Can God actually "die?"

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I'm Retarded? dijo:
this is roughly how the Bible sketches it out subtextually: since God is perfect, He is also the most valuable thing in existence. therefore, it is Correct and Good that all existence praises God. humans were created to serve as an army of voluntary worshippers to give glory to God. this is why humans were created in such a context that they exist in a constant state of moral peril. the humans that choose God get to hang out with Him eternally, which is the highest possible state of bliss since it is the purpose humans were expressly created for. the ones that rebel against God get to hang out with The Satan in the lake of fire forever, which also gives glory to God (i.e. perverts who rebel against the Cosmic Good get fucking owned).

God does not need believers or prayer to do anything. God can do whatever the fuck He wants, whenever He wants. prayers are merely pleasing to Him. believers are just a Correct expansion of the cosmic order. God's nature might be such that He is compelled to create things like this.

it's important to remember when considering things like this that God is not human. things like selfishness or conceit do not apply to God; if God believes He is better than everything else in existence, He's merely being objectively correct. since He is also perfect and incorruptible, it's also not possible for Him to be an unjust asshole. if you don't like how God has things laid out, it is in fact you who is wrong.
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Man when you put it that way Christianity sounds really fucking stupid.
 
I'm Retarded? dijo:
this sounds dangerously like heresy, friend. you're not a heretic, are you?
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I don't believe in God. Where's the heresy, though? Can God destroy Satan? Yes.
Does God choose not to destroy him? Also yes.
I'm Retarded? dijo:
God is not human
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Indeed. He is omniscient, so he must have a good reason for everything he does. Don't question it, though, cause firstly, you're not omniscient so you won't be able to grasp God's intentions. Secondly, as you've said, God is perfect, so everything he does is the best possible thing that could've happened. Even if it's drowning most people on Earth in a flood and nuking two cities.
If God orders you to kill your son, you must go and do it without expecting an angel to swoop down and stop you.
 
I'm Retarded? dijo:
this is roughly how the Bible sketches it out subtextually: since God is perfect, He is also the most valuable thing in existence. therefore, it is Correct and Good that all existence praises God. humans were created to serve as an army of voluntary worshippers to give glory to God. this is why humans were created in such a context that they exist in a constant state of moral peril. the humans that choose God get to hang out with Him eternally, which is the highest possible state of bliss since it is the purpose humans were expressly created for. the ones that rebel against God get to hang out with The Satan in the lake of fire forever, which also gives glory to God (i.e. perverts who rebel against the Cosmic Good get fucking owned).

God does not need believers or prayer to do anything. God can do whatever the fuck He wants, whenever He wants. prayers are merely pleasing to Him. believers are just a Correct expansion of the cosmic order. God's nature might be such that He is compelled to create things like this.

it's important to remember when considering things like this that God is not human. things like selfishness or conceit do not apply to God; if God believes He is better than everything else in existence, He's merely being objectively correct. since He is also perfect and incorruptible, it's also not possible for Him to be an unjust asshole. if you don't like how God has things laid out, it is in fact you who is wrong.
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If God was perfect then he would not have needed to manifest himself through Jesus Christ, engage with the mortal trials of man and allow Jesus to die on the cross in order to absolve mankind of their original sin (or some equivalent depending on what school of Christian thought you believe is accurate.) Perfect beings don't learn things; they just know everything already. God is not some ultimate overlord with mankind as mere plebs who should never engage with him under penalty of super-death. Turning God into a rigid dictator who totally ignores Man is where a lot of Christian-derivative heretical cults go wrong.
 
I don't understand your idea that if God can create something he can freely move between it. I can build a bird house but nothing except my dick will fit inside it. I can't freely move around the garden and the bird house because I'm too big. So assuming God has a physical form, it doesn't mean he can fit into the Afterlife in the way human souls presumably can.
 
skykiii dijo:
And this goes back to the whole "God dying" thing. Again this seems like just uncreative humans assuming that because we can die, that clearly God (or at least a god) can as well. Which maybe in some pantheons is valid. But applied to the Christian God, it makes no sense whatsoever.
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This is most apocrypha on God, or at least the Christian God. Like Young Earth Creationists who believe that a barely literate Irish Catholic Priest found out exactly how old the world is by reading the Bible really really hard. First of all, that guy did not come close even going by the Bible's metrics on the age of the Earth (this is not conclusively mentioned anywhere, but you can surmise that Methuselah himself was born before the "6000 years" between then and now, and a lot of YECism depends on God poofing the universe into existence in a literal week, which I see as symbolic rather than literal). The other issue is that YEC is only a standing theory because it spits in the face of the Theory of Evolution, which is practically fact now that we know how much Humanity itself has directly influenced the evolution of creatures, big and small, within a single human lifetime. This doesn't speak to a lack of human creativity, but it does speak to humanity's low expectations of God's creativity, a creativity that should be, by all accounts, ultimate and limitless.

