How would gods omnipotence work

[Keymaster]

Operating Under the assumption that there is a unified conciousness, in what way would it perhaps exist. And if so how could this conciousness give and recieve information omnipotently. Aswell as have the ability to interact with physical matter taking up space/ the space itself. I have my own opinions, but i would really like to hear others. 

[Piney]

I believe in the Algonquian concept that "God" is Creation. Literally the "Living Universe" which we are all part of.  

[XenoFish]

Hmm.....let's say there are infinite universes with infinite possibilities and infinite variety of people doing an infinite amount of things. I'd say the answer would be that omnipotence = confusion. 

[Keymaster]

Hmmm.....i was looking more for how would it work, in someones imaginative opinion. Like what could be the structure of it, and how could that structure work. Im just doing research, and wouldve like a group to brainstorm. A lil. 

[XenoFish]

Well unless god is an entity that can perceive all possible thing in time and space. Then yeah, god would be a time lord.

[Coil]

 

Just now, Keymaster said:

Hmmm.....i was looking more for how would it work, in someones imaginative opinion. Like what could be the structure of it, and how could that structure work. Im just doing research, and wouldve like a group to brainstorm. A lil. 

If you are interested in how the supermind works, then you can read this passage:

Spoiler

 

The fundamental nature of this supermind is that all its
knowledge is originally a knowledge by identity and oneness
and even when it makes numberless apparent divisions and dis-
criminating modifications in itself, still all the knowledge that
operates in its workings, even in these divisions, is founded upon
and sustained and lit and guided by this perfect knowledge by
identity and oneness. The Spirit is one everywhere and it knows
all things as itself and in itself, so sees them always and therefore
knows them intimately, completely, in their reality as well as
their appearance, in their truth, their law, the entire spirit and
sense and figure of their nature and their workings. When it
sees anything as an object of knowledge, it yet sees it as itself
and in itself, and not as a thing other than or divided from it
about which therefore it would at first be ignorant of the nature,
constitution and workings and have to learn about them, as the
mind is at first ignorant of its object and has to learn about it
because the mind is separated from its object and regards and
senses and meets it as something other than itself and external
to its own being. The mental awareness we have of our own
subjective existence and its movements, though it may point to,
is not the same thing as this identity and self-knowledge, because
what it sees are mental figures of our being and not the inmost
or the whole and it is only a partial, derivative and superficial
action of our self that appears to us while the largest and most
secretly determining parts of our own existence are occult to our
mentality. The supramental Spirit has, unlike the mental being,
the real because the inmost and total knowledge of itself and
of all its universe and of all things that are its creations and
self-figurings in the universe.
This is the second character of the supreme Supermind that
its knowledge is a real because a total knowledge. It has in the
first place a transcendental vision and sees the universe not only
in the universal terms, but in its right relation to the supreme
and eternal reality from which it proceeds and of which it is an
expression. It knows the spirit and truth and whole sense of the
universal expression because it knows all the essentiality and all
the infinite reality and all the consequent constant potentiality
of that which in part it expresses. It knows rightly the relative
because it knows the Absolute and all its absolutes to which the
relatives refer back and of which they are the partial or modified
or suppressed figures. It is in the second place universal and sees
all that is individual in the terms of the universal as well as in
its own individual terms and holds all these individual figures
in their right and complete relation to the universe. It is in the
third place, separately with regard to individual things, total in
its view because it knows each in its inmost essence of which all
else is the resultant, in its totality which is its complete figure and
in its parts and their connections and dependences, — as well as
in its connections with and its dependences upon other things
and its nexus with the total implications and the explicits of the
universe.
The mind on the contrary is limited and incapable in all these
directions. Mind cannot arrive at identity with the Absolute even
when by a stretch of the intellect it conceives the idea, but can
only disappear into it in a swoon or extinction: it can only have
a kind of sense or an intimation of certain absolutes which it
puts by the mental idea into a relative figure. It cannot grasp the
universal, but only arrives at some idea of it through an exten-
sion of the individual or a combination of apparently separate
things and so sees it either as a vague infinite or indeterminate or
a half-determined largeness or else only in an external scheme or
constructed figure. The indivisible being and action of the univer-
sal, which is its real truth, escapes the apprehension of the mind,
because the mind thinks it out analytically by taking its own divi-
sions for units and synthetically by combinations of these units,
but cannot seize on and think entirely in the terms, though it
may get at the idea and certain secondary results, of the essential
oneness. It cannot, either, know truly and thoroughly even the
individual and apparently separate thing, because it proceeds
in the same way, by an analysis of parts and constituents and
properties and a combination by which it erects a scheme of it
which is only its external figure. It can get an intimation of the
essential inmost truth of its object, but cannot live constantly
and luminously in that essential knowledge and work out on
the rest from within outward so that the outward circumstances
appear in their intimate reality and meaning as inevitable result
and expression and form and action of the spiritual something
which is the reality of the object. And all this which is impossible
for the mind to do, but possible only to strive towards and figure,
is inherent and natural to the supramental knowledge.
The third characteristic of the supermind arising from this
difference, which brings us to the practical distinction between
the two kinds of knowledge, is that it is directly truth-conscious,
a divine power of immediate, inherent and spontaneous knowl-
edge, an Idea holding luminously all realities and not depending
on indications and logical or other steps from the known to the
unknown like the mind which is a power of the Ignorance. The
supermind contains all its knowledge in itself, is in its highest
divine wisdom in eternal possession of all truth and even in its

