Are we becoming God? Or is God just a human idea?

[The I AM]

I’ve been thinking hard about evolution — not just biological but by will. Imagine reengineering ourselves into superhumans: flying with nano-powered suits or even better, upgrading our own biology for jet speed, super intelligence, energy efficiency, near immortality. We’d be masters of motion, thought, and space travel. Maybe even Kardashev Type III civilizations, harnessing entire galaxies.

Sounds like a sci-fi dream, but maybe it’s inevitable. The only thing that might stop us? That biblical Tower of Babel moment — scattering language and thought to keep us in check.

But then I ask: what if we transcend even that? What if there’s no limit — no highest scale? What if we actually built the universe ourselves — simulation style — and boredom becomes the real problem? I imagine God as a bored creator, fiddling endlessly with time, universes, and versions of themselves to escape eternal monotony.

And here’s the kicker: The traditional image of God as an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly calm being is kind of... boring. If God knows everything — every thought, every outcome — what’s the thrill? It’s like watching a movie you wrote, directed, and starred in... repeatedly.

Maybe the divine is us in motion. A collective consciousness where death is just another state, and unpredictability — chaos — is the spice of existence. Maybe God isn’t a separate, distant entity but the sum of human experience, evolving as we do.

Now, I know some will say: “You can’t understand God’s mind. It’s beyond human comprehension.” That’s a common rebuttal, but let’s unpack it:

*If God’s mind is unknowable, how can anyone claim to truly know God’s will or intentions?

*If we can’t know God’s mind, can we even be sure God has a “mind” at all, or are we just projecting human traits onto the unknown?

*This unknowability turns all dogma into interpretations — none absolute. Who then decides which one is correct?

*Saying “God’s ways are mysterious” feels like admitting that God’s nature is a blank canvas painted by human fears, hopes, and needs.

*If God is truly unknowable, then does the idea of a bored, omniscient God hold any real meaning? Or is it just human imagination running wild?


So, where does that leave us? Perhaps not worshipping a fixed, eternal deity, but acknowledging a dynamic mystery — a process of becoming that we are part of, shaping and evolving in real time.

In other words, God might not be a boring all-powerful ruler on a throne — but the unpredictable, evolving totality of our collective being.

This is the kind of future I want to discuss. A future where humans stop waiting for divine intervention and start becoming the architects of reality — with all the chaos, power, and beauty that entails.

What do you think? Are we really on the path to becoming God? Or is God just the story we tell to make sense of ourselves? And how do we navigate the tension between faith, reason, and this grand vision of human evolution?

 

[Here&Now]

Here are a couple of authentic mystics discussing the supreme identity. Thinking of God in these terms seems to make much more sense than the standard Western conception of an external omnipotent entity. Also, I strongly suspect it's literally true, despite how unlikely that may seem.

 

[northape]

@Here&Now2 put it very well. We in the West are conditioned by Christianity, even if we don't believe in it.
An idea like original sin is nonexistent in Asian religions. Buddhas and ordinary beings come from the same origin.
The only difference is recognition of the source. God is reality itself. You can be in love with God by fully surrendering to reality.

I think we have the capacity to travel to the stars and fly in the sky. It's hidden in our energy bodies, and remains undeveloped thanks to materialism.
You can't work on something you have no idea about. You can find accounts of extraordinary feats that humans are capable of in sutras.
We're limited by our times and ideas that dominate. Our beliefs kind of create this whole reality.
Basically, you can walk on water if it's part of your worldview. Getting there today seems like a fairy tale.

 

[fink]

Jonathon Livingston Seagull is worth a read also, on this train of thought.

I'm pretty closely aligned with a lot of your ideas here OP.

What do you currently believe? Not think or hypothesise, but genuinely believe?

 

[Skr9]

I think we’re all like, one big God, you know? Just different parts of the same vibe.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Jonathon Livingston Seagull is worth a read also, on this train of thought.

Such a wonderful little story.

I don't have too much to add here. This is complex topic and my mind explodes with things I could say.
But, like the self, God may not really be what we think it is or how we think of it, to the point that no matter how we try to concieve and perceive we miss the mark, and as such, may want to worry a little less about it.
We probably won't be able to grasp much until we can readily avoid needing to anthropomorphize and personify things in order to understand them.

One love

 

[Exitwound]

It is what it is.

All the "great" thing perceived, all the fantasies are true somewhere or sometime and there is nothing that can not be found in infinity.

From no-thing comes all-thing.

Let the music play.

 

[Voidmatrix]

nothing that can not be found in infinity.

Depends on the infinity

One love

 

[northape]

Jonathon Livingston Seagull is worth a read also, on this train of thought.

Thanks for your suggestion. This book is very relevant to this topic for sure.
What is freedom? How different is freedom from our idea of it?

I'd say people who practice flight are very different from those who just theorize about it.
Practicing it leads to more understanding, and we change in the process realizing our true potential.
Somewhere along the way, ideas about God or freedom fall away and become irrelevant.
It's up to us to do the work and see the truth of it. Faith would be a solid conviction in our path.
When we reach the true understanding, there is just an open sky, imo.

