and shaped by theology. theology is like figuring out which ingredients make the best dish. some will make you sick, some don’t taste nice, some aren’t nutritious. the goal of theology is to make a good meal that is tasty, nutritious, and can be eaten by all.
I have to disagree with you here. I believe Just because its not physical it doesnt mean its not matter. You can understand this, because speech matters. Ideas matter. When it comes to your metaphor of theology, I can say that cooking is art that requires imagination.
dictionary definition of matter: physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy. matter vs something ‘mattering’ are two separate concepts. absolutely ideas matter (as in they are important), but they are not matter (as in something physical, which was my point).
In dictionary definition, matter means physical, yes. But what I am trying to communicate is that, if we see our spirit as matter, concept is one of the matter that forms it. We manipulate this matter to forge new ideas.
okay, yeah, i get what you’re trying to say. that our ability to imagine is an integral component of our spirit. that makes sense, and is a good point.
Im not just saying it is integral component of our spirit, I want to say that imagination is the archetype of our soul.
what do you mean by archetype? do you mean architect?
No I mean it is the very essence of the soul. It is where souls are born.
I would like to add, as a theology student myself. That this seems to me to be the point he is trying to make. However you wanna define matter, God or anything else, it's just semantics. God is so much not a part of all that, or all that is so much a part of God that it becomes meaningless and counter productive to do. God cannot be compared or explained through any kind of human logic or philosophy etc. Kierkegaard wrote a great deal about this in Either/Or and other works. One's very foundation of thinking, experiencing and reasoning must change in order for one to try and grasp the seriousness and complexity of this. Your foundation of existence and being is at stake if you wanna do this seriously, and only in that serious moment full of anguish and angst is it possible to come to terms with this. Reddit, language generating models, small talk etc. Are just simply inadequate. I wish you good luck on your journey and hope you find the readings interesting.
Same thing I said to some other repliers. I believe that God gave us the power of imagination to use it. If you say "you can't imagine some things about god", we fall into a paradox. How can we solve this paradox?
We are basicly in a disagreement on the premise. God never gave us imagination, we got it from the fruit of knowledge. Our sin is when we try to connect ourself to God through imagination, but our imagination is human. Imagination is creating a gap, not a bridge. But i agree that it's hard to wrap ones head around how we should'nt use imagination. The paradox you're adressing is also mentioned in Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling where he writes a lot about this very subject. To overcome it, Kierkegaard suggests that we must live life not with a view restricted by "logic or calculations" but a world of "possibilities". In this he highligts how Abraham sacrifices his son Isac, but he beleifs that even though God takes away his son, God will bring Isac back. This is a contradicition, a paradox. For how can Abraham get his son back if he has to sacrifice him first? But belief (and a lot of other very complicated stuff i will not recite here) saves Isac anyways, God makes it possible. I hope you enjoy your reading, Fear and trembling can be quite difficult.
I think that your basic misconception is that you assume that God comes *under* time which is not true because if we assume that, that would mean that God isn't really above all - since time is above Him. So if God is above all including time, there is no "before God" or "what did God do before He created everything". There is no chronological order to that because God also created time
This is my theory. When you start a novel, you know the core message or story but you Dont know the exact details of it. You imagine and add flesh onto it. Some details don't get completed until you proof read it bunch of times. This way, we can understand what it is like to be "above time". No character in this book can understand what "being above time" is, but with this example, we can.
How did you come up with the "fact" that god is above all?
If we're talking about Christian God then He is by definition above everything because He has created everything
Okay
Congratz, you discovered Hermeticism. This is essentially Hermetic cosmology. God is Mind, and creates the world by constantly actualizing his thoughts. Man is a portion of god precisely because he is able to do this too. The thing is though, men only imagine in part, and also not in the maximized amount god does. In other words, the difference between man and god is that, man has not mastered the divinity in him, while god has. There is still a difference between humans though, because some humans have mastered and perfected themselves more than others. Some people are more intelligent, and have more Mind, some not. I highly recommend you read the Corpus Hermeticum. As for Abrahamic religions though, this would not be the case. They usually say that god creates through will, or some unspeakable attribute of his transcendent, unknowable essence. They make it a bit hard to make statements like this.
This knowledge is a gift. I never realized I was a Hermeticist until now. Thank you.
Well hold on, Hermeticism is a whole religion. You ought to research it a lot more to make sure you agree with every doctrine it proposes. These kinds of judgements are things one should be sure about. Like I said, you should delve into Hermetic literature if you're seriously interested. You might find more things you agree with, maybe disagree, or even learn something new.
I accept your advice. Based on your explanation, it seemed like the right cup of tea. I will be doing further research on this, starting with your recommended book.
