Answerer

Well to me, the 'Supergod' that had created God is none but our ancestors.

Clete

Wow. I’m away from a computer for the night and look what happens! Thank you all for your responses.

Let me give you a little background on where and why I came up with this idea. I was recently reading a post (I can’t remember if it was on this board or on “General Religious Discussions”) where someone was asking why science seems to just dismiss the supernatural out of hand. My response, along with several other posters, was that there can’t really be anything that is supernatural, because once anything (even God, the afterlife, etc.) is proven to be real, then it is natural. This got me thinking about the old atheist argument that postulating the existence of God simply moves the “lack of a cause” problem up a level without really offering any further explanation. So I though it might be interesting to turn the whole question on it’s head.

You see, as an atheist I think that there really isn’t much of a need for the supernatural, as it describes either things that don’t exist or natural things that we have yet to understand. I also find God’s given attributes of infinity, omniscience and omnipotence to be logically impossible. My thought here is to up the ante for theists. If one is to believe that such logic-defying being could exist, then why dismiss out of hand a being with attributes such as super-supremacy (being “higher” than the supreme being) and superinfinity (being infinitely beyond infinite)?

Personally, I’m with Jobar here on just applying Occma’s Razor and eliminating the need for Supergod or Megagod or Superduperfabulousgod or just plain old God. (By the way Jobar, I read that whole epic thread you were involved in with Keith recently and thought the Occam’s Razor animation was a great way to end it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thread of that length actually have a good ending, they usually seem to just fizzle out.)

JTVrocher: I like your idea of giving God a sidekick! I keep imagining Robin painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Christopher13

Hello. This is my inaugural post here. I, too, enjoyed the Occam's Razor graphic.
This question of a "supergod" has come up before. It is pretty much the same as the question of whether there are many gods or just one. Of course, using reason alone, man cannot know that there are not many levels of higher beings. What can be shown, however, is that there can only be one ultimate being that most people know as God. There can be no "supergod" greater than this God.
To explain further would involve one of the common proofs for God's existence, namely that there is only one necessary being--God. I won't detail it unless someone really wants me too. It seems there is a reluctance in some of the posts to accept both the strength and the limit of human reason. While it is difficult to understand that there is such a thing as an Unmoved Mover or a Necessary Being, it is forced upon human reason as true. You must resist the a priori temptation to deny what reason shows to be true.

Jobar

Christopher13:
What can be shown, however, is that there can only be one ultimate being that most people know as God.

Reee-ally?

It seems to me that no two people who come here trying to describe and justify the god they believe in, believe in the same one. All the descriptions are different.

You use the word 'know' incorrectly, there. The word you want is imagine. And our imagination is always able to add another dimension of possible power, another 'super' to supersupersuper...supergod.

And remember the razor. It cuts away all parts of a theory which are not shown to be logically necessary to the theory- and God is not needed, and unevidenced, in the universe (to our present knowledge).

betzerdg

Ever hear of the Eiyn Sof?

Kabbalah teaches that before the creation of G-d, in the sense of time space formation, there existed ONE undefinable, unknowable, sovergn ONE, without boundaries or definitions. The pure energy of existence unlimited and all knowing.

Eiyn Sof, because of HIS OWN NEED to express the attributes contained within himself (ie love, creativity, beauty, justice) with the desire to KNOW HIMSELF and to be KNOWN....created HIMSELF in time and space. This first creation was the tetragrammatron, the Yud HEy VAV HEY....containing the ten serferot....of the G-dhead.
And it is this concept that JOHN in the new covenant scriptures discribes YESHUA.....the firstborn of all Creation...and the Creator of all creation. In the beginning was the WORD, and the Word was with G-d, and the word WAS G-d...all things are made by him......." The spoken bursting forth word of G-d was the first movement in the void and chaos of that which was not G-d.

Just as a woman contain a "womb" ...so did EIYN SOF contract his boundaries to created that which was NOT HIMSELF...and in that void that was created by his own contractions HE created the universe. And in creating that which was NOT HIMSELF, he created the potential for that which was NOT GOOD....and thus the possiblity for "evil".

This is Jewish mysticism. It goes back a little farther than the christian concept of the YAHWEH creator. This idea makes G-d the very foundation of all things created...yet existent without time space boundaries ....the definer and the definition.

So....NOThing new under the sun...would apply to your super..supergod theory. Of course....it only can go back to the Eiyn Sof, being that HE was the first movement...the drop of the pin in the ripples of the creation process.

Shalom,

BEtzer

CannibalCorpseLC

i don't think it's possible at all. the whole point of being omniscient, omnipotent (btw if you really really think about, omnipotency itself is impossible) is that you are already at the super stage. you are trying to suggest an "ultra" god sorta speak, when there's no room or need for it. i mean think about it, if god is everything, then what is super god? it makes no sense.

happyboy

ah, the kaballah....a useless pile of superstitionist junk that babbles on incoherantly about God and still does not prove He exists. :banghead:

happyboy, still waiting for the explanation as to why, if the occult cannot affect real changes, it should be pursued at all

betzerdg

Torah observant Kabbalah a has completely different foundation from the new age occult "christian" Kabbalah that is so prevelent.

"Torah observant" Kabbalah, up until recently has only been explored and studied by Men over 40 years of age, who have been torah observant their entire life. Kabbalists do not used the "tetragramatron" to produce 'magic" as is the common perception of those who hear the word "Kabbalah"

I agree that the occult is a strange superstition, power-seeking kind of anti-knowledge thing. Not like Kabbalah in it's purist form.
Interestingly enough, the super-string theory...the chaos theory...and the "god particle" concepts were all explored by Kabbalists in the early 1600's. Wasn't it the Prophet ISAIAH over 3000 years ago who let us in on the fact that the world was round.

Alot of thought has gone into the formation of this theory of creation.....The Eiyn Sof is extremely more logical and less "magical" in my opinion, than the darwinian-evolution of the species, life from non-life, thing. I guess we all have our FAITHS....some just chose to call theirs "scientific".

How about this....you PROVE your thoery of the origins of the universe....and then I'll prove mine.

Shalom,

Betzer

Wyz_sub10

Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis. There is nothing in evolutionary theory dependant on the idea that life arose from non-life. You may want to explore evolution before calling it faith.

As for proving origins of the universe...you seem to be taking the most difficult question and holding it up as a base example of science.

Medical science, for instance, cures, heals and saves lives based on research, some trial and error, and the continued progression of human understanding of biological systems. It is ignorant to define this knowledge and undertanding as "faith". You either have a contempt for science or a lack of understanding of it.

Mageth

And above SuperGod is HyperGod; then MegaGod; then... GigaGod!

Don't stop there! It's Gods all the way up!