Why is it impossible for Evolutionists and Standard Creationists to realize that Evolution can be a natural process of God's Creation? Do people really think that God hand-built each and every animal on Earth before teleporting them down to the planet, or is it more likely that he created the infinitely complex machinations that would interact over eons to bring forth the existence of that animal? It seems to me that YECs unironically believe that God is an old man in a white robe who wears sandals and watches the Earth on a very big TV.

Another case of this is Infernus. Dante took a cursory glance at the bible, took every single hint of a message describing hell, and made his own fanon about it. The problem is that now more Christians believe that Dante's Inferno is the true Christian Hell, when the book, written in the 1300s, is an allegory for the human soul's journey to God, and not meant to be taken as a sneek peak into what Hell could be. The Bible leaves this intentionally vague, and the closest thing you really get to an explanation is in Revelation, where it is revealed that the endgame of Hell is literally just the Atheist Afterlife. The hellbound are deleted from the server, where they are allowed to experience the peace of nothingness. Hell is not a true destination. In the end of this world, those who couldn't be saved, simply cease after a (comparatively) brief stint there.

In any case, OP, I believe you found the answer to your question. This matter, if real, is so far above you that it literally does not matter, because even if God's death was possible, there is no fucking way any of us could kill him. And why would we?
 
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Shiverpeaks dijo:
I don't understand your idea that if God can create something he can freely move between it. I can build a bird house but nothing except my dick will fit inside it. I can't freely move around the garden and the bird house because I'm too big. So assuming God has a physical form, it doesn't mean he can fit into the Afterlife in the way human souls presumably can.
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God can also take like a million forms or even be absolutely formless though. And weren't there cases in the bible where God resurrected people?

Broadside dijo:
Your OP was a bit lame, how about we ponder something genuinely mind boggling such as this:

Can God create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it?
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The answer is yes. Just because it makes no sense to you does not mean its illogical to God.

Hardline Traditionalist dijo:
Why didn't God just will Satan away? Why did he place the tree of knowledge in such an easily reachable place if he knew that Adam and Eve would try to eat its fruit? Why did he get so mad at them when they did it, if he knew ahead of time they would do it? None of this makes sense, God works in mysterious ways, don't question it.
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Honestly, God's own decisions have always made sense to me, even disregarding the biblical interpretation that @I'm Retarded? posted.

Which, you'll notice I don't take the Bible itself all that seriously. It's clearly a human-edited document and humanity is, 99% of the time, not particularly insightful or creative. Even in modern culture a lot of writers end up coming up with retarded explanations for superpowers, magical macguffins, or even character behaviors, and then someone on the internet comes up with a million alternatives that make a fuckton more sense. Biblical authors had an additional problem in that their writing had to support an ideological point, not just make sense on its own.

Not to mention.... the Bible started out as an oral history and thus could easily have had the telephone game phenomenon applied. Indeed even in written form, scholars have found this to be the case. In particular, the Book of Job--that whole bit near the beginning where God and Satan make a bet was actually inserted later. The original version of the story didn't have that. And reading that book with that knowledge in mind... I kinda want to smack whatever author added that whole bit about the bet, because it kinda wrecks the rest of the story.

And yeah, I'm aware this puts me in a weird position. A lot of bible-thumpers--even here on the Farms--seem to think that if you believe in God then you have to assign some divine properties to a book as well, which to me is just going to stunt your spiritual development. At the end of the day, you have to understand a book is just a book.

..... Aaaanyway...

But yeah, even without a Biblical explanation, I can think of plenty of reasons God wouldn't take the easy way. God could be training us for something, or examining how perfect chaos plays out, or any number of explanations where always taking the easy out would be worse overall. Or maybe the easy way is simply boring. Or perhaps there is some mysterious higher reason I can't comprehend.

It's the other characters who I question. Like think about it, imagine you're Alexander the Great but you know what a Nuke Button is and that one of the kingdoms on your map has one... would you ever attack that kingdom? That's what I meant by asking about Satan. He would go in knowing full-well he can't win.

