Is god self-aware?

Simple Question.

Is God sentient or insensate.

Everyone here should agree that everything feels "experience", from the tallest man to the tallest moutians, all things "experience".

What is the prime difference between, a humans experience compared to that of a rocks of, per sa, being kicked?

Deep

It hurts when you kick me. A rock doesn't really care.
I see your kick and I cover my balls as it moves towards me. Rock has no balls so it covers nothing.
I then (if my balls still intact) kick the living # out of you.
Rock would just proceed to lay there.
Rock would not experience your kick but it does sense you and feels your presense. Plants do also. We just don't know how a rock does it yet, but we were able to hook up sensors to plants and play diff types of music to them and they reacted totally different to say heavy metal and classical music. The one with heavy metal died I think. The one with classical music grew almsot twice as fast and leaned towards the speaker!

So our human preconceptions and beliefs interfere with how we judge our experiences (negative/positive). Rock doesn't judge, it just absorbs experiences and moves on. So it cares not what happens to it at all. Plants don't either. They do have instinct to survive, however. Rocks don't have a choice either way so they don't have that instinct. They are only 1st density, their existance is drastically different from any other density. Take what I said with a grain of salt as I cannot prove this to you. I give this a high probability to be true, however based on my learning.

Also based on what I know, God doesn't exist as a separate entity, God simply encompasses all that exists for all eternity so no he has no separate consciousness as a God. All our consciousnesses combined are God. Individually we are all parts of the whole.

[Edited on 8-1-2004 by lilblam]

I don't know if God is sentient, but I do know that 'God' moves, and moves all along with itself.

I know that everything experiences, like plants experience the sun.

The human reacts because a human is self-aware when being kicked, but the rock does not 'care'.

Just sticking to your original question...there are two problems.

If God is everything, everywhere and ominpotent then there's a definitional problem with self-awareness.

As opposed to what? Who? What other? I'm not saying he wouldn't be self aware, but rather the question makes no sense. He'd be both self aware AND oblivious...completely devoid of imagination, the ability to project or even contemplate himself. He'd be total knowledge. Not exactly even 'intelligent', just blah. GOD.

OR if you ascribe to his creation of man with free will, then YES God is self aware....but he wasn't until he made MAN. Or at least the DEVIL.

"Good" means nothing without "Evil". And being omnipotent means nothing without lesser beings.

Lets discuss this further, please.

I posted this afore and I shall enjoy more articulation on this matter with the plethora of newly signed members.

As for my initial question, "is God self-aware", I would like to state that an omnipotent 'GOD' is being discussed: having virtually unlimited authority or influence, now this does not necessarily insinuate a sense of awareness facilitated by 'God', nor does it denote to a 'living' entity.

I would also like to raise another issue, if one does not mind: Was the creation fo the universe acted upon the laws of determinism [every event or state of affairs is determined by a preceding one], Compatibilism [ Every state of affairs is determinied by a previous state of affairs, but one has the ability to chose wether or not to act upon the cause, and has the free will to make an alternative volition] or, was it a categorical imperative [as Kant states:“the categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to another end.”] If God created the universe out of a nessicitated precedence, one can assume that God, too, is bound by the laws of the universe, laws in which he had created?

Odd..


What was the reason for the creation of the universe? Nontuism states an action driven neither by egoism or altruism, this sound about right to me.

Just some thoughts.

Have fun

Deep

[edit on 10-1-2005 by ZeroDeep]

as posted by ZeroDeep
Is god self-aware?

You bet He/She/It/The Force is. He/She/It/The Force is self-aware through each and everyone of us.

As to the creation of the universe, the three choices you give are either incomplete, inadequate, or a combination of all three. There are a variety of "laws" that govern us, but in the unfathomable infiniteness of such a Being, it is hard for us to evaluate or postulate "if" such a Being is governed by the same laws He/She/It/The Force created and established. The finite mind cannot, at this point in time or juncture in life, fanthom nor completely understand the infinite. That would be like asking that since we are controlled by Time, would He/She/It/The force be likewise controlled by such. Or Can God create a rock so heavy that He/She/It/The Force cannot lift?

Come on ZeroDeep.




seekerof

I think anything that would be considered a god must be self-aware. The God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam certainly is very self-aware. An unaware god would just be nature, the universe, etc. and would be completely able to be described by science, so wouldn't really be a god at all, in my opinion.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
I think anything that would be considered a god must be self-aware. The God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam certainly is very self-aware. An unaware god would just be nature, the universe, etc. and would be completely able to be described by science, so wouldn't really be a god at all, in my opinion.

Which in itself makes no sense, because the Judeo-Christian God is omni-present. That is, everywhere. Which brings up other problems such as hell. Many Christians believe hell is the absence of God, which is impossible if He is omni-present. I dont believe a personal, self-aware God though so I cant really comment on that. Just putting in my 2 cents.

Genesis 1

(KJ21)
   1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
   2And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
   3And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
   4And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
   5And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

If these first lines of the Bible don't already indicate self-awareness then I don't know what does...you can argue that Judeo-Christian theology is incorrect but I don't think you can say that our God is unaware.

