Am I God?

[Partinobodycula]

Absolutely false. God has the only and final judgment at the end of each of our Earthly lives.

And that’s the judgment that I fear the least.

 

[Fauken]

I think the OP needs to seriously consider this verse from Matthew 6:24:

“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

OP, you can’t call yourself a Christian and a Soliphist. You cannot believe you are God and be a Christian. If you call yourself a Christian Soliphist and ask if you are God, you’ve already answered your question; by the Christian, even the Abrahamic definition of God, you are not God. God does not think, will, or believe Himself as God. God is. That is the simplest, most accurate, and perhaps most profound truth of Christianity, and anyone claiming to be part of the Abrahamic faiths professes this.

You cannot worship yourself and God. You are either God or not God. You cannot serve two masters.

 

[tonyrey]

I think the OP needs to seriously consider this verse from Matthew 6:24:

OP, you can’t call yourself a Christian and a Soliphist. You cannot believe you are God and be a Christian. If you call yourself a Christian Soliphist and ask if you are God, you’ve already answered your question; by the Christian, even the Abrahamic definition of God, you are not God. God does not think, will, or believe Himself as God. God is. That is the simplest, most accurate, and perhaps most profound truth of Christianity, and anyone claiming to be part of the Abrahamic faiths professes this.

You cannot worship yourself and God. You are either God or not God. You cannot serve two masters.

Irrefutable - unless one has a split personality.

 

[LethalMouse]

To paraphrase Will Rogers, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that isn’t so.” The world is full of people who are certain that they’re right. And Christians hold no special significance among them. Amongst people and their Gods, there’s greater novelty in admitting that they might be wrong, than in insisting that they must be right.

In terms of philosophy to a degree. But as said many posters may tell you what they BELIEVE and that is where you might say most assuredly they could be more wrong.

But some theoretically could KNOW. Now you don’t have to believe them, but if you are saying I can not be sure about the chicken sandwich???

Because IF one can be correct about what they had for lunch then they can be correct about God.

So you could easily post a thread “What did you have for lunch yesterday”

And when someone says “A chicken sandwich”

you can argue that there could be some matrix like reason they are wrong, or that they are schizophrenic and hallucinated the chicken sandwich.

HOWEVER, no one can give you any answers beyond that.

So if you ask the question about lunch you will always receive the same answer of chicken sandwich (metaphorically) and the person is most logically most likely correct. The margin of error is negligible for matrix/insanity considerations.

So therefore you only ask “Am I God” and people tell you NO.

But you then say if their “version” of God is just their thoughts

to which some can say “NO” because for them they do not believe in a thought construct, but someone they have met.

 

[Partinobodycula]

In terms of philosophy to a degree. But as said many posters may tell you what they BELIEVE and that is where you might say most assuredly they could be more wrong.

But some theoretically could KNOW. Now you don’t have to believe them, but if you are saying I can not be sure about the chicken sandwich???

Because IF one can be correct about what they had for lunch then they can be correct about God.

So you could easily post a thread “What did you have for lunch yesterday”

And when someone says “A chicken sandwich”

you can argue that there could be some matrix like reason they are wrong, or that they are schizophrenic and hallucinated the chicken sandwich.

HOWEVER, no one can give you any answers beyond that.

So if you ask the question about lunch you will always receive the same answer of chicken sandwich (metaphorically) and the person is most logically most likely correct. The margin of error is negligible for matrix/insanity considerations.

So therefore you only ask “Am I God” and people tell you NO.

But you then say if their “version” of God is just their thoughts

to which some can say “NO” because for them they do not believe in a thought construct, but someone they have met.

This is where the character of a person really reveals itself, in their ability to recognize and accept the truth. Not about God, or chicken sandwiches, but about themselves.

Do you KNOW that there’s a God, or do you simply believe that there’s a God?

If there really is a God, then He knows what your answer should be…“I believe”.

 

[yppop]

I realize that there are very few people on this forum capable of appreciating the depth of this question, and doubtless no one capable of answering it, but still there may be those here who have something to gain or offer in regards to this question. So I thought that I would open the topic up for discussion.

Am I God, in the sense that I’m the creator of everything that I see around me?