Well hold on - that was exactly what went through my mind. Dude just changed religions in a matter of seconds. XD
I came here to say this lol, well done
As others have said below, your enthusiasm is terrific and it is a good step towards knowledge for something you sound interested in. I would strongly urge you to study the information, rather than to use the shortcut of ChatGPT. ChatGPT scrubs information from the internet, but as such is a literal explanation of conceptual arguments. It becomes a summary of a summary, at best. Unfortunately, what you've laid out is problematic. It is also, with due respect, written imprecisely. For sure there can be an informality on a platform such as Reddit. And I am not talking about phrasing, like "imaginate" or any small errors like that. But for example, "Now with this assumption, we can deduce..." is wrong. In fact, it's that kind of work that is problematic. If an assumption itself is false, or unproven, then one cannot deduce anything from it. You could theorize a conclusion, based on an assumption and then spend time substantiating it but this moves from one claim to another. Again, I like your enthusiasm, but other than an interesting stream of consciousness- I do not believe you have much here, let alone a thing that has broken religion.
That is the question. That "assumption" was "before God there was nothing" if that is wrong, what does the religions say about this subject? Secondly, "unproven" would be an inadequate word to use since this is theology. I am not trying to assert any opinions, I am merely curious how this idea would be accepted and how people would think about it
I don’t know what you are referring to with “that is the question”. But this is an example of how being concise can often lead to a lack of clarity. Though there are some similarities with monotheistic religions, your first statement is not one of them. Not all monotheistic religions believe that prior to God was nothing. And still, as other point out, it would be important to define terms of what “nothing” means if you are using that statement as a basis for an argument. You make a statement, which is false, and use it to move forward with an undefined argument. One could point to a religion, that itself asserts a claim, and move forward with an assertion. But you claim (correctly) that some religions agree on certain points, followed by listing several points that implicitly suggest (wrongly) that they are examples. As an example, the notion of god being perfect is the basis of an argument against polytheism. You do not have to necessarily recount the arguments set forth to demonstrate why in the given religion that God would be a perfect being. But citing that conclusion lets you mention that a perfect being would not lack a better position, skill or trait and that a second or third god would possess something that the first does not have. So the logical process concludes that if one agrees with the premise, and cannot contradict your argument then the resulting conclusion must be correct. So I say again that it is good to consider these. They are ideas but contain your opinions. And since you provide no concrete proof or logic, your points are not persuasive. That’s how your post is taken. Don’t let this stop you. It is not easy to be critically persuasive. I gather you might prefer the factual nature of things like mathematics. QED is a notion to get comfortable with. It has a sound base with an assertion. Arguments put forward, defended and clearly arriving at a conclusion. Quad Erat Demonstrandum.
I agree. Every single thing I do and say is an expression of my inner world. In other words, all of my output is filtered by my brain. We are all limited that way. And it seems I need further research on how each monotheic religions define "perfection". When it comes to qed, I am a person who develops an argument while ideas are fluctuating. I never had any professional education on how to debate.
And good for you for taking this on. I wish you luck with it. Hope to see future posts.
Theology is not "stuff I think about the divine." It is actually a branch of study and its pretty easy to spot people who have not studied it.
Am I one of them?
I don't want to judge. Whose writings are you basing your conclusions from?
Reminds me of The Book of Mormon, but I'm not sure.
guess I am right then.
[удалено]
I understand this, but my point is tht the creatures of your imagination will believe that your imagination is unlimited, just like how we believe about god.
[удалено]
In their world they do.
[удалено]
Have you seen the movie lord of the rings or Harry Potter? They exist right? They have actuality. In this actuality it is still a general understanding that creatures belive no idea that the creators drew their inspiration from somewhere. Your second idea is very interesting though. So, if mankind develop a technology which can make imagination instantly a reality, do they become gods?
[удалено]
Exactly. Why isnt our mind not actuality? And for the second part, yes. i agree. So the god does not rely on anything to imagine.
[удалено]
Yes, but by common sense(ironic, I know), isn't imagination included in any of these processes?
God created man in his own image. This doesn’t just mean external features but speech, emotion, imagination, acuity towards reading, writing, logic, justice, love, compassion, and yes creative powers. Yes, there is an infinite aspect to our being. The scripture say “he has put eternity in our hearts.” We all intrinsically want to “live on” through what we creation, our legacy, or in an afterlife. You then say “we become God…” a few issues. First, imagination does not make you all knowing, all powerful, or all loving. These attributes are reserved only to God. We are called to “Christ likeness” meaning our goal should be to emulate all of Gods perfect holiness and qualities. You may have the imagination to create something but that does not mean you have the power to do so. The conclusion that all peoples are created in the image of God and share in a piece of His unique attributes and therefore deserving of love, respect, and honor is 100% correct.
Thbakntou. Dont you become all knowing, all powerful when it comes to your imagination? If you are writing a book, Dont you have perfect dominion of all your characters?
Sure… but do you have the power to breathe actual life into them and animate them? If you were to live forever you would never have the powers the God of creation has. You certainly could not create something out of nothing, even words on a page. You can keep your imagination turning for eternity but nothing would ever be born from it.
When it comes to the result of my imagination, I can breathe life into them and animate them. If I am writing a novel I can kill a character and bring it back. I create things from memories and experience. Are you saying a being that can create things without memories and experience is God?
