How can an avatar be prevented from containing a deity's full power?

Question

Avatars are artificial constructs created by gods to interface with humans. Gods exist in the spiritual realm, a dimension separated from the mortal realm by a barrier. These avatars are built with certain traits specific to the god in question, such as genetics, mama type, etc. Avatars are made with the human body plan and allow a god to physically walk among their humans.

The deity Ashura seeks to enter the mortal realm using an avatar. This is meant to fulfill a prophecy, in which he does battle with an ancient demon seeking to conquer earth. However, avatars are only capable of possessing a portion of a God's power, making him much weaker in the mortal realm. Ashura decides to manifest his avatar in the form of a human woman, which would reproduce asexually. The child resulting from this would be Ashura at full strength, with all his godly abilities and powers. This virgin birth completes the "Blessed Trinity" of the religion that evolved around the god: Ashura in his god form, Ashura in his demigod avatar form, and Ashura in his human form as a mortal.

As an avatar is physically constructed by a deity and built with certain specifications to perfectly fit that deity, it should be natural that it would be able to fully contain a God's power. However, it is apparently the weakest of the trinity, with the resulting mortal being far more powerful than it's demigod form. The avatar ultimately ends up as a way for a deity to transmit its power. How can this be the case ?

Answer 1

The TL;DR summary: A Deity's Avatar is at some level Not Human where it matters

The Avatar Form is a construct of deities to imitate humans in the material world. At the core, while they might be genetically human, they are fundamentally Not Human. Be it because they are created by spiritual beings, the fact that they were not birthed by nature, but created by magic and will, who knows? The fact is that no matter how many scientific probes say that they are human, a small part of them is not, and that is enough.

Now, for a deity that wishes to walk the world for a human lifetime or two to oversee their religion, or to gain new perspective on humanity, or just to sleep with the next hot human behind their wife's back, this is fine. The Avatar is likely stronger than most, if not all, the mortals so their superiority is assured under these normal circumstances.

But no matter the perfection of its physical form, the avatar body of a deity is not of the material world, and as such its bits of alien nature hold it back. It is after all at its core, a form that humans are comfortable with.

Ashura's miraculous conception achieves something that is not normally done. It is a mortal shell created solely from the genes of a deity, such as they are. This child is conceived and gestated based on the rules of the material plane and birthed as a human child is. Given that it has only one deity parent, this should mean that this child is basically a deity if they were a human. The deity's own power will make sure that there is no problems with the child in development or delivery.

The ensuing child is a perfect mortal shell of a deity -- it bears none of the subtle imperfections of the avatar's body, and all the capacity to handle the powers of a deity given its asexual heritage. While it may or may not be able to use Ashura's full power, it is capable of using more of his power then his created avatar as a perfect mortal conduit.

Answer 2

As you indicated, the deity exists in a separate, spiritual, universe. A little like a Flatlander in the other dimensional world of the book Flatland, from the spiritual realm, there is a lot that escapes the ability of the deity to see and perceive.

If Flatland seems offensive for a deity, take a look at Orthogonal by Greg Egan. Your deities homeworld is just... very different from the physical plane.

The avatar is a “best available” construction, from the Flatlander perspective. It is as good as any construct from the limited perspective of Flatland can be. But it is an imperfect bridge. Kind of like trying to build a working car based solely on a single external picture of one. Since the avatar is a 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time native, it has the eyes, ears, physics, and chemistry allowing the deity to “get under the hood” to build the perfect bridge.

Or, another metaphor could be integrated circuits or other micro machines. We, as humans, have to first build microscopes allowing us to perceive at these scales, before we could build anything at these scales.

Answer 3

The problem you pose only seems to arise in the presence of some additional premises which are not immediately obvious (at least, to me).

Here's what we've got to work with:

1. Gods exist in the spiritual realm
2. The spiritual realm is separate from the mortal realm
3. There is a barrier separating the realms
4. An avatar "allows" a god to inhabit the mortal realm
5. An avatar is designed and constructed by a god (i.e. not by mortals)
6. The god may design the avatar however they like
7. An avatar can possess only a portion of a god's power
8. Ashura's avatar was designed to reproduce asexually
9. This avatar's offspring will be Ashura at full strength

You also note that:

it should be natural that [an avatar] would be able to fully contain a God's power

Which is evidently in conflict with premise #7. This makes me think that you're asking for help filling out some cosmology or other rules that resolve the conflict, while still permitting a god to exist in the mortal realm.

But I have some questions about this arrangement, because it seems like there are a few obvious ways to circumvent this whole game of avatars if the god's only goal is to be in the mortal realm.

Why would it be the case that an avatar's asexually-created offspring would be the full god? Wouldn't it be more logical for the child to be just another avatar? Or even a lesser avatar, given that it's now one step further-removed from its divine source?

Why is an avatar necessary at all?

It seems like the avatar must be a barrier-safe vessel, in which case I'd want to know why an avatar can't be constructed that's able to contain an entire god. Just make it bigger. Give it multiple compartments. Put a portal inside it that connects to the divine realm.

Or it's not a vessel, and the avatar is constructed in the mortal realm, which makes it a kind of "landing zone" that the god can transmit itself into, in which case I'd want to know how the god gets any part of itself past the barrier into the avatar on the other side. And I'd want to know why a god can remotely construct an avatar but not do other things remotely, like manipulate a powerful human into just summoning the god directly, or create enough avatars in one place to hold the totality of the god, and designed to immediately disgorge their divine contents so the god can reconstitute itself.

Answer 4

The avatar is the best possible in the mortal world.

In the spiritual world the God uses different materials and rules to create itself, but in the mortal world it has to follow mortal constraints. Imagine building a computer that replicates the performance of a computer using MOSFET transistors using PNP transistors.

Also, this human likely has one brain. Even with some shenanigans you might only be able to fit a few. The God may view brains in the same way we currently view CPUs, the more the better. To someone in the 1940's multiple CPUs are crazy, but now days it is common. Also, maybe the God has intelligence like a GPU that requires components that can't exist in the material world.

Finally, there is the information. The God likely is powerful due to knowing a lot of magic, and having a lot of experience. A this might surpass the limits on data storage in the physical world even if you use the full brain. That means the God would not know something and possibly be unable o learn somethings due to space limitations.

Answer 5

Their power is connected to the faith of mortals.

Their human form is of a holy bloodline, respected by all, and is seen as a natural form for their divinity. They formed it along the line of an ancient queen blessed by them. Some random robot? No one cares, no one believes that could be a true form.

Perhaps if they spend generations upon generations having avatars fight, and had a holy ancient avatar form which had saved the world it could serve as a focal point for human faith, but all they have is the bloodline of a queen.