Which gods and in what way?

One consistent characteristic of the vast majority of gods that humans have worshiped throughout history is that they are not us, they are portrayed as having attributes we humans can only dream about (which is precisely why we project them onto gods and comic book heroes, and other fictional characters).

Humans can’t become gods, we create the gods. Our belief is the only thing that keeps them alive in the collective imagination. To become a god would be a step down for a human. And the gods can’t become human because we won’t let them. They can’t perform the functions we created them to perform as humans. To be gods they must be better than us, more powerful than we can ever hope to be, not be subject to our common dependencies, our weaknesses and mistakes. They are the “us” we want to be but can’t because those expectations are unrealistic. Perfection is a fantastical state, a never-fulfilled aspiration.

Notice the gods never have attributes, abilities or super powers beyond what we can imagine. That’s not because we have a limited imagination but because gods only exist in our imaginations. They cannot extend beyond the boundaries our imaginations place on their existence. They exist in a subset of the superset humans. We are in turn a subset of the universe.

The only way humans are becoming like gods is that we are starting to understand things about reality that our ancient religious beliefs reserve for the gods. When we discovered the mechanics of lightning, belief in Jupiter was pretty much finished. We can create lightning. Have we become like Jupiter? No, Jupiter is simply no longer relevant. We’ve evolved beyond needing a placeholder for our lack of understanding about lightning.

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