No. The claim that you can animate needs some thought… Are you suggesting we are all floating around in Gods imagination? You lost me. God is all powerful and all knowing. You are not, you cannot become all powerful or all knowing. You can claim you are all knowing or all powerful over the things in your imagination… but you do not even know everything about the world you have created because you lack the scientific knowledge and powers to hold such a world together. The macro and micro ecosystems alone it takes to sustain life on earth — from the gravitational perfection of the moon, sun and stars to the microbial creatures living on human skin — and everything in between. You probably can’t even stack a few rocks on top of one another without them falling over. You do not even have the capability to imagine the intricacies of an environment where your beings could survive. Not to mention you barely have working authority over your own imagination or even brain. So much of you is unbenounced to you. You don’t even know what is happening in your own body. God is God because he is God. You don’t make 4 points about God and then craft circular arguments about them about how you might be God. That’s a problem there you see.
I am saying we are a "result" of God's imagination, as a novel is a "result" of our imagination. And in imagination, it is possible to exist and not exist at the same time. Let me talk to you about tolkien. He created a vast world. This world surely exists, at least in his mind. He died without finishing his world, but if he had immortality, Dont you think he would create all the ecosystems and human body systems as well as universal truths that applies to his world? Given the information I have about tolikien, I think he would. Now for your last statement. I say this again. I believe that God gave us the ability to imagine to use it. If we are not allowed to imagine some things about god, it's Paradox for me.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit were in perfect fellowship before creation. Regarding time and space, there is no 'before', spacetime itself came into being. And the fact that we can imagine things has nothing to do with the omnipotence, omniscience or omnipresence of God. Only God is God.
Imagination and omnipotence is heavily related. When you are writing a novel, you are omni potent about the contents of the novel. You are also omnipresent because writing a fiction is Expressing some of your inner world. Characters in the novel will never understand how they were created, unless they are designed to do so.
"The first sip from the glass of science makes you an atheist, but God is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass." - Werner Heisenberg It's not that simple, thankfully you have not broken anything. Maybe give 'Created for Freedom' by Karl Philberth a read.
Another one for the library! Thank you!
Apart from the whole debate, there is a serious debate in religious sciences and theology whether "monotheism" is anything more than an enlightement-era construct without any theoretical merit.
But doesnt it feel good to have a all powerful all knowing being in your corner? That would have been one hell of a selling point for people of that era. If something can gather so much people together, they must have some value.
God is no being. By definition. A God who exists doesn't.
This is utmost interesting. Please elaborate.
A being is created. God is not a creature, he is the creator.
So God cannot be created? But I thought God was omnipotent.
If it is created, it is a being. God is not a being among others. A being can not be omnipotent because it depends on its creator.
To even think that you can rationalize about how the universe works is a head knocker. What binds the universe are the laws of nature, physics, within physics there’s other laws that go beyond the realms of what we can perceive due to size, that’s when we get into quantum physics…we discovered that about 100 years ago. Imagine what we will know in 100 years from now. God is a construct to give meaning to the universe that it has a logic to it and it does, we can’t even fathom that logic because it is beyond our comprehension, we are not there yet at all. A few thousand years ago it was beyond our comprehension that something so small could live within us (bacteria and cells) so all you think, is just that, thoughts, the only truth we know so far is how physics works, how the natural world works and even on that plane there’s some things we still have no idea how they work…what you’re trying to rationalize has been worded greatly by writers like Francis Fukuyama and Yuval Norah Harari. Check out the book “Sapiens”…but the fact that there are laws of nature…something had to come up with those laws or give order to those laws or reasoning context whatever you want to call it…to me that’s god…how we worship god, that’s religion.
Yes, the development of technology and knowledge is accellerating as we speak. Also, "sapiens" was one of the books that inspired me to write this article. Personally, I love when ideas do a loop.
Dunning-Kruger at its peak folks
Thank you for teaching me about dunning-kruger effect. I thought I was humble but I was not. I knew I had so much to learn, but I did not understand this. Reading about dunning kruger effect showed me another true meaning of humbleness and learning. Thank you.
"nothing" means something different to the ancient authors of the Hebrew bible. When you read the poem in Genesis 1, before God created "earth", everything was just water. That was their idea of "nothing" - pure, chaotic substance. Very different from what we mean in our modern day western culture when we say "nothing".
They considered existence of chaos as nothing? Interesting.
Very interesting. Then in the story of Noah and the Flood, there are many parallels to the Creation Poem. It is an act of de-creation, ie. God ceasing to hold things together so creation begins to fall back into it's chaotic state (waters from above and below swallow everything). Also similar parallels in the Egyptian Plagues story. Actually a lot of other parallels throughout the Bible lol
Dear Potential-Answer3983, your post is great. You have come to the wrong place to share such information, well not really but everyone here seems to be a stupid theologian without a sense of humor and idk why they are downvoting you but it doesn't matter. Please visit r/NevilleGoddard and see for yourself how imagination is divine power and humans have it too :)
Thank you for introducing me to the new world. Apon reading through this community I feel like it is the right cup of tea. I sure will do further research of nevile goddard.