I realize that the knee-jerk reaction is to regard this question as nothing more than trolling, but I assure you, the question isn’t as farfetched as it might at first appear, and the answer not as self-apparent as you assume.

Am I the creator of all that I see? Am I God?

Parti
Before I attempt to answer the OP question please define God?
Yppop

 

[LethalMouse]

This is where the character of a person really reveals itself, in their ability to recognize and accept the truth. Not about God, or chicken sandwiches, but about themselves.

Do you KNOW that there’s a God, or do you simply believe that there’s a God?

If there really is a God, then He knows what your answer should be…“I believe”.

Uniquely I know of God what I know of the chicken sandwich.

I can like I said prove neither. But I have seen what I have seen, met whom I have met and been where I have been. Whether provable or not it is true.

Greater think of this thread and my sandwich.

You can question my sandwich identically to this OP.

You can question if I am right in my knowledge.

You can ask me to prove my sandwhich.

I can be limited to knowing and unproving.

You can then never ever know I am wrong. You can think it, you can believe it, but you can never know I did not have the sandwich.

I however can and will know I had it regardless of your protests.

 

[MPat]

There is no contradiction. Believe me, if it was there I would have noticed. “Before” is a term that you use to define the causal order of things. But to me, “before” is a relational term, not a causal term. The bible speaks of the Father’s only begotten Son, does this mean that the Father pre-existed the Son?

Sorry, but if you want to use the claim that you are smart and honest for something here, prove it first.

Anyway, the contradiction is obvious - and it is obvious that you won’t see it, as you do not want to see it. But still, let’s put the contradicting statements one next to the other:

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as before I was born.

I’m simply asking a question. One that has indeed been asked many times before, by men far wiser than me.

So, was there anything before you?

What’s obvious to one person isn’t always obvious to another, and people live in denial of the obvious all the time. It’s something that we’re very, very good at.

Well, if you say so, we’ll happily believe that you live in denial of the obvious.

Oh, and, by the way, claiming to be able to prove nothing, claiming that proof is necessary for knowledge (implicitly) and claiming bad things about other people all at the same time doesn’t look very well…

I listen more closely than you might think.

Maybe you listen less closely than you think?

Or can you prove otherwise? Or, perhaps, sometimes proof is not required for knowing?

Sometimes the answers to questions are like the answers to prayers, people mistake not getting the answer they wanted, with getting no answer at all.

And sometimes the question really is not answered, just evaded.

 

[Partinobodycula]

Parti
Before I attempt to answer the OP question please define God?
Yppop

Hi Yppop,
I’m aware that any definition that I give will almost certainly need refinement, but I’ll do the best that I can. To keep this as simple as possible, am I the final cause of everything that I see around me?

Is the world the way it is, because I make it so?

 

[Partinobodycula]

So, was there anything before you?

Before I answer this question I would like to use this as an example of how the mind creates everything that it sees around it. And why the world around me looks the way it does, and not like an idyllic paradise that skeptics of solipsism seem to believe that the mind should create. Nor like the heaven that critics of theism seem to think that a benevolent God should create.

Obviously if the world is all in my mind, then you’re simply me talking to myself. Which means that I must be schizophrenic, right. Well not really, we all have conflicting thoughts in our heads from time to time when we’re faced with difficult choices, like problems with a child, or a job, or a relationship. We go back and forth with ourselves about questions that seem to have no clear and easy answers. We struggle to find the best options in situations that don’t really provide ideal options, only less worse options. These conflicts exist in our minds all the time. From big problems like a teenage son or daughter dealing with drugs, to small problems, like is there really such a thing as free will, to overarching problems like why is there something rather than nothing. Our minds are consciously or subconsciously dealing with these types of questions all of the time.

This being the case, the solipsist then considers whether the mind doesn’t just manifest these conflicts as voices within itself, but as an entire reality seemingly external to itself. A reality in which these voices and conflicts become personified. You’re my conscious mind giving voice to a conflict that it’s unable to resolve. So yes, to a solipsist, you’re my mind talking to itself, and in the process creating everything that it sees around it. You’re a personification of my own internal conflicts.