 

[northape]

It is what it is.

This level of acceptance could be a way out. But we need to really practice it all the time.
Total surrender leads to openness.

All the "great" thing perceived, all the fantasies are true somewhere or sometime and there is nothing that can not be found in infinity.

From no-thing comes all-thing.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It's just that without love, it becomes nihilistic.

Let the music play.

Yeah, let the music play. Let it all flow and bloom. I feel it points to love too.
An open sky filled with love & understanding would be a fine description of God

 

[fink]

my mind explodes with things I could say.

Yes brother Void! This statement is the single most accurate description of all my strife

 

[Memberberries]

I think we’re all like, one big God, you know? Just different parts of the same vibe.

Reminds me of this:

The Egg

By: Andy Weir



You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” y
ou said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

 

[Jamie01]

If our tech is going to play a big role in shaping the future of our evolution I gotta say that it’s at least partly terrifying…

That’s a lot of power currently in the hands of ultra wealthy psychopaths.

I spend 55 hours a week dedicated to a job already, and have to rent almost everything but an old car..while my parents generation could earn like 50x the buying power with more spare time…all the while we have tech that generation etc only dreamed of.

We know more about the brain, about consciousness. We have pretty much instant access to media worldwide. We can communicate from our pockets with the other side of the globe at any moment.

Yet I don’t feel any closer to being a god. I feel tired of society and its advances and tbh just want to be more free from it all.

I think dying will be great though. I believe in god so I’m not necessarily looking out for when we become a god…or the god. I get where you are going however

 

[blig-blug]

We in the West are conditioned by Christianity

I think that view, while it does have some truth to it, is excessively simplistic.

In general, in all religions you can find more mystical doctrines and interpretations and simpler, more pedestrian ones. Following the (translated) Buddhist names for both sides, we could talk about the supramundane (lokuttara) and the mundane (lokiya) doctrines / dhammas. Usually only a small minority of believers in any religion will have any knowledge at all of the supramundame doctrine, and what most people will believe in and identify as the essence of the religion is the mundane.

I know from talking to Thai Theravada monks that this is the case in Thailand. To most of the population there, the Dhamma consists on accumulating merit to ensure a good next life, very much like Christians try to do it. They may accumulate merit by praying, donating to monasteries, burning incense for a Buddha statue, and making prostrations to statues (note that "clinging to rites and rituals" is one of the Ten Fetters to be overcome for Arhatship). Often they will refer to Buddha in godlike terms, and to them Nibbana and Arhatship is something that could be only attained by extremely special, almost legendary people in the past, very much like Christian sainthood. They see their religion as part of their national identity, and the King as almost divinely ordained to "protect" the Dhamma. To them, not only there is no problem in any of this, but that is what Buddhism is.

I will agree that in (Theravada) Buddhist texts, the supramundane doctrine is much more explicit and laid out, and they don't have an equivalent to the Old Testament that contradicts most of the core messages in the New. But that has mattered little historically for most of the population. Many of the differences in attitude from the average Thai and the average westerner (differences that are quickly disappearing) have as much to do with Thailand being a less industrialized society than with cultural differences: many of those differences have been present and still are in certain Catholic societies, but not because they were Catholic but because they were agrarian.

If one reads the Christian mystics (particularly the pre-renaissance ones, but not only), one finds very similar messages to those of their Eastern relatives. As an example, I'll quote here the two last chapters of (Pseudo-) Dyonisus Areopagita's "Theologia Mystica". Apologies for the long quote, but I think it's very illustrative of what I'm trying to say:

So this is what we say. The Cause of all is above all and is not inexistent, lifeless, speechless, mindless.It is not a material body, and hence has neither shape nor form, quality, quantity, or weight. It is not in any place and can neither be seen nor be touched.
It is neither perceived nor is it perceptible. It suffers neither disorder nor disturbance and is overwhelmed by no earthly passion. It is not powerless and subject to the disturbances caused by sense perception. It endures no deprivation of light.
It passes through no change, decay, division, loss, no ebb and flow, nothing of which the senses may be aware.
None of all this can either be identified with it nor attributed to it.

Again, as we climb higher we say this. It is not soul or mind, nor does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding.
Nor is it speech per se, understanding per se. It cannot be spoken of and it cannot be grasped by understanding.
It is not number or order, greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity or dissimilarity.
It is not immovable, moving, or at rest. It has no power, it is not power, nor is it light.
It does not live nor is it life. It is not a substance, nor is it eternity or time.
It cannot be grasped by the understanding since it is neither knowledge nor truth. It is not kingship. It is not wisdom.
It is neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness.
Nor is it a spirit, in the sense in which we understand that term. It is not sonship or fatherhood and it is nothing known to us or to any other being. It falls neither within the predicate of nonbeing nor of being. Existing beings do not know it as it actually is and it does not know them as they are.
There is no speaking of it, nor name nor knowledge of it.
Darkness and light, error and truth - it is none of these. It is beyond assertion and denial. We make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it, for it is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and, by virtue of its preeminently simple and absolute nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial.