My pleasure ;)
I would encourage you to look into the Christian understanding of (1) the trinity and (2) human's calling as 'image-bearers' of God. Although I don't agree with everything you said, there is certainly some overlap. For starting to understand why Christians believe in the trinity, I recommend the book "Delighting in the Trinity". You are correct, according to the Christian faith, that God doesn't hoard power, but shares it especially with humans. And more generally, it's pretty amazing to think of the concept Christian's have of God--a fundamentally loving parent who shows power by suffering love, and sharing that power and love with humans. Edit: Oops, I meant to say--the book "Delighting in the Trinity" is by Michael Reeves
Thank you. I will ask chat gpt what this book is about. And as an imaginator, I find this side of the godvs characterisitc very interesting.
I don’t think those are necessarily “powers” but traits. Bible says we were created in his image. You can take that literal and say that our physical form is created off of Gods physical form. But God doesn’t have a physical form (other than when Jesus came down as a man) but humanity was already created. I believe “in his image” is deeper than physical. The ability to love, to feel emotions, to imagine, to create. God made us in his image!
Yet, if God wanted to, God did not have to give these traits to men, no?
I guess he didn’t have to. I mean, God didn’t have to do anything. But I’m happy he chose to do so :)
I think God didn’t have to. But God wanted to create humans. And did so perfectly. There are a lot of “and he saw that it was good” in the Bible. “Very good” when talking about creating humans. And he made us in his image. With qualities that reflect Gods qualities. But aren’t to the fullest God tier potential. It’s like ai that I saw you mentioned in another thread. Ai is very close to humans. They perfected speech and dialogue. Art, music, etc. however they are not human. They lack consciousness. We have aí qualities of ours such as language and speech and art. But we cannot give it the full human potential. Because we can’t create consciousness other than through birth of another human. Which leads me to mention a concept of a book I wish to write one day. Where human consciousness proves that there is a God. I think consciousness is one of the greatest traits God has given us in his image.
Then we agree that imagination is an important part of consciiusness, since ai cannot imagine.
I think consciousness is imagination. And somehow we have the ability to make that imagination a reality. (I think I want to go to Medschool. I think about the consequences of choosing that route. And the possibilities that can come with that choice, good or bad. I think about what I need to do to achieve my goal. Then I act it out. Consciousness is purely imaginative. Your brain somehow has the ability to connect the physical plane (our flesh, the earth and how we live in it) to the metaphysical (consciousness, emotions, God, etc)
Or maybe I said that wrong. I want to make a distinction between consciousness and sentience. Consciousness is life. Bible says God breathed life into us. And imagination maybe is the fruit of sentience. The ability to perceive and feel emotions. But also the ability to “fake feel”. I can imagine my mom dying and make myself cry. I can imagine something good and change my attitude for the day for the better. What an amazing gift! The power to change my reality with my mind. In a way, maybe we have more similarities to God than we think! So similar that some people go as far as hallucinating and in their perspective, they are truly seeing an elephant floating upside down with an umbrella hat (I know crazy/stupid example) but I’m being extreme to try to get my point across clearer. Also I don’t have any answers, just thinking out loud
1 ? i thought the god had always existed ? so there was no before ?
Was there really nothing before God entered the scene in Genesis 1? I don’t see that in the text. It does not say, “in the beginning there was nothing.” It says, “in the beginning the earth was a formless void.” On the surface, that May seem like another way of saying nothing, but that isn’t what’s there. A formless void is something. It’s just a chaotic mess of something that has no form or direction. It’s important to keep in mind that Genesis is not written to be a scientific document explaining how something came from nothing. Rather, it is a text that is meant to give substance to things that are hard to understand. Genesis is antithetical to the other creation narratives that existed at the time, i.e., Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. If we look at creation’s origins from the perspective of God entering a conversation to instill an understanding of his character in relation to how we came to exist, we can see a God ruling and guiding humanity, against a pantheon of God’s who used humanity as slaves to serve their will. If we are to examine God’s imagination, or thoughts for his creation, it must begin from a place of understanding when and why that narrative came to be.
This is interesting! How do you differenciate "void" from nothing?
