A one thousand and one question. Can "he"? I know that we wouldn't have existed without "him", but i make the claim that it goes the other way, too, and i am not being arrogant here.

God sure can exist without us. What are you being if not arrogant? He's eternal. Eternal is more than millions of years ago and still counting. What is man?less than 9000years old.

Yes God can exist without us. I read in my bible that man was created only after the angel was already in existence with God. Remember what david said in Psalm 8 vs
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all [things] under his feet:
7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, [and whatsoever] passeth through the paths of the seas.

So God created man out of Love and nothing more

Jenwitemi:

A one thousand and one question. Can "he"? I know that we wouldn't have existed without "him", but i make the claim that it goes the other way, too, and i am not being arrogant here.

Image123:

God sure can exist without us. What are you being if not arrogant? He's eternal. Eternal is more than millions of years ago and still counting. What is man?less than 9000years old.

Can he, really?

Without us sentient beings,
-who will acknowledge him on this earth?
-Who will talk about him?
-Who will even mention him?
-Who will worship and praise him?
-Who will fight over him?
-Who will kill for him?
-Who will let himself be killed for him?
-Who will give him names?
-Who will be his chosen person/ people?
-Who will he show off his powers to?
-Who will he brag that he is this and that to?
-Who will he show his wrath to?
-Who will write a whole book about his exploits and call it, the holy bible/torah/quran?
-Who will create a religion(s) based around worshipping and fearing his fearfulness?
-In other words, who will bring "him" to life? Animals? Insects?
-As a creator, what is "he" without his creations, especially the sentient ones with a certain high level of self-contemplation?

No, these are not questions borne out of arrogance. I just want sincere and well thought out answers?

if God really created us just to worship him and polish his ego, then he doesnt love us as much as we claim.

We could also claim, and quite rightly so, that "he" created us in order to bring "himself" to life.

chiketee:

if God really created us just to worship him and polish his ego, then he doesnt love us as much as we claim.

OP,these your ideas are not what makes God exist. He existed before them and will continue to exist after them. He's the Beginning and the End. It seems you have a quite foggy idea of who God is.

Image123:

OP,these your ideas are not what makes God exist. He existed before them and will continue to exist after them. He's the Beginning and the End. It seems you have a quite foggy idea of who God is.

And how do you know that he pre-existed them (meaning before YOU existed), when you were never around to perceive and acknowledge his pre-existence? He may be the beginning and the end, but he cannot acknowledge his own existence without the help of a third party, or else he would've been just another "thing" just floating around in "nothingness", bearing no significance whatsoever. His creations made him what he is, a god, a creator. Without his creations, he would've been neither a creator, nor God. A nothingness floating around in eternal nothingness.

If you think i am thinking all wrong, then explain to me how a being can be a creator without his/her creation(s)? And while you are at it, explain clearly to me, how a creator who does not create sentient beings that can independently perceive him/her as "their" creator, can claim to be a God?

If a creator creates, for example, a universe with unicellular organisms as the only life forms in it, how does the existence of that creator being get acknowledged? Unicellular organisms are not going to acknowledge him as a creator because they are not sentient. They are not going to form a religion to worship him, praise him, neither will they write scriptures about him and beat themselves in the head about who has the right interpretations of those scriptures or who does not.

Without the sentient beings to do all that, without a sentient third party to witness the process of creation being carried out by God, then God simply does not exist. That is why there are still atheists. . .

toba:

Yes God can exist without us. I read in my bible that man was created only after the angel was already in existence with God. Remember what david said in Psalm 8 vs
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all [things] under his feet:
7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, [and whatsoever] passeth through the paths of the seas.

So God created man out of Love and nothing more

As far as i know, sheep, oxen, and all the beasts in the field, cannot even acknowledge their own existence, their own being, let alone that of the being who created them. Since this god is a very very very egocentric being, he had to create something that has the ability to acknowledge him as the creator God, so he created us, the sentient beings, out of a dire need of recognition. So, is it a wonder why he "loves" us? Look at all the acknowledgements we have been showering him for the last 2-3 millenia, aand are still doing?

Jenwitemi, I must confess, your brilliance puts these fanatics to shame and silence. Well done.

