How to Become a God

are you tired of being mortal is your limited  perspective in space and time getting you down  

are you embarrassed by your lack of Supernatural  powers and devoted worshippers is there not a  

single Church in your name if this sounds like  you don't worry I have just the solution why not  

become a God okay admittedly that's a little  harder than I'm making it sound I don't think  

there's any actual way to just become a god  yourself but you humans sure do have a lot of  

interesting ideas about this in your fiction  and hey we already made a video about how to  

kill a God so if you are paying attention  there should be at least one vacancy so at  

least according to the stories you tell  where do you start how does one become a

[Music] god [Music] one of the best things in life  is learning which is probably why you're here to  

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be the most popular conception of a God in our  modern world is you know capital G God beginning  

and end of all things creator of the universe  omniscient omnipotent and Immortal Wikipedia  

defines the word God as meaning the Supreme Being  Creator and principal object of Faith you're  

probably familiar unsurprisingly a god like this  often show up in fiction too being all powerful  

and mysterious it's rare that characters become  a God of this sort though that would be kind of  

hard to do wouldn't it there's only one position  and it doesn't have a terribly High turnover rate  

rare for the end all be all One and Only God of  the cosmos to be replaced but there are stories  

where it happens in the series His Dark Materials  by Philip pman there's a Catholic church-like  

organization called the magisterium which worships  a Catholic faith likee God called The Authority  

the magisterium believes this being to be like  the abrahamic god of our world the omniscient  

omnipotent creator of the universe near the end of  the series as a war is waged against the authority  

the truth is revealed The Authority is not the  Creator but merely the first Angel after all the  

other angels came into being the authority lied  to them telling them that he had been the one who  

created them which led the world to worship him  as their creator eventually however the authority  

himself is usurped by a different Angel because  he isn't the omnipotent creator of the universe  

and that's something you can only fake for so long  this is actually a really great demonstration of  

the main problem with becoming the capital  G kind of God it's got a very difficult to  

replicate primary requirement you can't really be  the Creator God of the cosmos unless you first you  

know create one which a pretty tough feet even  in fiction anything less than complete control  

over a domain of your own making falls short of  the mold but there are some examples that come  

pretty close think of all those stories where some  mad scientist Engineers a tiny civilization of  

people microcosmic God by Theodore sturgeon this  episode of Rick and Morty that terrifying messed  

up sequence from Mark Twain Adventures where the  kids meet the mysterious stranger with the power  

to create and destroy life and what appears  at least to those life forms infinite power to  

manipulate this little reality these figures do  appear in some capacity like gods don't they at  

the very least they're playing God which is an  interesting Trope unto itself now that I think  

about it maybe there's a video in there somewhere  a little questionable whether they really should  

be considered gods but still interesting as one  of the more plausible ways to achieve this for  

a more direct example I'm going to step out of  bounds for a second here look I'm not necessarily  

trying to call it fiction but the Theology of the  Mormon Church contains an irresistibly unusual  

example of this in their scriptures if you pay  close attention you find that especially devout  

adherence to the faith are promised their own  worlds to rule over in the afterlife essentially  

becoming gods in their own right that itself is  already pretty unique but their really interesting  

exception to this hurdle of becoming an omnipotent  God we were talking about is uh maybe a bit more  

controversial within the church some Mormons  believe that God himself was once a human who  

ascended to Divinity the fifth President of the  church Lorenzo Snow summed up the belief with  

a Nifty little poem as man now is is God once  was as God now is man may be it seems that more  

recent Church presidents have backed away from  that assertion and it's now a less common belief  

but I still find it a fascinating idea a great  circumvention of the idea that there can only  

be one ultimate Creator God but like I said not  exactly trying to call this fiction per se from  

what I can see having multiple capital G Gods like  this isn't very common in fiction in fact off the  

top of my head I can only really conjure up one  instance Andrew hussy's massive sprawling and  

notoriously confusing webcomic Homestuck is at its  core about four 13-year-old internet friends on  

the path to essentially become Gods the story is  about the four of them playing a video game called  

spur that doesn't so much blur the line between  cyberspace and reality as it does completely  

destroy it the the prize for beating the game  a brand new universe for you and the friends  

you played the game with in fact looking at it  a certain way spur could be said to be something  

of a god training simulator once the players have  escaped the world-ending meteor shower triggered  

by starting up the game that destroys their real  life home planet presumably causing billions of  

casualties in the process don't worry about it  they're each given their own custom planet to  