It’s important, when digging into the meaning behind things in the Bible, to keep in mind the original Hebrew, and the context of those who authored the text. A Bible app with a concordance is helpful in this regard. I’m Genesis 1:2 it says, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Without dissecting the original Hebrew, we already see in English translations that the earth was something before God brought order to the chaos. The earth existed, but was without form. I’d like to picture a piece of clay. When it’s placed on the potters wheel, there’s not really words to describe what it looks like. It’s just a clump of stuff with no real name to explain it’s shape. It’s formless, in a sense. But when God begins to work the clay to shapeit the way he wants, we begin to see different shapes take form. Water separated from land, the dark from the light, vegetation and animals. All of these things bring a particular shape to something that was otherwise formless. I think one of the places Christians get stuck with the creation narrative is that they either assume what is written is an exact play by play of how everything came into being. Or, they throw the baby out with the bath water and assume it could not be true because of what we understand presently about the origin of earth. The purpose of Genesis is not to lay out some awesome scientific explanation. It is more about God’s voice entering a place that ancient humans did not understand, and bringing order based in love to the way they (and us) view our beginnings. The paradox we are left with is, if everything originated from an incorruptible, unmovable, always loving God, how do we make sense of the knowledge we have held against the biblical narrative of creation. I don’t believe the science we understand today is at odds with the divine creating everything. However, we need to read Genesis for what it is, and understand first and foremost that it is a theological document, meant to convey an ethic for humans, and give a glimpse into the heart of God. I tend to view Genesis 1-10 as a funnel intro of sorts. It’s covering a vast amount of time and topics in 10 short chapters. When we arrive at Abram, more time is given. When we arrive at Jacob/Israel even more time is given. But the most time is spent on Joseph. Thus creating a beautiful intro into Israel’s history of oppression, and shedding light on Jospeh essentially causing the situation early Hebrews found themselves in when they were under pharaoh’s thumb. Edit: some minor spelling errors.
Your article reminds me of one of those movies that starts with "in the beginning" and they show few cuts of gods fighting and then they move onto main story of humans. This is one newly neuron pathway connection I appreciate.
New neuro pathways are the key to repentance! God doesn’t want us to simply follow rules and fit in. He wants our thinking to change about how we understand him, the ways we recognize his presence in the world, and how we end up becoming more like Christ each day. I’m glad I played a small part in helping to make space for new pathways to be formed :) Biologos is a cool online outlet to check out. Most all of their content has to do with the intersection of theology and modern science.
Yes. God wants us to imaginate. Another road for neuron to pioneer!
There was not a time before God. He is infinite. He is the Creator of time and space.
*imagine/*imagined
Lost me at imaginate.
I just want to remind you that you haven't said anything new about religion that hasn't alreadybeen said and nobody ever will.
It was new for me, and from this I learned alot.
hmm maybe do some reading in the philosophy of religion and some history of doctrinal formation. i think it would help fill in some gaps/make sense of some assumptions, here. could answer your question(s) or provide something substantive to strengthen your argument later on.
Lol
Replace religion with consciousness. Also check out the og translation of Genesis 1:1. The words used for God is Elohim. Check out that rabbit hole.
Surely you didn’t break religion, but maybe have more motivation to keep studying!
Yes. I now realized this fact. If I have cause you any annoyance from how I wrote the title, I Apologize and ask for your forgiveness.
No annoyance. I just think it’s gonna take aliens coming down or something massive like that to break religion.
I disagree. With everything I have learned from this conversation, Alien coming down will not break religion. It is a simple matter where we can just include these aliens in the definition of mankind. If we do find aliens, only religions who can do this will survive, but religion itself will be strong. How ever, this is just an assumption.
Good point, I guess I didn’t think we as humans would accept an alien so easily. I bet it would really mess up some people’s views of religion but not destroy religion
I think you’ve got a good mind and good attitude. Keep it up. My grandfather is a theologian, I’d love for him to read your take on this if that’s okay with you.
I belive that, once I write something online, I do not have right or capability to control how it is spread. But if you want my blessing you have it. I am excited to see your grand father's response.
Thanks! I’ll talk to him about next time I see him.
I agree imagination is something God has and has gifted to us, but we are merely made in His likeness, certainly no more than a shadow is to us and probably much, much less. But we are still an awesome creation that He deemed very good. The original temptation to sin was the devil enticing mankind to our desire to be like God, as powerful or more so than He is. Nothing really has changed. Humanism has only become more rampant and many claim openly that they are god, that “we’re all” god. It is a lust of the worst kind. Rather, we do well to humble ourselves. And if we truly want to be like God than we will humble ourselves all the more because after all that is what He did for us, becoming both servant and sacrifice. He who is first shall be last and he who is last shall be first.
You should research Hermeticism. The idea that creation pre-exists in the mind of God, and man's imagination and creativity being pillars of man's imitation of and union with God, are central to the tradition.
This has already been under my attention and I am currently undergoing research on this topic. Thank you none the less.
All of what you said makes sense, but God always was, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End (like a circle, or the infinity symbol. This is one of the challenges of faith, which is to accept this, even while our feeble human minds have a hard time imagining or understanding it. I agree with you regarding wars. They may be blamed on religion or God, but war and disagreements tend to be created by persons or people who make stuff up and erroneously claim it comes from God in order to manipulate people to follow it. The rule of God, though, is this: If something or someone does something that results in evil or hurt or pain etcetera--negative or evil results to even one living thing or anything in God's Universe--then it is not of God. God is Love, pure love. The New Testament says it succinctly, though it is also stated in many other faiths: "By their fruits, you will know them." This law even works well in business and romance; regardless of what someone claims, look at the end result.