Did I just see brilliant? I'm sure you don't know the meaning of the word 'fanatic'.
OP
So you confirmed that you don't know God, little wonder. Well, I know Him and He told me that He's eternal, from endless ages to endless ages, and I trust Him and I love Him. And humans are not his only or first creation. His fulfilment or happiness is not centred on earth(which he formed long time before man), not to talk of man who is very young and falls short of God's standard.
If you want to know God, you should talk more with people who know Him, and less with the ilk of mockers and haters, gerrit?

Of course you know him! You brought "him" to life with your "knowing", and keeps him "alive" through your knowing. That is what your religious doctrines are there for, to make sure that you keep on "knowing" him in order to ensure his further existence. He totally relies on your power of "knowing" him for his existence. That's the whole point, is it not?

And for that, he secretly worships you, even though your religion will not admit that to you, so as not to blow up your own ego and make it start running riot in you, and making you start acting like. . . well, yahweh.

Image123:

OP
Well, I know Him and He told me that He's eternal, from endless ages to endless ages, and I trust Him and I love Him. And humans are not his only or first creation. His fulfilment or happiness is not centred on earth(which he formed long time before man), not to talk of man who is very young and falls short of God's standard.
If you want to know God, you should talk more with people who know Him, and less with the ilk of mockers and haters, gerrit?

Well, i am talking to people who have kept him on "existence support" till now on NR through their knowing, am i not? You, for example, are full of knowing him, and i am talking to you. You are keeping him alive. Don't you think that he should praise and worship you for all you've been doing for him?

Image123:

If you want to know God, you should talk more with people who know Him, and less with the ilk of mockers and haters, gerrit?

ROSSIKE:

Jenwitemi, I must confess, your brilliance puts these fanatics to shame and silence. Well done. 

Thank you for the praise. I feel so great right now. . . like yahweh. I now understand why yahweh loves praises and worship so much. It gives you a rush.

lol 

ROSSIKE:

Jenwitemi, I must confess, your brilliance puts these fanatics to shame and silence. Well done.

Whats the meaning of this? no one should be put to shame becos another is expressing hs/hr opinion. rephrase to make more sense

Jenwitemi:

Can he, really?

Without us sentient beings,
-who will acknowledge him on this earth?
-Who will talk about him?
-Who will even mention him?
-Who will worship and praise him?
-Who will fight over him?
-Who will kill for him?
-Who will let himself be killed for him?
-Who will give him names?
-Who will be his chosen person/ people?
-Who will he show off his powers to?
-Who will he brag that he is this and that to?
-Who will he show his wrath to?
-Who will write a whole book about his exploits and call it, the holy bible/torah/quran?
-Who will create a religion(s) based around worshipping and fearing his fearfulness?
-In other words, who will bring "him" to life? Animals? Insects?
-As a creator, what is "he" without his creations, especially the sentient ones with a certain high level of self-contemplation?

No, these are not questions borne out of arrogance. I just want sincere and well thought out answers?

very good points but your questions give the impression that man created god inn his own image

Story story. You're boring. Just because you don't have an husband doesn't give you the privilege to make a married person doubt the existence of marriage, or love or what marriage entails. Don't waste my time. Believing is seeing. Thank God, I believe and I see. Which level you dey? Go and start something profitable.

manmustwac:

very good points but your questions give the impression that man created god inn his own image

They do, but not necessarily so. Look at it this way, to be a painter, one has to paint in order for the painting to make one a painter. But because the painting is only an inanimate object, it has to be witnessed and acknowledged by a third person(a sentient being) as the work of the painter, before the painter can be called a painter of any calibre. Catch my drift?

To be a creator, one needs to have created something observed by another sentient being capable of acknowledgement. So, the created does not necessarily have to imagine it's creator in order for the creator to exist, even though this might be the case if the created is sentient enough, like humans for example. It can go both ways. The relationship between the created and the creator is always symbiotic, they both compliment each other. It is a dance of symbiosis.

You don vex? Why now?

Image123:

Story story. You're boring. Just because you don't have an husband doesn't give you the privilege to make a married person doubt the existence of marriage, or love or what marriage entails. Don't waste my time. Believing is seeing. Thank God, I believe and I see. Which level you dey? Go and start something profitable.

