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This setting follows a religion in which god, originally a perfect entity and the seat of human consciousness, split himself into two separate beings and reincarnated into two mortal forms. These two beings would be the primogenitors of the human race, each possessing half of god's original qualities and attributes and explaining the sexual dimorphism in our species. We are, in a sense, all demigods due to having a smaller piece of our deity in each of us.

Only God can create new life, and both man and woman possess a metaphysical key inside them that can access that ability. When those separate keys unite, they can unlock the gate to where that power resides and access that potential. This is how new souls are created and brought into the world. Since each new human being possess as piece of God inside them, it stands to reason that God is getting weaker as more souls are being born. Why would this not be the case?

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    $\begingroup$ The first were semi-gods, then the next four were demisemi-gods, then hemidemisemi-gods. $\endgroup$
    – Separatrix
    Oct 9, 2018 at 7:21
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    $\begingroup$ @Seperatrix : “As though the whole human race were nothing more than an impossibly fast tune on a player piano” $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Oct 9, 2018 at 7:31
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    $\begingroup$ The premise seems to be some kind of conservation-of-mass analogy for souls. This reduces a perfect-entity 'God' which by definition cannot be weakened to a powerful-but-limited 'god' which can be. The first heretic will ask: "Well, which kind of deity is it?". With so much room for interpretation, seems likely to fracture into different religions rather quickly. $\endgroup$
    – user535733
    Oct 9, 2018 at 7:51
  • $\begingroup$ "f**k you, god!" ... "okay" $\endgroup$
    – Otto Abnormalverbraucher
    Oct 9, 2018 at 10:58
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    $\begingroup$ Infinity divided by any finite number, no matter how big, gives the exact same infinity. $\forall n \in \mathbb {N^*}, \infty / n = \infty$. And God is infinitely powerful, and infinitely merciful, and infinitely good. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Oct 9, 2018 at 19:29

7 Answers 7

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It's a long term investment

The god splits itself between the first two humans, each a semi-god. And again between their children, the demisemi-gods. And again between their children, the hemidemisemi-gods. But much beneath that the soul does not split further, rather the soul is split and regrown, like a god of starfish or bacteria. While humans cannot grow a full godlike soul, they can grow a portion of one from the seed they're given by their parents. Each human with a little bit of god soul allowing them to create new life in their turn.

When they die the little parts of their soul are freed to return to the god or to be distributed to new humans.

And come the apocalypse it'll be time to recoup on that investment

To harvest the crop of humans, each with their small part of the god soul, into something far greater than the god was to begin with.

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Same reason humans dont grow smaller each time they are born: they grow afterwards. So God would in fact grow stronger over time.

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The total amount of "Soulmass" stays the same

It is the fragments that get smaller. Each time two souls unite to create more they split and thus get weaker.

The entity god, which consists of all souls, does not change. The distribution of souls fluctuates and gets split into more fragments, but the soulmass remains.

Death is the only thing removing souls

The only issue that would remain is death. Humans die, where do their souls go? If they'd just vanish, the total amount of souls would be reduced as it would lose this fragment.

But why would they just have to vanish? The fragment inside a dying person could be absorbed by other humans in a funeral ritual. Either a single person gains it or it is partially absorbed by all participating humans.

Another possibility would be the soul inside a decomposing body to persist and merely split and move through the world. The body is decomposed, the plant life absorbs its nutrients (and soul). The plants then continue the cycle of life in some way (produce fruit or get eaten) and thus over a long period of time the souls will end up inside a human body again.
And this is what the cycle of life is in your world. Redistribution and fluctuation in the presence of god.