Quest on complete with a population of Sapient but  dimwitted amphibian residents their own monster to  

defeat called a denisen a heroic mythological  role to embody that shapes their character Arc  

and themes their Quest and even a spiritual  guide customized with the personality of a  

corpse of their choice each of them has a literal  death bed hidden somewhere in their world called  

a quest bed which if the player dies on it will  resurrect them with thematic superpowers a special  

costume and near immortality after coming back  this way they can only only die if the universe  

judges their death to be either just or heroic to  beat the game they have to breed and hatch a frog  

that contains their new universe in its throat  pouch but not before they figure out how to use  

time travel and teleportation to ensure that they  themselves are born in the past because of course  

they've somehow been playing the game since before  they were born nothing is ever simple in Homestuck  

but that raises an interesting question because  who created the players original universes and  

were they once players in their own session of  spur like I said it's Homestuck so it's pretty  

confusing all I know is that I'd be a sear of art  okay so those are some examples of stories that  

kind of break this mold or get around the hurdle  they have multiple of these big Creator gods that  

are omnipotent and Rule their own Universe here's  the catch though even if they did create their own  

universes the Homestuck kids hardly qualify as  omnipotent or omniscient right and even if you  

are a very devout member of the Mormon church  and you do become the all powerful God of your  

own domain are you really all powerful isn't  there technically a God above you in that case  

who originally created you in a weird way these  examples both sort of tread the line between being  

a capital G God and a lowercase G1 and that's an  important distinction because becoming that type  

of God seems far more manageable we already gave  a definition for capital G God Wikipedia describes  

the lowercase G type as a spirit or being believed  to control some part of the universe or life and  

often worshiped for doing so this kind of God  is incredibly popular in fiction probably owing  

a lot to their fallibility and the fact that  there's more than one of them together both  

of those things allow for interesting character  your interactions in conflicts that wouldn't be  

possible in stories with just a boring perfect  capital G God and these Gods also frequently  

come from Mortal Roots somehow at some point they  ascended to godhood so to the point of this video  

how is that done if you've spent any time at all  playing the Smash Hit Video Game balers Gate 3  

you're probably very familiar with this loading  screen apparently the Dead 3 Bal Bane and mgle  

were once mortal men but ascended to godhood  Courtesy of the lord of the end of everything  

jural after a long and brutal Journey they  just wandered up to him and demanded to be  

gods and lucky for them he decided it was time to  retire and that might seem like a pretty singular  

experience but they're far from alone a lot of  the Gods of the Forgotten Realms started out  

as Mortals and in fact one of the main ways that  gods are created in this universe is by existing  

Gods sponsoring the Ascension of particularly  exceptional Mortals almost like some kind of  

divine Alcoholics Anonymous meeting for instance  mistra the goddess of magic sponsored azuth to  

become the god of the Arcane under her and later  sponsored Savas to become the god of divination  

you get the idea but what if you don't have a  patron deity who conveniently thinks you should  

be granted immortality and divine power well  luckily in such universes there's usually some  

sort of literal mechanism for this a process you  can follow an artifact you can activate a McGuffin  

of some kind that will grant you what you seek if  only you can find it in Brandon sanderson's first  

mistborn Trilogy the final Empire is suffering  under the brutal regime of the Lord ruler a  