lower, limited or individualised forms has only to bring the latent
truth out of itself, — the perception which the old thinkers tried
to express when they said that all knowing was in its real ori-
gin and nature only a memory of inwardly existing knowledge.
The supermind is eternally and on all levels truth-conscious and
exists secretly even in mental and material being, surveys and
knows the things, even obscurest, of the mental ignorance and
understands and is behind and governs its processes, because
everything in the mind derives from the supermind — and must
do so because everything derives from the spirit. All that is men-
tal is but a partial, a modified, a suppressed or half-suppressed
figure of the supramental truth, a deformation or a derived and
imperfect figure of its greater knowledge. The mind begins with
ignorance and proceeds towards knowledge. As an actual fact, in
the material universe, it appears out of an initial and universal
inconscience which is really an involution of the all-conscient
spirit in its own absorbed self-oblivious force of action; and
it appears therefore as part of an evolutionary process, first a
vital feeling towards overt sensation, then an emergence of a
vital mind capable of sensation and, evolving out of it, a mind
of emotion and desire, a conscious will, a growing intelligence.
And each stage is an emergence of a greater suppressed power
of the secret supermind and spirit.
The mind of man, capable of reflection and a coordinated
investigation and understanding of itself and its basis and sur-
roundings, arrives at truth but against a background of original
ignorance, a truth distressed by a constant surrounding mist of
incertitude and error. Its certitudes are relative and for the most
part precarious certainties or else are the assured fragmentary
certitudes only of an imperfect, incomplete and not an essential
experience. It makes discovery after discovery, gets idea after
idea, adds experience to experience and experiment to experi-
ment, — but losing and rejecting and forgetting and having to
recover much as it proceeds, — and it tries to establish a rela-
tion between all that it knows by setting up logical and other
sequences, a series of principles and their dependences, gener-
alisations and their application, and makes out of its devices a
structure in which mentally it can live, move and act and enjoy
and labour. This mental knowledge is always limited in extent:
not only so, but in addition the mind even sets up other willed
barriers, admitting by the mental device of opinion certain parts
and sides of truth and excluding all the rest, because if it gave
free admission and play to all ideas, if it suffered truth’s infinities,
it would lose itself in an unreconciled variety, an undetermined
immensity and would be unable to act and proceed to practical
consequences and an effective creation. And even when it is
widest and most complete, mental knowing is still an indirect
knowledge, a knowledge not of the thing in itself but of its fig-
ures, a system of representations, a scheme of indices, — except
indeed when in certain movements it goes beyond itself, beyond
the mental idea to spiritual identity, but it finds it extremely
difficult to go here beyond a few isolated and intense spiritual
realisations or to draw or work out or organise the right practi-
cal consequences of these rare identities of knowledge. A greater
power than the reason is needed for the spiritual comprehension
and effectuation of this deepest knowledge.
This is what the supermind, intimate with the Infinite, alone
can do. The supermind sees directly the spirit and essence, the
face and body, the result and action, the principles and depen-
dences of the truth as one indivisible whole and therefore can
work out the circumstantial results in the power of the essential
knowledge, the variations of the spirit in the light of its identities,
its apparent divisions in the truth of its oneness. The supermind
is a knower and creator of its own truth, the mind of man only
a knower and creator in the half light and half darkness of
a mingled truth and error, and creator too of a thing which it
derives altered, translated, lessened from something greater than
and beyond it. Man lives in a mental consciousness between a
vast subconscient which is to his seeing a dark inconscience
and a vaster superconscient which he is apt to take for another