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    $\begingroup$ Your username is rather apt for this question $\endgroup$
    – nullpointer
    Oct 9, 2018 at 7:19
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    $\begingroup$ There may be fundamental violations in the conversation of soulmass due to a lack of ZR spiritual parity. We won't know for sure until we build the LNC (Large No-on Collider) which should be able to reach energies of up to 12 Gigathaums. $\endgroup$
    – John O
    Oct 9, 2018 at 14:54
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    $\begingroup$ There is no need to assume souls perish on death. Free-floating soulmass might be reabsorbed into the new souls created with each new human. Your idea that god is the sum of all souls is an elegant concept. Have you considered theology as a career option? $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Oct 10, 2018 at 1:17
  • $\begingroup$ @a4android unless electrical engineering is close enough to theology for your taste, no, I haven't yet. $\endgroup$
    – ArtificialSoul
    Oct 10, 2018 at 7:53
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I can think of two ways to resolve your theological issue:

God is finite

If your God is a finite whole split among all of humankind, then God is simply the sum total of all the divine fragments. When a new child is born, the existing fragments held by their parents are simply split into smaller ones. Over the course of time, as fragments are split over and over again, an individual's connection to God(symbolic or literal) shrinks, but God as a whole remains unchanging

God is infinite in potential

Simple enough. Every newborn child has a fragment of God spawned from the two held by his biological parents. Therefore God as a sum of the whole strengthens over time rather than decreases.

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  • $\begingroup$ If God is infinite then God as a whole remains infinite over time. No amount of summation changes it. Infinity is a tricky little swine. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Oct 9, 2018 at 7:34
  • $\begingroup$ @JoeBloggs Fair point, my answer needs an edit $\endgroup$
    – nullpointer
    Oct 9, 2018 at 7:35
  • $\begingroup$ @JoeBloggs Also, each fragment of infinity is also infinity, so every newborn would also be infinitely godlike. $\endgroup$
    – Otto Abnormalverbraucher
    Oct 9, 2018 at 10:51
  • $\begingroup$ @OttoAbnormalverbraucher: Depends on how you’re fragmenting it, I suppose. Given the nature of the question it seems like division, so yeah: everyone is equally godly. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Oct 9, 2018 at 12:42
  • $\begingroup$ @JoeBloggs Only if you're creating relative fragments. Nothing prevents you from creating a finite fragment of an infinite group, e.g. 1,2,3 and the natural numbers without 1,2,3. The former is finite, the latter is still infinite. $\endgroup$
    – Suthek
    Oct 9, 2018 at 15:08
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Is God a bounded being that holds the power of the universe or is God a manifestation of, and a conduit to, the power of the universe? In current human religion, it would be more the latter. Though of course you could make up any type of God you wished.

Another possibility is that God's power is finite, but it's so enormous that a few gazillion souls doesn't even make a dent.

When God manifested into two human forms, are you saying God's power was at that point made finite and that no new power could come from the universe? Like if someone with countless riches had to grab two suitcases and stuff them with gold and jewels and that was all they had access to forever. Then divided among children and grandchildren and so on.

Again, you can write this however you want, but I just can't see God power or souls or anything else like that being equated to a finite amount of gold. Though it might be interesting if you created a God that was indeed subject to that constraint.

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The reproduction is sexual instead of asexual fission

What you described in your question is that the originating deity split itself into two, reproducing asexually in a fission process. In this instance it makes sense that the two halves should be less powerful than the originator as 1 devided by 2 is one half. However in sexual reproduction, each partner contributes half of their genetic information and they combine into a new whole 1/2 + 1/2 = 1 so there is no loss (or if you want to follow the analogy exactly it's 1/4 + 1/4 = 1/2 because the parents are really only 1/2 of the originating deity). This makes it so that all the offspring of the children will maintain a 1/2 of the deity's essence.

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If your god created the universe, they would also create "the rules" and be without any limitation whatsoever. "If you make it, you can fix it."

If your god was perfect, as you suppose your god was at it origin, then they would not ever at any point become a doofus and make themselves less than perfect. If your god was somehow a bungler, they would have untold eons to eventually get it right. The creation can no more become the creator any more than the painting can become the artist, no matter how wonderful it is to imagine. On the other hand, if you are making your own universe, you can imagine whatever you want, because you have taken over as god.

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