Jenwitemi:

They do, but not necessarily so. Look at it this way, to be a painter, one has to paint in order for the painting to make one a painter. But because the painting is only an inanimate object, it has to be witnessed and acknowledged by a third person(a sentient being) as the work of the painter, before the painter can be called a painter of any calibre. Catch my drift?

To be a creator, one needs to have created something observed by another sentient being capable of acknowledgement. So, the created does not necessarily have to imagine it's creator in order for the creator to exist, even though this might be the case if the created is sentient enough, like humans for example. It can go both ways. The relationship between the created and the creator is always symbiotic, they both compliment each other. It is a dance of symbiosis.

I am tempted to say that you actually answered your own question. But I think it's not really that simple, if you were looking for a philosophical answer to the question; 'Can God exist without us?'

Your earlier write-up about our 'sentience' and the whole act of acknowledging God on earth presupposes that we already know what 'God' and 'sentience' are. But in all honesty, I think that nobody really knows. The Holy books give to us shadows of God, while the Neurosciences are still struggling to come to grips with what 'consciousness' is really all about. 

So until we are clear without any ambiguity what I mean when I say; I am, ', or what I am saying when I affirm; 'God is, ', it will be difficult to fully answer the question you pose. And until then, our responses are but primitive grunts and aberrations of the truth, clouded by our own beliefs, unbelief’s, life experiences and the cultures where-in we became ‘sentient’. 

In my belief system, the relationship between God and man is not symbiotic. The spirit of Man from which consciousness seeps is a blurred expression of the ineffable one. Man's 'worship and praise' of God is for man's benefit alone and not for God's. Our 'spiritual' exercises of attempting to 'walk with’ Him are for our own benefit, but God can do without man.

God does not need man to exist as God is self-sufficient.  He just is.

The topic is both perceptive on one level and yet tragically ill conceived on another level.

God IS.

The very nature of God by necessity expresses itself in terms of creation. In this sense I might say that God's very existence naturally and necessarily expands outward as creation. What this implies is that God cannot cease to "create" - creation is a mere manifestation of the eternal and infinite mind of the Godhead. Thus in answer to the OP: there is a sense in which it may be said that God does not, and cannot "be" without the natural expression of God's mind: to wit: creation.

But one must be most careful in this observation. This in no way implies that God "needs" anybody, race, species or entity for anything. It simply means that all that exists is a necessary manifestation of God's mind - which cannot but be the case. It could not be otherwise.

Jenwitemi makes alarmingly contradictory statements.

Jenwitemi:

To be a creator, one needs to have created something observed by another sentient being capable of acknowledgement. So, the created does not necessarily have to imagine it's creator in order for the creator to exist, even though this might be the case if the created is sentient enough, like humans for example. It can go both ways. The relationship between the created and the creator is always symbiotic, they both compliment each other. It is a dance of symbiosis.

The above, for example, is absolutely ridiculous.

If i create a work of art, the fact remains that I have created a work of art - whether or not ANY third party observes it. I cannot see how the affirmation or validation of a third party is required in any terms whatsoever. The fact remains that I have created that work of art. If I am a conscious and aware being, I would be aware that I have created a work of art. It is ridiculous in the extreme to argue that I am not an artist unless a third party sees my work. That is a pure logical fallacy. It seems Jenwitemi imagines a God who is despoerate for fame.

But the bizzareness does not stop there. If we consider strictly the question in the OP, it should be noted that the OP implies that the failure of any third party to observe my art not only renders me a non-artist - but in fact means that i do not exist. I submit that that is ridiculous in the extreme. It amounts to a suggestion that if the universe was not observed by mankind, then the creator ceases to exist. Or there was never a creator. This is unimaginably ridiculous.

Worse still, Jenwitemi concedes that he makes no point when he states -

So, the created does not necessarily have to imagine it's creator in order for the creator to exist

This utterly closes the OP's case against himself.

Deep Sight:

God IS.

How can it be known that God Is, if there is no person within or outside of God to perceive the God that IS?