but a luminous inconscience, because his idea of consciousness
is confined to his own middle term of mental sensation and
intelligence. It is in that luminous superconscience that there lie
the ranges of the supermind and the spirit.
The supermind is again, because it acts and creates as well as
knows, not only a direct truth-consciousness, but an illumined,
direct and spontaneous truth-will. There is not and cannot be
in the will of the self-knowing spirit any contradiction, division
or difference between its will and its knowledge. The spiritual
will is the Tapas or enlightened force of the conscious being of
the spirit effecting infallibly what is there within it, and it is
this infallible operation of things acting according to their own
nature, of energy producing result and event according to the
force within it, of action bearing the fruit and event involved in
its own character and intention which we call variously in its dif-
ferent aspects law of Nature, Karma, Necessity and Fate. These
things are to mind the workings of a power outside or above it
in which it is involved and intervenes only with a contributory
personal effort which partly arrives and succeeds, partly fails and
stumbles and which even in succeeding is largely overruled for
issues different from or at any rate greater and more far-reaching
than its own intention. The will of man works in the ignorance
by a partial light or more often flickerings of light which mislead
as much as they illuminate. His mind is an ignorance striving to
erect standards of knowledge, his will an ignorance striving to
erect standards of right, and his whole mentality as a result very
much a house divided against itself, idea in conflict with idea,
the will often in conflict with the ideal of right or the intellectual
knowledge. The will itself takes different shapes, the will of
the intelligence, the wishes of the emotional mind, the desires
and the passion of the vital being, the impulsions and blind
or half-blind compulsions of the nervous and the subconscient
nature, and all these make by no means a harmony, but at best
a precarious concord among discords. The will of the mind and
life is a stumbling about in search of right force, right Tapas
which can wholly be attained in its true and complete light and
direction only by oneness with the spiritual and supramental
being.
The supramental nature on the contrary is just, harmonious
and one, will and knowledge there only light of the spirit and
power of the spirit, the power effecting the light, the light
illumining the power. In the highest supramentality they are
intimately fused together and do not even wait upon each other
but are one movement, will illumining itself, knowledge fulfilling
itself, both together a single jet of the being. The mind knows
only the present and lives in an isolated movement of it though
it tries to remember and retain the past and forecast and compel
the future. The supermind has the vision of the three times,
trikāladr.s.t.i; it sees them as an indivisible movement and sees
too each containing the others. It is aware of all tendencies,
energies and forces as the diverse play of unity and knows their
relation to each other in the single movement of the one spirit.
The supramental will and action are therefore a will and action
of the spontaneous self-fulfilling truth of the spirit, the right
and at the highest the infallible movement of a direct and total
knowledge.
The supreme and universal Supermind is the active Light and
Tapas of the supreme and universal Self as the Lord and Creator,
that which we come to know in Yoga as the divine Wisdom and
Power, the eternal knowledge and will of the Ishwara. On the
highest planes of Being where all is known and all manifests
as existences of the one existence, consciousnesses of the one
consciousness, delight’s self-creations of the one Ananda, many
truths and powers of the one Truth, there is the intact and in-
tegral display of its spiritual and supramental knowledge. And
in the corresponding planes of our own being the Jiva shares
in the spiritual and supramental nature and lives in its light
and power and bliss. As we descend nearer to what we are
in this world, the presence and action of this self-knowledge
narrows but retains always the essence and character when not
the fullness of the supramental nature and its way of knowing
and willing and acting, because it still lives in the essence and