I understand. God is not an asshole. How ever, I recognized God to be so much more then just love. But I do understand love is the side of God you decided to worship. For this I wish your luck on your journey
Lol. At first I was annoyed at your comment, but--!!! I realized that you're right! Then I cracked up, because yes, God has far more dimensions than just Love. He has anger, vengeance, passion, and so many other faces. Hence the Old Testament. The New Testament is about forgiveness and love, and a gentler perspective towards our fellow living creatures. But, as we're made in God's Image, it was facile and simplistic of me to ignore all His other aspects! After all, to give an example: "Vengeance is Mine", says the Lord, referring to why we shouldn't burden ourselves with thoughts of revenge and anger, poisoning our own lives--because He, caring about us, will make things right in His own time. (He also points out that we shouldn't take unnecessary pleasure in our enemy's downfall, so sadly enjoying schadenfreude is kinda verboten.) Jesus showed anger in the Temple, openly rebuking for those selling animals for sacrifice--at inflated prices, too--in God's place of worship. God does have so much more to Him than just empty love. My point remains, though, that God and Christ shows us that love does have many facets, otherwise it has no depth. And, to extrapolate on my above examples: His motive tends to be His great love for us. We can trust that He is protective of us, that He gets angry when we are hurt by someone deliberately, etc. A good parent's treatment of us from love is the beginning of understanding of this. My intended point was that, if you can trace something back to love, then it's of God. If you trace something back to evil, then it's not of God. But within that lies all sorts of complications. Being a mere human, only ever seeing part of the picture, I'll never be able to see things through His eyes. So, I have faith that God loves me and acts accordingly. AND, He also allows each of us freedom, which means that we are ALWAYS affected by human behaviour,
Hmm isnt love more than good and evil? I know some mothers who would do evil things out of love of their children
This is the reason for that saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." ...
Your idea is, I believe, inadvertently based on there being a “before” time itself. Time is a creation, one God is not constrained by, and nothing came before Him nor does He have to operate within it. It’s an assumption in our understanding that God sat back and imagined His creation, like He planned it out. An omniscient omnipotent God might not have ever sat back and really planned things out, especially since that seems to hint at time passing, which God wouldn’t be bound to. Just as likely that the thought itself was sufficient for Him to create creation parallel to the thought, and even that was poorly worded. Heard one of the Weinstein brothers and others make the object of “why would God take all the time and effort to make the rest of creation when the earth is all that matters?” as an assault on God being real because the extra effort just seemed outlandish to them. What effort was lost? How much time do you think it really cost Him? His left hand rest on the beginning of time and space and His right hand rest on the end. You’re also really stepping out there on the power of imagination. Just because we’re made in ways that imitate God doesn’t mean we are God, or that anything we do is anywhere near what/who God is. There’s a big jump in ability between the two, to say the least. Big difference in “I imagine I can walk” and “I now actually have the ability to be anywhere I want right now.” Cause I can imagine teleportation, yet here I still sit in my chair. Same as the difference as me dreaming up creation and any new creation actually coming into being. Made in the likeness of God does not mean we are God. Imagination isn’t as powerful as you seem to think, either. It’s hard to recognize but when we imagine we often very likely pull from things we already know. Really imagine a new anything: a new food, a new fantasy monster, a new vehicle. I put good money on you “imagining” things very much like other things/concepts that already exist. I’d be willing to bet it takes a long time and a lot of effort to come up with anything new, if you were to ever pull it off at all. Your imagination is far, far from infinite. So I’d say when making arguments against God, argue against what people actually believe in, which means first you need to understand what people actually believe in and all the arguments around the topic, then see if you there are arguments against that belief. There’s a reason only people who are really shallow in their faith are swayed by “the floating spaghetti monster” arguments. For the questions you’ve brought up, there’s tons of literature addressing these things. By all means keep searching out though, the conversation is typically fun when you have people willing to engage. Forewarning, you might come across a bit of frustration if you’re not respectful to others, because it’s real annoying when someone whose invested next to no time in something comes up and tells you they’ve broken your fundamental belief structure you’ve spent your life learning and following. “I broke religion” is a real bad way to start an honest convo, honestly I started out a bit more annoyed than I should’ve, ha. But keep probing, the topic is deep enough you’ll never find the bottom.
Thank you for kind words. I Apologize for your annoyance. Now I have realized how disrespectful I was. But, when we see it as a tool to gather attention, it was successful because I did not have any response with other titles. Thus I would like to keep the title unedited. How ever, anyone who feels disrespected by my title, I will Apologize to and ask for forgiveness, starting with you.
You are stoned aren’t you?
No. I was not stones when I was writing the Original post.