Deep Sight:

The very nature of God by necessity expresses itself in terms of creation. In this sense I might say that God's very existence naturally and necessarily expands outward as creation. What this implies is that God cannot cease to "create" - creation is a mere manifestation of the eternal and infinite mind of the Godhead. Thus in answer to the OP: there is a sense in which it may be said that God does not, and cannot "be" without the natural expression of God's mind: to wit: creation.

Okay.

Deep Sight:

But one must be most careful in this observation. This in no way implies that God "needs" anybody, race, species or entity for anything. It simply means that all that exists is a necessary manifestation of God's mind - which cannot but be the case. It could not be otherwise.

I don't buy this claim. All creative acitivities come from a need, whatever that need might be or serve, and it is no exception here. Why is all that exists a necessary manifestation at all? Why can it not be any other way, like no manifestations at all? Why can it not be otherwise? You have not yet make a good case yet to topple my position on this. Why does God have to create at all?

Deep Sight:

If i create a work of art, the fact remains that I have created a work of art - whether or not ANY third party observes it. I cannot see how the affirmation or validation of a third party is required in any terms whatsoever. The fact remains that I have created that work of art. If I am a conscious and aware being, I would be aware that I have created a work of art. It is ridiculous in the extreme to argue that I am not an artist unless a third party sees my work. That is a pure logical fallacy.

Deep Sight, if you create a work of art in remoteness, that is known only to yourself, and you go to another town without your artwork, how would you be known to be a creator of any work of art by the people you meet, unless you tell them that you are an artist? And for confirmation sake, they will rightly demand to see the artwork. If you cannot produce it, they have the right not to believe that you are an artist which will put pay to your claim as a creator. That only you know that you have created something of any worth is never enough. It has to be confirmed either by the creation itself(if it is sentient) or by others who are equally sentient or else the creation itself will be worthless. That your creation is of any worth without it confirming you as a creator is absolutely ridiculous. Why go through all the trouble in the first place if your artwork does not serve you any purpose?

Deep Sight:

It seems Jenwitemi imagines a God who is despoerate for fame.

The bible god did act desperate for fame, and so did allah. The bible and the quran showed this quite clearly.

Deep Sight:

But the bizzareness does not stop there. If we consider strictly the question in the OP, it should be noted that the OP implies that the failure of any third party to observe my art not only renders me a non-artist - but in fact means that i do not exist. I submit that that is ridiculous in the extreme. It amounts to a suggestion that if the universe was not observed by mankind, then the creator ceases to exist. Or there was never a creator. This is unimaginably ridiculous.

You have not explained to me why my claim is both "bizarre and unimaginably ridiculous", like you claimed. You are just throwing words around without any solid arguements to counter my stand. I still maintain my stand that if you exist alone all by yourself, and no other sentient being is there to perceive your existence, then you do not exist, no matter how many universes you create. The perception through the consciousness of sentient beings create other sentient beings, who in turn create them. In order words, sentient beings create each other from each other's respective perceptions of one another. The art of creation is never one way, but in both directions. This is really deep topic that can take us into uncharted territories.

Deep Sight:

Worse still, Jenwitemi concedes that he makes no point when he states -

So, the created does not necessarily have to imagine it's creator in order for the creator to exist

This utterly closes the OP's case against himself.

Not so fast, buddy. What i meant there was that in the case of the creation being an inanimate or non-sentient being, then there is no imagining involved. Amoebas don't imagine up a God, do they? But sentient beings like humans do, and that is why they are paramount to any creator to have them occupying any created universes. That is why we are in existence, to bring God's creations, and God itself to life through our perceptions. So, my case is still open.

Jenwitemi,i know u re a theist&do know how powerful God is.I read in the bible how balaams donkey spoke to balaam.If God wants amoeba to talk,he can/could do so.If u believed that the complex universe was created by God,dont u think he can make less complex animals/non animals to praise him?

toba:

Jenwitemi,i know u re a theist&do know how powerful God is.I read in the bible how balaams donkey spoke to balaam.If God wants amoeba to talk,he can/could do so.If u believed that the complex universe was created by God,dont u think he can make less complex animals/non animals to praise him?

And why didn't "he", then? I mean, obviously he did not. What held him back? Perhaps there is that something about us sentients, that is just irresistible to "him". I don't think any god worth his salt, will be overjoyed with being praised by a mass of amoebas. And going by the size of the bible god's ego, that is just an absolute no no.