And that’s why the world is full of conflicts. Because the mind has questions that it simply can’t answer, and foremost among them, is where did I come? A question which no matter how hard it tries, the mind simply cannot answer. And so it creates a world in which to personify all of the possible answers, and the inherent conflicts within those possible answers. The mind is beset with conflicts from a question that it cannot answer, and so the world it creates is beset by conflicts as well. The mind cannot conceive of hot without cold, light without darkness, or good without evil. For it cannot create one without creating the other.

Reality may simply be the mind trying to rationalize the existence of itself. Now you might believe that this is ridiculous, but as a Catholic you should believe that the material world can’t give rise to consciousness. Molecules, no matter how intricately configured, can’t produce the mind. The question then is, can the mind create the material world? And if so, what would it look like?

But this still leaves unresolved, the question of where did I come from? And so solipsism still leaves room for God. That’s a question that the mind just can’t conclusively answer.

 

[Partinobodycula]

OP, you can’t call yourself a Christian and a Soliphist.

Compassion, patience, forgiveness, kindness, mercy, humility…in my eyes these are the things that make someone a Christian. The sad thing is, that they don’t make them a Catholic. Dogma does. A solipsist is what I am by nature, because I can never gain a perspective outside of myself. A Christian on the other hand, is what I am by choice.

You cannot worship yourself and God.

It’s not my intent to worship myself, nor that you should either. My intent is simply to understand myself, and to understand why men suffer, and how the explanation for that suffering may lie in me. Not in others, and not in God, but in me.

God does not think, will, or believe Himself as God. God is.

Yes, the famous “I am that I am”. But within the concept of “I am” is the concept of what I am, and within the concept of what I am is the concept of where I came from. It’s my proposal, that in answering those two questions, what I am and where I came from, that consciousness creates everything that it sees around it. But what I cannot answer, is where consciousness comes from, and so the mind still leaves room for God.

 

[e_c]

OP - I have recommended Gilson to you before, and I will do so again here. Try “Methodical Realism.”

You have pushed the Idealist paradigm to its natural absurd end. Even Berkeley would be telling you to cool it at this point.

If you empty definitions, require Cartesian certainty for knowledge, etc., you can’t get out of the bubble you are in.

 

[Partinobodycula]

OP - I have recommended Gilson to you before, and I will do so again here. Try “Methodical Realism.”

I’ll readily admit that I haven’t read Gilson’s “Methodical Realism”. But I’ve been a solipsist for quite some time and so I’ve probably encountered most arguments against idealism at some point. Such arguments do tend to have recurring themes. I suspect that in the case of “Methodical Realism” the argument will be something along the lines of consciousness being unable to form the concept of an object from whole cloth, and therefore requires an external source from which to draw the information with which it forms its concepts.

If this is indeed the case, then my reply to Gilson would be…DON’T DO THAT!!!

He’s making the exact same mistake that theists have been accusing non-theists of since God only knows when. He’s using the rules that govern the creation to judge the creator. To be specific, he’s applying the concept of time to that which creates the concept of time. In other words, he’s saying that the object must exist before the consciousness which perceives its existence. He’s assumed the order of cause and effect, and that’s a mistake. He’s assumed that the past determines the present, when in actuality it may be the present that determines the past.

I realize that this sounds totally absurd, but consider it this way, if God could create every possible past and every possible future, then what decides which one actually exists? The answer, if I truly have free will, then I do.

 

[yppop]

Parti
This is the question from the OP

Am I the creator of all that I see? Am I God(1)?

Here is your last post.

I realize that this sounds totally absurd, but consider it this way, if God(2) could create every possible past and every possible future, then what decides which one actually exists? The answer, if I truly have free will, then I do.

I asked you in an earlier post to define God and you didn’t answer. Now I list two of your statements above in which you use the word God in two different senses. In the first you are asking if you are god. Does this god from your OP the same God you refer to in your last post, the God that created every possible past and every possible future?

Please distinguish between god#1, a god that creates your personal subjective reality and God#2, the God that created and sustains objective reality and provides the “raw material” that allows you to create your own trivial world.

If you are claiming to be a really trivial god#1 good for you. If you are claiming to be God#2 please let me win a big lottery.

