God as Necessary Being: A Metaphysical Reflection

[Michael Paul]

In a world full of competing ideas about God — as creator, judge, person, force, or mystery — I’ve come to a very different, and I believe more fundamental, interpretation. I don’t understand God as a being among beings, nor as a distant personal deity making decisions from the beyond. Rather, I conceive of God as infinite, eternal, necessary Being Itself — the uncaused, self-existent ground of all that is, was, and ever will be.

This metaphysical view, which I call necessitarian monism, is grounded in a single undeniable fact:

Consciousness exists.

From this, it follows that something exists, and thus non-being is impossible. Being exists necessarily; it cannot not be. Existence itself has no opposite, no alternative, and no external cause. It just is — eternally, infinitely, unconditionally.

This foundational reality — which I identify with God — did not begin, was not caused, and did not “decide” to exist. God could not have created Himself or chosen to be infinite, omniscient, or eternal. That would imply a contradiction: that something caused or authored itself, which is metaphysically incoherent.

So I reject the idea that God “chose” to be who He is, or that He deliberated whether to create the world. God’s nature, will, and creative expression are all necessary, just as His existence is. There are no metaphysical alternatives to how reality has unfolded, because the very concept of “could have been otherwise” presupposes contingency — and contingency is an illusion born from finite, temporally conditioned consciousness.

In this framework, free will in the libertarian sense is impossible — not only for humans, but even for God. For a choice to be truly free in the libertarian sense, the chooser would have to be the ultimate author of their own nature, desires, and will — which leads to an infinite regress and ultimately contradiction. Since neither God nor human beings can create or author themselves, no one can be the ultimate source of their will. Therefore, all apparent “choices” are necessary unfoldings of what must be.

God, then, is not a willful agent arbitrarily deciding things. God is the necessary, eternal unfolding of infinite Being, and everything that exists is a mode, aspect, or expression of that Being. There is no metaphysical gap between God and creation — not because everything is God in a pantheistic sense, but because everything is necessarily within God, as the totality of Being itself.

This view has deep implications. If non-being is incoherent and existence is necessary, then death is not the annihilation of being — it is simply a transformation within Being. If God cannot choose, then creation is not arbitrary — it is a necessary self-expression of the infinite. If everything is necessary, then there are no accidents, no brute (inexplicable) facts, and no true evil in the ultimate sense — only the necessary appearance of limitation, which is part of the structure of finite consciousness embedded within infinite Being.

God is not a remote sovereign handing down commandments or testing His creatures. God is the one infinite reality in which all things live, move, and have their being. And this reality — however mysterious — is rational, intelligible, and inescapably necessary. We are not separate from it. We are not anomalies. We are not flukes. We are necessary manifestations of the divine whole, awakening — or dreaming — within it.

This, to me, is the most coherent and honest interpretation of God. It demands no blind faith, no appeal to miracles, no escape from reason. It begins with the undeniable and leads to the inescapable:

That God is necessary Being — and all things, including ourselves, unfold necessarily within God.

[Breakingthewall]

This is the level of reflection and understanding needed for spirituality to be something serious and not a religion for people who only understand simple ideas.

What you've said is perfect but can still be nuanced. Existence is the relative movement that emanates from reality. As you've said, it has no beginning and is inevitable, but it has a , let's say, source. What you call God is existence itself, the infinite, inevitable relative movements that, in their synchronicity, create forms of infinite depth. And the source of existence is reality, which is limitlessness, absolute openness. The whole transcends existence as movement, although it always manifests itself as such.

Edited Friday at 11:00 AM by Breakingthewall

[Reciprocality]

Have you considered that the god that requires faith preserves the meaning of the generally accepted concept of god, while the god of necessity is no different from any theory of substance or relation of necessity/contingency?

That the hundreds of billions of conversations concerning why there is anything at all and why it is precisely how it is throughout history were about something which requires faith for a reason, as opposed to something that is determined through a syllogism?

 

Edited Friday at 11:05 AM by Reciprocality

[Michael Paul]

2 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

This is the level of reflection needed for spirituality to be something serious and not a religion for people who only understand simple ideas.

What you've said is perfect but can still be nuanced. Existence is the relative movement that emanates from reality. As you've said, it has no beginning and is inevitable, but it has a , let's say, source. What you call God is existence itself, the infinite, inevitable relative movements that, in their synchronicity, create forms of infinite depth. And the source of existence is reality, which is limitlessness, absolute openness. The whole transcends existence as movement, although it always manifests itself as such.

Thanks for your kind response, it’s much appreciated.

I draw inspiration from philosophers like Parmenides and Spinoza. Parmenides essentially argued that being must be and non-being cannot be. In other words, the fact that existence exists is necessary because “non-existence” is not and cannot be a coherent alternative to it.

Spinoza argued in his book The Ethics that God is literally everything, and His existence is necessary.

Necessity is one of the traditional divine attributes, and we can derive further attributes of God strictly from His necessity. For example, that which is necessary must be eternal, i.e. without a beginning or ending to its existence. And eternal, necessary Existence must be ontologically infinite, because there cannot be anything “beyond” it that could limit it from the outside.

[Princess Arabia]

I was reading your post and was like, "damn", then I read some more and was like "wow", kept on reading and was like "I like that", more... and was like "great way to put it" read more... and at the end was like "damn, have to read that over" a lot to take in. Sounds perfect to me except for a few things, but that's just word semantics I won't taint this post with my views and expressions, it's fine all on it's own. 

[Michael Paul]

9 minutes ago, Reciprocality said:

Have you considered that the god that requires faith preserves the meaning of the generally accepted concept of god, while the god of necessity is no different from any theory of substance or relation of necessity/contingency?