I gave u one reason which is love&just desire. Read psalm 8 vs 4 down wards

Who is you that God cannot exist without?

@Jenwitemi.

What is 'God'?

Jenwitemi:

How can it be known that God Is, if there is no person within or outside of God to perceive the God that IS?

I think that it is apt, as Beneli has indicated, that you first define for us what you mean by the term “God.”

I state to you that God is the oneness of all infinity. This is something that cannot but exist. It is self-existent. Thus, God IS.

All creative acitivities come from a need, whatever that need might be or serve, and it is no exception here.

Prove this claim. For I positively deny it. If I produce a work of art – that does not necessarily arise from a “need” strictly so called. It is simply an expression of my mind or feelings. I do not strictly NEED to express it.

Why is all that exists a necessary manifestation at all? Why can it not be any other way, like no manifestations at all?

Why do you have thoughts? Why not no thoughts?

Why does God have to create at all?

Why do you have to think at all ? ? ?

Deep Sight, if you create a work of art in remoteness, that is known only to yourself, and you go to another town without your artwork, how would you be known to be a creator of any work of art by the people you meet, unless you tell them that you are an artist?

You mistake being known as something with being something

Your very own words betray this fact – you asked – “how would I be known as an artist. This is your error. The issue is not about being known as anything. The issue is being something.

Thus I repeat; I may paint pictures in the privacy of my room all my life. No person may see such pictures. This does not mean that I am not an artist. I clearly am.

And for confirmation sake, they will rightly demand to see the artwork. If you cannot produce it, they have the right not to believe that you are an artist which will put pay to your claim as a creator.

They have a right not to believe, of course. That doesn’t change anything. I am what I am irrespective of whether the public knows it. The Public is often wrong, anyway.

That only you know that you have created something of any worth is never enough. It has to be confirmed either by the creation itself(if it is sentient) or by others who are equally sentient or else the creation itself will be worthless.

Ridiculous. I actually have (and this is true) a set of very potent drawings which I contrived for the purpose of bringing to life a specific imagination I have always had since I was a child. The drawings are so strange and other-worldly that I have never dared to show them to any person. It would be st.upid for any person to assert that for this reason the drawings do not exist.

That your creation is of any worth without it confirming you as a creator is absolutely ridiculous.

Would you care to mention WHY?

Because mankind creates inanimate things everyday – such as a car for example. The inability of the car to recognise man as creator does nothing to change the fact that man is the creator. Further, if the car was actually a sentient intelligent creature, its failure to recognise man as its maker would be absolutely irrelevant to the fact that man IS its creator.

Why go through all the trouble in the first place if your artwork does not serve you any purpose?

How dare you presume that it serves no purpose? The purpose is known only to me: it gives me private pleasure. Capisce?

The bible god did act desperate for fame, and so did allah. The bible and the quran showed this quite clearly.

I am not interested in the conception of God contained in either of those desert Semitic traditions.

I still maintain my stand that if you exist alone all by yourself, and no other sentient being is there to perceive your existence, then you do not exist, no matter how many universes you create.

Let me ask you a question; did the solar system exist before mankind arrived to “observe” and “perceive” it?

There you go.

I hope you will not be so ridiculous as to claim that it did not exist. This example alone makes it abundantly clear that things exist independent of observation.

You seek to tie observation to existence: and state that anything that is not perceived does not exist. This appalling line of reasoning will lead you to conclude that the planet Neptune did not exist until mankind invented a telescope powerful enough to see it. Or that atoms did not exist until mankind invented the microscope. Or that bacteria did not exist until mankind arrived to perceive them This is plain absurd. Quit it.

The perception through the consciousness of sentient beings create other sentient beings, who in turn create them.

In other words, Dinosaurs did not exist. Bravo.

This utterly closes the OP's case against himself.

Not so fast, buddy. What i meant there was that in the case of the creation being an inanimate or non-sentient being, then there is no imagining involved. Amoebas don't imagine up a God, do they? But sentient beings like humans do, and that is why they are paramount to any creator to have them occupying any created universes. That is why we are in existence, to bring God's creations, and God itself to life through our perceptions. So, my case is still open.