If you define God akin to god#1 we might be able to have a nice discussion because I know where the sensations, feelings, emotions and qualia reside. The answer to your question in the Op: You may be your own god; but you certainly are not the God that created and sustains objective reality.
Yppop

 

[Partinobodycula]

I asked you in an earlier post to define God and you didn’t answer.

Actually, I did answer. See Post #92

Please distinguish between god#1, a god that creates your personal subjective reality and God#2, the God that created and sustains objective reality and provides the “raw material” that allows you to create your own trivial world.

God #1 can best be described as what Aquinas refers to in the Fifth Way as the final cause. God #2 is that which most Judaic religions refer to as God.

The answer to your question in the Op: You may be your own god; but you certainly are not the God that created and sustains objective reality.
Yppop

If I’m God #1, then I am by necessity the creator of God #2.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I realize that there are very few people on this forum capable of appreciating the depth of this question, and doubtless no one capable of answering it, but still there may be those here who have something to gain or offer in regards to this question. So I thought that I would open the topic up for discussion.

Am I God, in the sense that I’m the creator of everything that I see around me?

I realize that the knee-jerk reaction is to regard this question as nothing more than trolling, but I assure you, the question isn’t as farfetched as it might at first appear, and the answer not as self-apparent as you assume.

Am I the creator of all that I see? Am I God?

If you are not able to answer your own question, and you need some one else to respond to it, then no, you are not God. You are just a humble Partinobodycula.

 

[Partinobodycula]

If you are not able to answer your own question, and you need some one else to respond to it, then no, you are not God. You are just a humble Partinobodycula.

This may indeed be true if one is speaking of an omniscient God as espoused by Catholics, but in this case I’m talking specifically about God as being defined as the creator of everything that I see around me. Much as the dreamer is the creator of the dream, am I the creator of you? Just as you might ask if you’re the creator of me. Not through any conscious willing of my existence, but merely as a consequence of the natural workings of the conscious mind.

So in asking you a question, my mind may simply be contemplating the question, and in so doing, creating a reality that embodies that question. Is reality simply consciousness contemplating the existence of itself?

 

[yppop]

Actually, I did answer. See Post #92

God #1 can best be described as what Aquinas refers to in the Fifth Way as the final cause. God #2 is that which most Judaic religions refer to as God.

If I’m God #1, then I am by necessity the creator of God #2.

So you created “every possible past and every possible future?” Who created you??
Yppop

 

[JuanFlorencio]

This may indeed be true if one is speaking of an omniscient God as espoused by Catholics, but in this case I’m talking specifically about God as being defined as the creator of everything that I see around me. Much as the dreamer is the creator of the dream, am I the creator of you? Just as you might ask if you’re the creator of me. Not through any conscious willing of my existence, but merely as a consequence of the natural workings of the conscious mind.

So in asking you a question, my mind may simply be contemplating the question, and in so doing, creating a reality that embodies that question. Is reality simply consciousness contemplating the existence of itself?

Oh, contemplating consciousness, who may or may not (who knows?) be simply contemplating its own and only repetitive question once again: how poor you are! How poor is your repertoire of questions! I leave you alone now, and wish you enjoy your “profound” contemplation…

 

[openmind77]

I realize that there are very few people on this forum capable of appreciating the depth of this question, and doubtless no one capable of answering it, but still there may be those here who have something to gain or offer in regards to this question. So I thought that I would open the topic up for discussion.

Am I God, in the sense that I’m the creator of everything that I see around me?

I realize that the knee-jerk reaction is to regard this question as nothing more than trolling, but I assure you, the question isn’t as farfetched as it might at first appear, and the answer not as self-apparent as you assume.

Am I the creator of all that I see? Am I God?

If you need to ask the question, then you are probably not God.

However it looks like, you may be confusing solipsism with eastern style monism.

Solipsists put themselves at the center of the universe, but are strangely not surprised that they don’t understand most of it (try reading a book on graduate level mathematics or physics or any science - if you created it, you should be able to explain it).

Monists on the other hand, say that there is only universal being that underlies all reality and that your soul/self (not your brain or body or personality) is the same as that universal being.

So, no you are not God, but God maybe you.