body of the spirit. The mind, when we trace the descent of
the self towards matter, we see as a derivation which travels
away from the fullness of self, the fullness of its light and being
and which lives in a division and diversion, not in the body
of the sun, but first in its nearer and then in its far-off rays.
There is a highest intuitive mind which receives more nearly the
supramental truth, but even this is a formation which conceals
the direct and greater real knowledge. There is an intellectual
mind which is a luminous half-opaque lid which intercepts and
reflects in a radiantly distorting and suppressively modifying
atmosphere the truth known to the supermind. There is a still
lower mind built on the foundation of the senses between which
and the sun of knowledge there is a thick cloud, an emotional
and a sensational mist and vapour with here and there lightnings
and illuminations. There is a vital mind which is shut away even
from the light of intellectual truth, and lower still in submental
life and matter the spirit involves itself entirely as if in a sleep
and a night, a sleep plunged in a dim and yet poignant nervous
dream, the night of a mechanical somnambulist energy. It is a
re-evolution of the spirit out of this lowest state in which we
find ourselves at a height above the lower creation having taken
it up all in us and reaching so far in our ascent only the light
of the well-developed mental reason. The full powers of self-
knowledge and the illumined will of the spirit are still beyond
us above the mind and reason in supramental Nature.
If the spirit is everywhere, even in matter — in fact matter
itself is only an obscure form of the spirit — and if the supermind
is the universal power of the spirit’s omnipresent self-knowledge
organising all the manifestation of the being, then in matter and
everywhere there must be present a supramental action and,
however concealed it may be by another, lower and obscurer
kind of operation, yet when we look close we shall find that it
is really the supermind which organises matter, life, mind and
reason. And this actually is the knowledge towards which we
are now moving. There is even a quite visible intimate action of
the consciousness, persistent in life, matter and mind, which is
clearly a supramental action subdued to the character and need
of the lower medium and to which we now give the name of
intuition from its most evident characteristics of direct vision
and self-acting knowledge, really a vision born of some secret
identity with the object of the knowledge. What we call the intu-
ition is however only a partial indication of the presence of the
supermind, and if we take this presence and power in its widest7
character, we shall see that it is a concealed supramental force
with a self-conscient knowledge in it which informs the whole
action of material energy. It is that which determines what we
call law of nature, maintains the action of each thing according
to its own nature and harmonises and evolves the whole, which
would otherwise be a fortuitous creation apt at any moment to
collapse into chaos. All the law of nature is a thing precise in its
necessities of process, but is yet in the cause of that necessity and
of its constancy of rule, measure, combination, adaptation, re-
sult a thing inexplicable, meeting us at every step with a mystery
and a miracle, and this must be either because it is irrational and
accidental even in its regularities or because it is suprarational,
because the truth of it belongs to a principle greater than that
of our intelligence. That principle is the supramental; that is to
say, the hidden secret of Nature is the organisation of something
out of the infinite potentialities of the self-existent truth of the
spirit the nature of which is wholly evident only to an original
knowledge born of and proceeding by a fundamental identity,
the spirit’s constant self-perception. All the action of life too
is of this character and all the action of mind and reason, —
reason which is the first to perceive everywhere the action of
a greater reason and law of being and try to render it by its
own conceptional structures, though it does not always perceive
that it is something other than a mental Intelligence which is at
work, other than an intellectual Logos. All these processes are
actually spiritual and supramental in their secret government,
but mental, vital and physical in their overt process.