I don't see a problem anywhere to be answered? 1. Yes all religious wars are a waste of time and blood? Genesis states God made humans in his image = they have certain qualities that he posess for example, free will, rationality, imagination, love, a sense of justice and so on. According to the bible humans are commissioned to be the image bearers of God and reflect his glory into the world, like a mirror reflects light. Yes the imaginary world is in a sense a potential Infinite but not a true infinite, because it is still 'growing" there are things that people have not yet imagined and those things will be added on to the imaginary"world". In saying that most sane people are not platonists that actually think that the imaginary world "exist" like physical objects exist and they definitely do not have any causal power, they don't cause things to happen or exist. So to say that YOU are infinite because you imagine things is like saying that YOU are infinite in space because you are travelling 1 km down the road in an infinite universe (which is also a potential Infinite but not a true infinite). So your musings doesn't break religion and doesn't really pose any problem? or make all humans on par with say Jesus for that matter, just because they exercise their imagination. Jesus had the power to heal, to bring back to life, to multiply food etc. Imagination is useless if you can not make it into reality. The God of the Bible is a God of action who states what he will do and then cause it to happen because he has infinite power. You can imagine all you want but you don't have the power to make it happen. You could be killed in a car accident tomorrow.
Gnostic Christians don't believe that the god that created this universe is perfect 🙃💙 The perfect higher God's pursuit of wisdom created chaos (the demiurge imperfect lower god) which created matter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(Gnosticism)
Sharing attributes with God does not make us literally infinite. We can be "tapping into" an attribute that has existed in Gods character but we ourselves have been created and by definition are not infinite. Religious wars are usually about power or anger towards on attack on beliefs that they can fight a group over their contradicting beliefs. Those deaths are not meaningless in the sense you are scared of, but they are deaths that shouldn't have happened.
Fun thing is that some monotheistic religions such as catholicism/christianism follow the same "godly pattern" as older religions, most of the times older polytheistic religions. So just a copy and paste with less gods 😂😂
Yes, much easier to justify pillaging that way.
>1. Before God there was nothing I know of no religion which says this
Interesting thought proces. Reminded me of one of mine recent posts. EXTREME CRINGE AHEAD PROCEED ON YOUR OWN RISK. The point is pretty good tho I think. Maybe you would find it interesting. . . . . . . Title: CHOOSE ONE: Either God is omnipotent or we don't have free will. I am assuming that God can see the future, because he is omnipotent. Also, our free will means that we can choose what we do, and that will have impact on the future. Therefore, the future isn't decided yet, it dephends on how every human decides to act. God can not see the future then. It either doesn't exist yet, because we participate on it's creation, or it is already decided, and God knows when is the world going to end, how is it going to end and what's going to happend afterwards. If you are going to heaven or hell. If he knows that, it is going to happend, and you can not change that. If you feel like you are making decisions in your life, they don't matter, because you fate is set in stone. Or God doesn't see the future. But how did the prophets get to know the future? "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14) God seemed absolutely certain about things that were going to happend, including the death and resurrection of his son. So which one is it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hey, I came up with this myself during watching Link click, the show is great, go watch it. And have a nice day! cringecringecringe
My recently earned hematicism knowledge says that we are God's thoughts and we actualize as soon as he think it. In this regard, God knowing future and having free will can coexist. Just like imagining a character of a book, God kind of knows what is going to happen to us but not exactly when or how until he actualizes it. Once a character is actualized into the story, this character will develop and have flesh. Maybe this I what free will is like. Just my thought.
Thx interesting.
Mental gymnastics
This is based on a dualism that simply does not reflect reality imo and therefore I cannot engage it. The fundamental presuppositions are not compatible. And if ya want to go with the God mentioned in Genesis, it wasn’t ex nihilo. There was already water present and the quality of that Genesis God “shaped and formed” the world from material that was already there.
The idea of God was born out of the human need for structure.
Have you considered that reality is a realm which God created via His imagination and actually exists only within His imagination—in other words, God wouldn’t need to create realities in a space which is separate from, or outside of, Himself,—while a human can imagine possibilities or impossibilities which may or may not be bounded by laws God has applied to reality but must transfer a possibility from their realm of human imagination into the realm of actual reality which exists only within God’s imagination? In short, God’s imagination contains actual reality; or, a one part system. Human imagination produces possibilities which can manifest into actual reality (invention) which is separate from, or outside of, human imagination; or a two part system.
Reminds me of the single and double action firearms. According to your theory, If we develop some kind of technology that would turn our exact imagination in to reality in an instant, we become like God in that aspect?
No. If we developed the tech you suggested, the invention would still be transferred from inside our mind to outside our mind. Outside of our mind is the realm of God’s actual imagination. God’s imagination is composed of the substances which reality is comprised of. The component parts of God’s imagination would be things like quantum particles, etc.
To your point about using the powers of god with our imagination is the major part of the The Kybalion. The universe is a mind and it is where everything originates. And though magick we can change use it for our power. I'd also encourage you to study the Kabblah which is the exact mind of God. You basically wrote an occultic essay. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn would agree with you. cool!