Throughout the Bible, God uses the word "I". If you say "I", you recognize that you are individual. You recognize there's something other than yourself. You also recognize that you are something other than your environment. I also believe God can be whatever He chooses, so he can be more or less according to His will.

This entire issue is just proof of mans arrogance. This is something out of academia psyco-bable. Why is there "Air" etc, Yawn, etc. This isn't very "deep".

This is a question I have asked myself many times (and so far haven't answered myself)

My idea of God (so far, I am still searching) is just the energy in the universe. EVERYTHING is made up of energy just in different forms some living some "not" but its the same energy. That energy creates life but does not necessarily "KNOW" it created it. The afterlife is just what happens to the bit of energy that is "us" after death of the body.

I am not even sure that God is even aware that "He" is God, or even aware of itself much less us.

Before we get into the question of God being self aware, we must first answer the question of "What does it mean to be self aware"?

MINDS ARE SIMPLY WHAT BRAINS DO
What do brains do? Doing means changing. Whenever we learn or 'change our minds', our brains are engaged in changing their states.

When we see a ball roll down a hill, we appreciate that the rolling is neither the ball itself, nor something apart in some other world - but merely an aspect of the ball's extension in space-time; it is a description of the ball, over time, seen from the viewpoint of physical laws.

It seems that being "self aware" really means that we can comprehend and react to change in the Universe. We understand and comprehend a progression of events. So a rock isn't self aware, since it doesn't have the capacity to understand change. At least we can't observe any reaction in the rock that shows it was able to capture events in time and react to them.

So it would appear that an entity (God) that is capable of creating and maintaining the Universe would have to be self aware. Would have to understand a progression of events and react to them. Obviously if we are created by God and we are self aware then the Creator would need a working knowledge of what being self aware was before giving us the capabilities ourself.

To say that God isn't self aware would be to rule out the possibility of God creating an organized Universe. Everything would be left to chance since there would be no thought put into the reaction and organization of atoms. Now we are indicating that the organization of the Universe and the correct placement of our planet is simply blind luck. In effect you question reverts back to the question..."Is there a God?" This is simply another way to ask, is there intelligent design, or is it all an accident.

Freinds,

I don't mean to sound rude, but you jumped the gun without fully comprehending my proposition --mundane as it was.

I simply posed a question in regards to the creation of the universe in advocacy of a hypothetical stance which I provided. I'm not saying the Universe was created by God; however, if one persists, the universe was created, this is common knowledge: the "big bang" is a generaly accepted universality; however, what caused the "big-bang" has been debated for decades.

And those who speak in tounge of Christ: I created this thread and strictly stated an "OMNIPOTENT" entity, not a Christian God -Yaweh. I have no need to discuss his logistics on this site. You're adhereing a meta-physical notion to Yaweh the clan God Moses, whom, at the time, was more worried about discarding Baal, Marduk, Elohim, than anything.

Let me reiterate my stance, once again, to something more pliable: Let us picture a stream of water flowing in the beautifull mountians in the Swiss alps; this stream moves and causes erosion to take place on the land it passes over. Does this stream have a mind behind it's movement?


Seeker,

I'm not a big fan of circulatory logic and descartian ontology I would also like to state that calling my propositions faulty, does not make them faulty; one awaits a productive diatribe as to WHY they are faulty.

Deep

[edit on 15-1-2005 by ZeroDeep]

Scale. On the scale of the Universe we as individuals are smaller than nanotechnology. If we use a computer as a model, the macrouniverse (case, keyboard, batteries) is not where the 'thinking' power is localized- that is hidden in the microuniverse of the processor. So if by G-d we mean Universe, perhaps the Macrouniverse is the wrong place to look for self-awareness. A better place to look might be down in the nanoarchitecture- say, in the eyes of that poor unfortunate over there (sorry- that's your employee?).

What if G-d was one of us... Just another slob on the bus, trying to make His way home... like a Holy Rolling Stone...

Yes, I am.

Hehehehehehe.....

Love and light,

Wupy

LOL! If He isn't intelligent enough to be self aware, He wouldn't be God.

If He created us to commune with Him, He must be self aware.

If He said He is "I am that I am", he must be self aware.

I am, therefore I am hungry. This proves that I am also self aware, and I am off to get a burger and some fries. My arteries are not self aware; screw'em!

Well, in the conventional christian/judaism/islamic belief of god, god is omnipotent; and I do believe omnipotent means all things, including himself.

Perhaps in the beginning God "was" self aware pure awareness in an empty vacume. perhaps he initiated the big bang, i.e the creation of physical matter in order to expand awareness. Perhaps he imagines, learns and experiences ever new facets of his own "being" through us, animals, plants, rocks, aliens etc etc.
You cannot understand another until you walk in his shoes the saying goes, perhaps "God" walks in infinite shoes. If he creates new souls and new bodies then every one, every experience is new and as such he is infinite. Life itself is Gods awarness. New life, new experience, new awarness, never ending. Imagine experiencing the life of 6 billion human souls and new ones every second, not to mental animls plants, rock, an alien life in an infinate number of world in an infinite physical universe, unlimited. Far more intresting than just "Being" alone in a vacume wouldnt you say? I am self aware, you are self aware, x infinity. Yes, I think "God" is self aware.