Hardly the view of mundane Christianity!

 

[blig-blug]

Yet I don’t feel any closer to being a god. I feel tired of society and its advances and tbh just want to be more free from it all.

I really resonate with this, Jamie. We humans may be building a kind of (small-g) god with our social structures and technology. That doesn't make us into gods, and I fear it may be killing what one could call the "divine spark" in us. We have turned the domestication process to ourselves, and more and more we are to our ancestors like dairy cows are to bisons.

 

[northape]

We in the West are conditioned by Christianity, even if we don't believe in it.

I think that view, while it does have some truth to it, is excessively simplistic.

I'm a simple guy
All I mean is that most of us inherit a “guy in the sky” idea of God. We carry cultural baggage from Christianity because it was so dominant here for a while. And of course, it's a popular everyday version of it. Still, these ideas are ingrained in the Western psyche. They get adapted through language and early education.

If one reads the Christian mystics (particularly the pre-renaissance ones, but not only), one finds very similar messages to those of their Eastern relatives. As an example, I'll quote here the two last chapters of (Pseudo-) Dyonisus Areopagita's "Theologia Mystica". Apologies for the long quote, but I think it's very illustrative of what I'm trying to say:

Every religion I know of has an esoteric part or mystic school of thought. I'd say that it's the true core of any religious tradition.
It was not my intention to mock Christianity in any way. I just wanted to show that we have a cultural bias. That's all.
I'm a pretty religious guy myself. When shit hits the fan, Jesus Prayer starts faster than any mantras

 

[Here&Now]

What do you currently believe? Not think or hypothesise, but genuinely believe?

I'd really like to know as well. @The I AM, what are your personal beliefs on the matter? I get the feeling you're already fully versed in mysticism, with your name being the first clue lol. Are you just having fun stirring the pot and inspiring others to consider their own existence more deeply? Or are these genuine questions that you're really asking yourself as someone who's new to perennial philosophy concepts?

 

[blig-blug]

All I mean is that most of us inherit a “guy in the sky” idea of God. We carry cultural baggage from Christianity because it was so dominant here for a while. And of course, it's a popular everyday version of it. Still, these ideas are ingrained in the Western psyche. They get adapted through language and early education.

Yes, I fully agree. It's just that in general the situation isn't much better in other cultures. I often what reaches the West from the East is "the best" produced by those cultures, and thus we tend to think that that's how it is there. It's like if they had gotten to know Christianity through their intellectuals bringing the best from the Western mystics. Sadly, instead they got to know it mostly from fanatical missionaries and colonizers... cue some Chinese farmer "finding Jesus" and starting a civil war that would kill 30 million people: Taiping Rebellion - Wikipedia

Every religion I know of has an esoteric part or mystic school of thought. I'd say that it's the true core of any religious tradition.

And it's remarkable how those parts resemble each other across traditions. And how they often resemble the experiences that this forum is about.

It was not my intention to mock Christianity in any way.

Don't worry, I know, and I'm not a Christian anyways. It just was a good opportunity for me to write about the topic, I've been thinking about it lately

 

[The I AM]

Jonathon Livingston Seagull is worth a read also, on this train of thought.

I'm pretty closely aligned with a lot of your ideas here OP.

What do you currently believe? Not think or hypothesise, but genuinely believe?

Appreciate your suggestion.

What I truly believe? I believe we’re pieces of something much bigger, each of us carrying a spark of that vast intelligence or being, call it consciousness, call it the universe, call it God, whatever fits.

I don’t think there’s some bearded man in the sky pulling strings. I believe we’re active participants in something cosmic, possibly even divine. That life - our struggles, questions, madness, and dreams - is part of a grand unfolding.

I believe death isn’t the end, and that existence is layered, weird, and far more beautiful than we can grasp right now. I believe in curiosity, in becoming, and in breaking old molds - even spiritual ones - so we can evolve.

And yes, I believe we’re here to remember something we’ve forgotten.

 

[The I AM]

I'd really like to know as well. @The I AM, what are your personal beliefs on the matter? I get the feeling you're already fully versed in mysticism, with your name being the first clue lol. Are you just having fun stirring the pot and inspiring others to consider their own existence more deeply? Or are these genuine questions that you're really asking yourself as someone who's new to perennial philosophy concepts?

Haha, you caught the clue. I’m very much a student of the mystery, both the mystic and the madman in the mirror. These are genuine questions I ask myself often. I wouldn't say I'm new to perennial philosophy, but I also don’t think I’ve “arrived” anywhere. I believe we are the question and the answer in motion.

I stir the pot, yes, but mainly because I think the stew gets tastier when more minds flavor it. If we're fragments of something divine, then each of us holds a piece of the map, right? So I toss my piece in and hope others do the same.

We’re all decoding the “I AM.” Together.