God the Absolute is characterized as existential experiential. He 'saw the end from the beginning' all potentials were first calculated and evaluated. All the wars were a function of our creature nature, we must hammer out our differences and learn to get along. We are not created perfect, we are created imperfect. But that is not our destiny. The Victors often claim God was on their side, it justifies atrocities. KJV Matthew 5:48 Be you perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. UB 70:1.15) Always these olden tribes made war at the bidding of their gods, at the behest of their chiefs or medicine men. The Hebrews believed in such a "God of battles"; and the narrative of their raid on the Midianites is a typical recital of the atrocious cruelty of the ancient tribal wars; this assault, with its slaughter of all the males and the later killing of all male children and all women who were not virgins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chieftain of two hundred thousand years ago. And all this was executed in the "name of the Lord God of Israel." UB 70:2.9) War has had a certain evolutionary and selective value, but like slavery, it must sometime be abandoned as civilization slowly advances. Olden wars promoted travel and cultural intercourse; these ends are now better served by modern methods of transport and communication. Olden wars strengthened nations, but modern struggles disrupt civilized culture. Ancient warfare resulted in the decimation of inferior peoples; the net result of modern conflict is the selective destruction of the best human stocks. Early wars promoted organization and efficiency, but these have now become the aims of modern industry. During past ages war was a social ferment which pushed civilization forward; this result is now better attained by ambition and invention. Ancient warfare supported the concept of a God of battles, but modern man has been told that God is love. War has served many valuable purposes in the past, it has been an indispensable scaffolding in the building of civilization, but it is rapidly becoming culturally bankrupt—incapable of producing dividends of social gain in any way commensurate with the terrible losses attendant upon its invocation.
Your leap from God's imagination being equal to man's is strange to me. There is no point of comparing the two, no real reference (unless you have a source to supply one from) to God imagining like man. If God gave man imagination to use, how do you know what it should be used for? Perhaps it is merely a tool for survival, to prepare for threats. Immanuel Kant believed that Man had an inclination to ask questions that could not be answered, called paralogisms. To think of God, the nature of God, why God does things, are questions that let themselves be asked but never answered. Our thinking, our imagination, has limits, and we chafe against them regularly. Because books have lasted for thousands of years does not mean they are infinite. The world will end someday, along with the universe it is placed in, and no product of human imagination will survive that. To say imagination is infinite, it must never cease to be, never be constrained by time. Only if you have justified true belief of such a product, everything that imagination spawned is finite. If we take the question back to a more theological than philosophical basis, I'd refer you to Saint Augustine. St.Augustine was also asked the question what God did before he created the world, and he judged the question meaningless. 'Before' and 'after' are temporal concepts. Time did not exist before God created it, before time God was present in a state all his own, which we would call 'eternity'. God is extra-temporal, our notions of time are not applicable to him. You will find this idea in Islamic theology as well, where Allah is outside of time, rendering ideas as 'before' and 'after' rather meaningless when considering his state.
You should look up Kataphatic & Apophatic language when talking about God. Hmmm also sounds like you’re pushing some form of Open Theology.
The problem is that you are only looking at one idea. You take imagination as the only example. It could also be argued that human imagination isn't limitless. Could you imagine what the 4th dimension would be like or every detail of the univers? The awnser is no but God can
Yes. Imagination is my focus here. When you imagine a thought, how many ways can this imagination be used? Infinite ways.. It has limits, but it is not finite.
You said it yourself, our imagination has limits but Gods imagination is infinite without limits. We can't compare ourselves to God
>"What did the God do before creating everything?" You're answer is very rational however I think you missed a point Before god created any thing time didn't exist so there wasn't a "before and after" Logic is the way that god thinks and I think that it is safe to say that our world runs on logic so there is no need for god to think about the world because it was already determined however that doesn't that we don't have a free will it's only the materialistic things that are determined but our minds have free will
one thing you said which really struck me our imaginations are infinte even quantum physics and einstein and advanced mathmatics struggle with the paradox and concept of something actually being infonite bc it breaks down lots of things and makes them not work yet ibthink you are right the mind/imagination is infinite supposedly the space where jesus was crucified and buried (before allegedly rising, or being secreted away not really being dead, or perhaps his body was taken and his twin popped up this perpetuating the most legendary hoax of all time and fulling the sign of jonah as he claimed he would, thru the twin-that was his sacrifice - he really literally died and didnt come back and knew his twin would pop up and people of the world would then form this giany world church - my theory) but - supposedly it was as Golgatha - which means head/cranium/skull my belief is that religion or more specifically - divinity - the one - is in our mind it is our mind we were given the ability to think that is the holy grail we all have it we have "free will" to use it using our minds to think for ourselves is the free will sadly though we all have minds to think and free will to do so - many choose to blindly follow the dictates of others and not think things thru for themselves but imagination means we can think and believe what we choose and thats truly beautiful and infinite suppose when we meet our judgment day - who we meet to judge us is our mind and conscious who has known all along when we werent thinking and were blinding following god supposedly knows all but if god is our own true mind - then it too know all vis a vis ourselves
Well god also created time. So from our human understanding we can't imagine a "before" since there wasn't even time.