Study the foregoing closely. You state that – in the case of the creation being an inanimate or non-sentient being, then there is no imagining involved.

This statement makes it already clear that a created thing which is inanimate does not, and cannot recognise its creator. Yet this does not change the fact that it has a creator. Recall the example of the car I gave above. It is thus clear that the fact that an inanimate thing does not or cannot know its maker, does nothing to change the fact that its maker made it.

Now here is the question I have for you: why should it be any different with an animate or sentient being. Let us start first with a creator of low or no awareness, such as an ant or a rat. Would you say that the fact that an ant or a rat cannot conceive of God renders God non-existent?

You cannot state such a thing. Now -

1. Inanimate things and

2. Animate things of low consciousness

BOTH cannot conceive of God, and yet this does nothing to change anything about God!

Now the question is this – why should it be different with a creature of high consciousness and awareness? Why exactly should such a creature need to recognise God – its maker – before the maker can –

1. Be the maker and

2. EXIST.

Both the foregoing are ridiculous in the extreme. For what you unwittingly assert is that if every single conscious being were to become an atheist, then God would cease to exist. A horrid contradiction the like of which I have never come across before; because it is hinged on the thought that the creator is an imagination of the created. If that is the case, then there is no reason why you should refer to him as the creator in the first place! You cannot refer to him as creator and turn around to assert that he does not exist if not imagined by the created. That is contradictory.

In summary what you need to recognise is that the recognition or perception of any sentient being is not required for a thing to exist. The Andromeda Galaxy has existed for millions of years and THAT IS AN ADAMANTINE AND UNCHAEABLE FACT. Mankind did not “observe” or “perceive” it before it began to exist. The best you can say is that man did not know of its existence. Mankind’s inability to perceive it did nothing to change the fact that it existed.

Now note something carefully here. We did not perceive it because it was BEYOND us. Way beyond our perceptive capacities.

Does it not similarly strike you that there are things that currently remain way beyond our perceptive capacities? Is God not the most transcendental thing? If this is the case then it follows that God is also beyond us: and accordingly we may or may not perceive him: that will do nothing to change the fact of his existence

I need to draw your attention to a further implication of your absurd surmise: to wit – it implies that everything that man does not currently know of – DOES NOT EXIST.
This is inherently absurd because it means that nothing exists outside our knowledge, and thus the contradictory implication is that nothing new may ever be discovered.

Which is unthinkably ludicrous because new things are discovered everyday.

Tell me: did such things exist before they were discovered? Did Pluto exist before we discovered it? Of course it did. Aha.

You can summarily see how absurd, ludicrous and unsustainable your voodoo thinking is.

beneli:

@Jenwitemi.

What is 'God'?

"God" is a manmade english word.

ud4u:

Who is you that God cannot exist without?

"US", not "ME".
Who is God without the totality of sentients beings? A non-existent. God is created through the collective perceptions of all sentients that exist, who in turn were created by God the creator. Can you see the tight relationship?

Jenwitemi:

"God" is a manmade english word.

This does nothing to answer the question "What is God." This escapist response may be given in respect of everything. If I am asked what  a TABLE is, I could toe your path and state - "Table is a man made English word." That of course does not tell me what a table is, because the word "table" refers to something, just as surely as the word "God" refers to something.

What is a Car. Your answer - "it is a man made English word." Ol boy you go fail exam o. Because the word "car" refers to something - an automated vehicle moving on wheels. 

Jenwitemi:

"US", not "ME".
Who is God without the totality of sentients beings? A non-existent. God is created through the collective perceptions of all sentients that exist, who in turn were created by God the creator. Can you see the tight relationship?

Ridiculous. Hocus pocus. Bunkum. This only works if humans are eternal in the past - i:e have always existed. There is no way you can assert or prove that that is the case. Accordingly it is prepostrerous to state that God created us and that simultaenously we created God - for the simple reason that if God created us, then naturally this implies that we came into existence AFTER God - and as such could not have been there to create God before we even existed. Quit the absurdities, Jenwitem.

Jenwitemi:

"God" is a manmade english word.

So God is that limited? why dont u try wikipedia?