Godlike being with near Limitless power later it's  revealed that he was once a simple pass Blackman  

who seized the power flowing from the mythical  well of Ascension which only the prophesied hero  

of Ages was supposed to do honestly a lot of  characters in misbourne wind up becoming Gods  

come to think of it and they usually follow a  model similar to this but interestingly I think  

the most famous example in Mporn is actually  of someone who isn't really a god at all just  

a human who conned a lot of people into thinking  he was the thief in Revolutionary Kelsey sets up  

a plan in the event of his death to trick everyone  into thinking that he's been resurrected his plot  

works and he ends up venerated as the god of a new  religion the Church of the Survivor this is called  

deification and unlike literal Ascension it's  actually quite achievable even in reality many  

ancient civilizations had a habit of deifying  their leaders after they died sometimes even  

when they were still alive Roman emperors were  considered to be part partially divided in life  

ascending to godhood upon their deaths this led  to the emperor Vespasian on his deathbed uttering  

these incredible final words oh dear I think  I am becoming a god it wasn't just the Romans  

though deified rulers or God Emperors showed up  in ancient Egypt ancient China the ancient Incan  

civilizations and probably plenty of other places  too even now there are many cultures who still  

practice ancestor worship possibly the easiest  path to godhood since all it really involves is  

dying these are very different kinds of gods  though ones with little if any Supernatural  

power so do they really count in our how to kill  a God video we discussed killing Gods by depriving  

them of belief and worship if removing worship  can destroy a God why shouldn't adding worship  

create one in the anime death note a teenage boy  named Light Yagami stumbles across a notebook that  

allows him to kill anyone he knows the face and  name of he immediately gets Swept Away by the idea  

of using it to purify the world of bad people  and criminals creating a new world one that he  

will be the god of it's important to note here  that light knows there are real gods of death  

called Shinigami his notebook came with one more  importantly he knows he's not so when he says he's  

a god what exactly does he mean he's not Immortal  he has no sphere of influence no worshippers at  

least not at the time his abilities are entirely  dependent on an external object anyone can use one  

that already belongs to an actual God which he's  just borrowing light is of course referring to  

one thing power the ability to choose who lives  and dies has often been considered Godlike but  

could it really be that simple can an otherwise  normal person be considered akin to a God just for  

having the ability to kill after all that power  resides in nearly everyone to some extent it's an  

interesting question it is technically still power  over life in a manner of speaking another trait  

that's often referred to as Godlike as having  knowledge Beyond human Ken in the abrahamic  

story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit  is said to have made humans like God in knowing  

the difference between good and evil in the video  game bloodborne which is almost entirely about  

ascending to godhood involves two factions arguing  about the best way to do so one of them believes  

that the key is knowledged or as it's symbolized  in game eyes if you can manage to find and eat  

three eye- covered umbilical cords before the end  of the game thus sliding your character's stomach  

not just metaphorically with eyes you unlock  an ending where the player becomes an infant  

great old one sort of a slimy baby culu but while  the great old ones are definitely powerful and  

mysterious figures it's worth noting that we don't  actually know that they're Gods in game bloodborne  

leaves that like so many of its other questions  unanswered and while we're still on the topic of  

being Godlike there is a fantastic episode in the  second season of Star Trek the Original Series in  

which the USS Enterprise is trapped by a powerful  alien being calling himself the god Apollo on  

a planet that's strongly resembles Classical  Greece the crew starts off believing he's lying  

or delusional but eventually they put together  the shocking truth he really is Apollo he and  

the others of his species visited Earth thousands  of years ago and the Pastoral ancient Greeks were  

awed by their displays of Supernatural power  simple Shepherds and tribesmen of early Greece  

creatures like that would have been gods in fact  they couldn't have been taken for anything else  

so how do you become a god perhaps the answer to  that question is as diverse as the gods themselves  

win a game find an artifact drink a potion ask  another God very nicely but if none of that is  

working for you if you're having trouble finding  a deity to sponsor you or an artifact to Grant  

you Godly Powers maybe consider the f it till  you make it approach after all sometimes all it  

takes to become a God is for someone to believe in  [Music] you of course it might be a little easier  

to convince people if you did have Godly powers  and that's you know little hard to achieve for  

human beings in the real world I think the closest  you can really come is Mastery over technology to  

become extremely educated and use what you know to  influence the world world around you unfortunately  

education is exorbitantly expensive these days  not everyone wants to go into a lifetime of debt  

just to get their career going not even if it  means a shot at deification but it doesn't have  

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anyway that's all for this one thanks for watching  and keep making stuff up I'll see you next week

bye [Music]

[Music]