You should write on an unsettled question that interests you enough to keep your interest for a long time. If you don’t have a clue what this is, then I recommend you do some literature review. Research is not done in a vacuum. Once you know what conversations people are having, then you can see where your perspective can make a valuable contribution.

Hey you, reading this right now. You just drank water didn’t you?

There would be no religious wars, honor killings, more freedom, no religious leaders abusing their powers, no waste of labor and money on religious things, etc. It may seem that we would be more educated and have better understanding.

Removing the word religion from this excerpt wouldn’t remove any of these problems. We would still squabble over territory, resources, and ideological differences. To give a non-religious analogy: if a time traveler went back and killed Hitler, Germany would still retain all the problems from WW1 and the Weimar Republic that were ripe for a dictatorship.

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Bookpilled. If you’re into science fiction books, he’s a great YouTuber to check out.

edit: Also, he does extra videos on his Patreon. But if you don’t like him try Outlaw Bookseller and Media Death Cult.

Well I suppose it depends on your views of consciousness. Some would argue that our consciousness is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon grounded on the electrical impulses of our neurons. Personally, I’m convinced that the phenomenon need not be physical. It should be possible, with enough computing power, to model the same interactions. But I admit that if you reject this possibility, then the simulation hypothesis loses credence.

Yes, this is the idea. Although, as another noted, you can argue back and forth on whether Bostrom’s argument holds.

Sorry, I suppose people haven’t heard of the “Simulation hypothesis” in philosophy.

Nick Bostrom argued that, statistically, it is more likely that we live in a simulation than not. Assume that an advanced civilization could build a machine with enormous computing power, sufficient to simulate a human mind and a universe “around” it. It follows that the number of such simulated minds/universes could be near infinite. So the probability of our actually being in a simulated universe dwarfs the probability that our reality is not a simulation.

I’m agnostic. If you find the statistical probability argument for the existence of aliens salient, then by the same token you should believe that our reality is a simulation. In which case, the existence of aliens once again becomes questionable; the statistical probabilities of an infinite simulated universe are outside the realm of our current knowledge.

edit: See comment below on Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Hypothesis.

If we can pick math, then I choose logic.

I’m going to say no. Most of human history is nasty, brutish, and short.

I think they’re saying two things. 1) You have to live for a few million years in the past in order to get a billion dollars when you reach the present age. 2) You can’t just go to sleep for a long time to get out of the scenario.

Can God kill Himself.?" This presumes God is a physical and material being.

I’m afraid I don’t see why being non-physical entails being eternal. For example, couldn’t God create an angel and then destroy it later? If angels are non-physical beings that can be created and destroyed, then immateriality doesn’t entail eternality. Moreover, you’re right that God cannot die, but it doesn’t follow that the answer to question #1 is “no”. If there was something that God couldn’t do, then God wouldn’t be omnipotent. So the question asks can God commit a logically contradictory action.

God would then be both a non material being, and a material being in which he animates, that has the potential to lift the stone. Now if you belive that every material object has consciousness…

I think our starting assumptions are somewhat far apart.

There are different logics that account for temporality, modality (e.g., necessity), degrees of true, etc. But I doubt there’s any logic we could construct that can account for the inconceivable and the impossible being possible. Human reason throws up its hands and sits in the corner.

Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it.

When we assume a contradiction is true (e.g., God is immutable and God is not immutable: P ^ -P), then we can derive any proposition and it’s negation from that contradiction.

1. P ∧ -P
2. P     (1)
3. -P     (1)
4. P ∨ X     (2)
5. X     (3, 4)
6. P ∨ -X     (2)
7. -X     (3, 6)

If God can make a contradiction true, then every other proposition whatsoever can be proven true and false at the same time. We can infer the following: 1) All questions about God are useless because God is now beyond reason/logic and 2) Reason itself would lose all applicability as logic, necessity, mathematics, etc. can no longer be taken for granted. These seem like untenable consequences. We have, however, an alternate conception of God’s omnipotence that doesn’t force us to abandon reason/logic.

Wait, isn’t space and time infinitely divisible? (I’m assuming you’re referencing quantum mechanics, which I don’t understand, and so I’m genuinely asking.)

Agreed. And if God can do things outside of logic/reason, then we can’t understand him. Then the answer to the paradox would be: it is both impossible and possible. Which doesn’t make sense, but now we’re supposing God doesn’t follow the law of non-contradiction.

The specific example doesn’t matter much. Google “category error” or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.

You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.

It’s not like I’m trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.

I agree with the classical interpretation of an infinitely perfect immaterial God outside of time. But the way out of the paradox is to scrutinize the question itself.

To illustrate the point, take three paradoxical questions: 1) Can God kill himself?, 2) Can God create a stone that he can’t lift?, 3) Can God create a square circle?

#3 Is obviously a meaningless question. The words individually have meaning, but the “square circle” refers to an impossible object whose properties are self-contradictory. Because we interpret God’s power as the ability to do all logically possible things, the inability to create this self-contradictory object is not a limit on his power.

#2 Seems better on the surface because we can posit increasingly larger stones. But the contradiction here is between the object and the nature of God. Once we accept an infinitely perfect God, there can, by definition, be nothing greater than it. If there was a stone that God couldn’t lift, this would contradict the fact of God’s existence. Therefore, as we are under the assumption that God exists, the object itself must be impossible.

#1 Is another form of the omnipotence paradox in #2. Can God do something that contradicts his own properties? This would make God immutable/eternal and yet not immutable/eternal. But an infinitely perfect God is, by definition, immutable/eternal! So any action that would contradict himself is a contradiction in terms and thereby logically impossible. Just like in the case of #3, the answer to the question isn’t “no”. Rather, the question itself is nonsensical.

can god kill god

It’s not a paradox, the words are just incoherent. It’s like asking whether God can taste the color blue. The answer isn’t yes/no, there is no answer.

edit: a word