The Nature of the Supermind chapter XIX
http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/downloadpdf.php?id=37

 

[StarMountainKid]

I've wondered the same thing, hypothetically. God just goes "poof!" and things happen.  What's the mechanism. Maybe God itself doesn't know.

[StarMountainKid]

Personally, I wouldn't want some unified consciousness listening in to my thoughts. Or worse still, having some influence on  my consciousness. 

If such a thing did exist, there'd have to be some organization to it. It would need a purpose to exist. Or perhaps, it exists as some natural phenomenon, a sort of meta-neural web that operates autonomously with no external directives.

There's a Zen poem,

"Even the god of spring

Knows not how the flowers bloom"

Maybe it would just exist like everything else.

[brian100]

On 5/9/2018 at 3:03 AM, Piney said:

I believe in the Algonquian concept that "God" is Creation. Literally the "Living Universe" which we are all part of.  

That's the same as saying God is everything (pantheism).  We know its not true b/c everything withers and dies.

[brian100]

On 5/9/2018 at 12:03 AM, Keymaster said:

How would gods omnipotence work?

How can God know everything, and be everywhere, and do anything?  You just defined a God.

Edited September 19, 2019 by brian100
typo

[brian100]

You would have to define light as God to be everywhere.

[+DieChecker]

I think God would have to exist in a kind of hyperspace, for lack of a better term, where everywhere is available instantly. Or so near instant as to make no difference.

We have computers that operate on the scale of pico seconds, so I don't see why a living being couldn't also live at that scale if perception.

That would account for instantaneous communication, and knowledge. And possibly future knowledge, if time is just another dimension that can be accessed by "wormholes".

Performing miracles would also be possible by moving energy, and physical matter, by the same wormholes.

A vast number of effects would be possible. Walking on water, food multiplication, lights and sounds...

[Rlyeh]

4 hours ago, brian100 said:

You would have to define light as God to be everywhere.

Then God isn't everywhere.

[Piney]

5 hours ago, brian100 said:

That's the same as saying God is everything (pantheism).  We know its not true b/c everything withers and dies.

Circle of Life is part of how it works

[+DieChecker]

1 hour ago, Scudbuster said:

Billions and billions of stars out there, along with billions and billions of planets.........and you think some "god" is concerned about "us"...?

Assuming omniscience, God could care about every grain of sand on all of those planets. Watching each single grain every picosecond into forever. 

Can you not care about every plant and animal on Earth? Would a bacteria deep in the rock, below Nebraska, be cared for by you any more, or any less, then any other animal, or plant?

[brian100]

3 hours ago, Rlyeh said:

Then God isn't everywhere.

But Llght can go into any darkness.

[brian100]

Darkness can not travel into the light.

[Rlyeh]

2 hours ago, brian100 said:

But Llght can go into any darkness.

Light isn't everywhere.

[brian100]

4 minutes ago, Rlyeh said:

Light isn't everywhere.

Light can go everywhere. And even x-ray right thru you.

 

I'm going to hit you with what you guys say to me!

 

Even though you can't see light it doesn't mean its not there.

Edited September 19, 2019 by brian100
add more

[Rlyeh]

2 hours ago, brian100 said:

Light can go everywhere. And even x-ray right thru you.

It hasn't.

 

2 hours ago, brian100 said:

I'm going to hit you with what you guys say to me!

 

Even though you can't see light it doesn't mean its not there.

Wrong, we can detect light.

[+DieChecker]

14 hours ago, Scudbuster said:

With all the atrocities, wars, rapes, robberies, fires, accidents, going on i'd have to say "he" obviously isn't up to the job.

Luckily your opinion is yours.

If you were a god, would you prevent all accidents and all crime, and fires, and disasters? You'd make the world perfect, and keep people from being mean?

[brian100]

9 hours ago, Rlyeh said:

It hasn't.

 

Wrong, we can detect light.

Yeah you can detect light in the ultra violet and the infrared spectrum.. even though its pitch black.  Also fast moving x-ray light radiation sees though solid objects.

So light can go anywhere.

 

Without light everything dies.

[Davros of Skaro]

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

If you were a god, would you prevent all accidents and all crime, and fires, and disasters? You'd make the world perfect, and keep people from being mean?

I would make Adam 2.0 because beta Adam is screwing things up.

[Rlyeh]

2 hours ago, brian100 said:

Yeah you can detect light in the ultra violet and the infrared spectrum.. even though its pitch black.  Also fast moving x-ray light radiation sees though solid objects.

So light can go anywhere.

No.

 

2 hours ago, brian100 said:

Without light everything dies.

No.

[brian100]

2 minutes ago, Rlyeh said:

No.

 

No.

Just because its dark dosen't mean there is no light.