My mortal brain can only see two possibilities: Either Satan was so high he ignored all logic, or else that characterization is also the fault of a faulty human author making shit up.

As for the Tree of Knowledge... its only in the Bible we hear that God commanded them not to eat. For all we know, in reality it could've been more like "hey, if you eat this you'll have to move out of the garden, just FYI" or perhaps God even wanted them to eventually eat the fruit and the whole Garden was essentially a safe "front yard' of sorts while mankind was in its childhood stage, and all the stuff about it representing a downfall was nostalgic storytellers being all like "man we used to live in this awesome garden and everything was good, until your mom ruined it for us!" similar to how people nowadays look back on the eighties and nineties.
 
I plan on finding out. I'll smuggle a gun into heaven, mark my words.
 
Hardline Traditionalist dijo:
Indeed. He is omniscient, so he must have a good reason for everything he does. Don't question it, though, cause firstly, you're not omniscient so you won't be able to grasp God's intentions. Secondly, as you've said, God is perfect, so everything he does is the best possible thing that could've happened. Even if it's drowning most people on Earth in a flood and nuking two cities.
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to clarify, I personally am an agnostic, so I don't strictly believe in the Bible's doctrine as stated or any other really. however, in the Bible's canon, this is unironically true, and assuming the Bible is strictly correct as written (which I personally do not), justifiable. in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is similarly shocked at God's decision to Ctrl+A Del both cities in their entirety, and asks him to reconsider, and God eventually agrees he will spare everyone in the cities if he can find even ten people who aren't complete degenerates:

The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.” So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord.

Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

so God sends some undercover angels into the city, who are immediately stalked by guys from the town who follow them to Lot's house. then the whole city surrounds Lot's house and demands the angels be given over for gang-raping. there's a weird thing here with ancient Jewish custom, where taking a guest into your house is a huge moral undertaking and requires you to take their safety as seriously as your own, or something, so Lot's bizarre move where he offers the rape mob his daughters to try to protect the angels is supposed to be extremely virtuous on his part. idk. the people around here who know shit about Judaism could probably tell you more about that.

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground. He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.” But he urged them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” But they replied, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near the door to break it down. But the men inside reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they were unable to find the door.

at this point God evidently made up his mind and the angels tell Lot it's time to get the fuck out of Dodge. I don't know what the pillar of salt thing is about, I guess when God tells you to do something in the course of saving your life, you don't fuck around.

Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city—bring them out of the place. For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up, get out of this place; for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.

When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.” But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city. When they had brought them outside, they said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.” And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die. Look, that city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one? —and my life will be saved!” He said to him, “Very well, I grant you this favor too, and will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

Bible stories are fun. :)
 
D&D has alot to answer for in this respect. It created this idea that god's need their mortal worshippers in order to sustain their divinity. This is not true in the case of "Capital G" God.

Actual God cannot die or be conceptually neutered within reality because he created it and rules it absolutely. Even Satan is ultimately a creation of God and subject to his rule.

The only reason God doesn't just wave his hand and deletes reality is because he promised he would not do so, which is the one thing that can bind him. His own covenants.
 
LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV] dijo:
Pick up a sword, call up a mage and a cleric and lets go kill the Demiurge
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.... Doesn't the Cleric get his power from God though?....

I'm Retarded? dijo:
I don't know what the pillar of salt thing is about, I guess when God tells you to do something in the course of saving your life, you don't fuck around.
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The thing is there was (and might still be) a literal pillar of salt in that geographic area, so what happened to Lot's wife was one of those "here's our mythological explanation for how this thing came to be" things.

Myth-makers were kinda just wild so they decided that apparently seeing the fate of the towns immediately turned her to salt. I like to think of this as like an extreme version of "seeing something so horrifying it makes your hair stand on end," whatever she saw was so horrifying it literally reduced her to salt on the spot. It wasn't necessarily God choosing to punish her or anything like that.

(Actually, that's one of my problems with the Bible as written--it tends to assume literally everything is something God made happen. A good example is Exodus where it clearly says "God hardened Pharoah's heart" and made him not listen to Moses. Why would God do that? The obvious answer: God wouldn't--the author of that passage just gave a retarded explanation).
 
Yes, Jesus died and came back. The thing to understand about God is that he can change the 'strength' of his power the same way that you can grab things with force or not. Omnipotence means that all possibilities are at his disposal which means he can limit himself, if he couldn't he wouldn't be omnipotent because there would be things he wouldn't be able to do.
 
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