That the hundreds of billions of conversations concerning why there is anything at all and why it is precisely how it is throughout history were about something which requires faith for a reason, as opposed to something that is determined through a syllogism?

 

I think God and reason go hand in hand. We can get closer to a deeper understanding of the nature of God/Reality through the tools we have available to us, such as logic and rationality. I think it is totally possible for us to establish God’s existence a priori, through pure reason alone. But that requires a deep understanding of the nature of what God is metaphysically.

[Michael Paul]

4 minutes ago, Princess Arabia said:

I was reading your post and was like, "damn", then I read some more and was like "wow", kept on reading and was like "I like that", more... and was like "great way to put it" read more... and at the end was like "damn, have to read that over" a lot to take in. Sounds perfect to me except for a few things, but that's just word semantics I won't taint this post with my views and expressions, it's fine all on it's own. 

Hahaha, I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it!

[Breakingthewall]

28 minutes ago, Michael Paul said:

Necessity is one of the traditional divine attributes, and we can derive further attributes of God strictly from His necessity. For example, that which is necessary must be eternal, i.e. without a beginning or ending to its existence. And eternal, necessary Existence must be ontologically infinite, because there cannot be anything “beyond” it that could limit it from the outside.

All of this is indisputable, and as you say in another post, logic leads to truth. This is because existence is logic. Logic means relationship. What is relationally coherent exists. But there is another plane of reality: nonexistence is simply unmanifested potential because it is not coherent with the whole. Any existence is relative movement, since in an unlimited framework there is no movement except with respect to a reference. From this it follows that any existence is stable, synchronous relative movement. From any relationship, infinite relationships are derived in infinite dimensions. This is the unthinkable totality of existence.

But existence is manifestation; it is not ultimate reality. Existence has an opposite: nonexistence, which is simply the absence of relative motion. That it does not exist does not imply that it is not "real" as a concept. Understanding this is essential because it leads to the ultimate essence, the reality from which existence emanates. Reality is not logic; it is the source of logic or relationship. The conceptual framework you are developing is impeccable because it is absolutely logical, and that creates a viable conceptual structure for openness. Openness is not in the realm of logic, but limited logic closes.

Edited Friday at 11:41 AM by Breakingthewall

[Princess Arabia]

46 minutes ago, Michael Paul said:

This foundational reality — which I identify with God — did not begin, was not caused, and did not “decide” to exist. God could not have created Himself or chosen to be infinite, omniscient, or eternal. That would imply a contradiction: that something caused or authored itself, which is metaphysically incoherent.

So I reject the idea that God “chose” to be who He is, or that He deliberated whether to create the world. God’s nature, will, and creative expression are all necessary, just as His existence is. There are no metaphysical alternatives to how reality has unfolded, because the very concept of “could have been otherwise” presupposes contingency — and contingency is an illusion born from finite, temporally conditioned consciousness.

In this framework, free will in the libertarian sense is impossible — not only for humans, but even for God. For a choice to be truly free in the libertarian sense, the chooser would have to be the ultimate author of their own nature, desires, and will — which leads to an infinite regress and ultimately contradiction. Since neither God nor human beings can create or author themselves, no one can be the ultimate source of their will. Therefore, all apparent “choices” are necessary unfoldings of what must be.

This right here is at the core of my famous saying(to me anyway) "I didn't ask to come here". This explains to me why I am presumably here. It answers how I'm here, it made me rest that saying and will never say it again because I can see now that I didn't ask to come here, no one did, but everyone's presence MUST be because existence must be and is a necessary unfolding. Whether that's the case or not, it resonated and something here is saying 'did that show you how you're here and that you didn't ask to come here but YOU MUST BE. Forget about that "there's no one" stuff right now this here explains how I am. Even though there's no real "how" but that's the best way I can put it.

 

[CARDOZZO]

2 hours ago, Michael Paul said:

In a world full of competing ideas about God — as creator, judge, person, force, or mystery — I’ve come to a very different, and I believe more fundamental, interpretation. I don’t understand God as a being among beings, nor as a distant personal deity making decisions from the beyond. Rather, I conceive of God as infinite, eternal, necessary Being Itself — the uncaused, self-existent ground of all that is, was, and ever will be.

This metaphysical view, which I call necessitarian monism, is grounded in a single undeniable fact:

Consciousness exists.

From this, it follows that something exists, and thus non-being is impossible. Being exists necessarily; it cannot not be. Existence itself has no opposite, no alternative, and no external cause. It just is — eternally, infinitely, unconditionally.

This foundational reality — which I identify with God — did not begin, was not caused, and did not “decide” to exist. God could not have created Himself or chosen to be infinite, omniscient, or eternal. That would imply a contradiction: that something caused or authored itself, which is metaphysically incoherent.

So I reject the idea that God “chose” to be who He is, or that He deliberated whether to create the world. God’s nature, will, and creative expression are all necessary, just as His existence is. There are no metaphysical alternatives to how reality has unfolded, because the very concept of “could have been otherwise” presupposes contingency — and contingency is an illusion born from finite, temporally conditioned consciousness.

In this framework, free will in the libertarian sense is impossible — not only for humans, but even for God. For a choice to be truly free in the libertarian sense, the chooser would have to be the ultimate author of their own nature, desires, and will — which leads to an infinite regress and ultimately contradiction. Since neither God nor human beings can create or author themselves, no one can be the ultimate source of their will. Therefore, all apparent “choices” are necessary unfoldings of what must be.

God, then, is not a willful agent arbitrarily deciding things. God is the necessary, eternal unfolding of infinite Being, and everything that exists is a mode, aspect, or expression of that Being. There is no metaphysical gap between God and creation — not because everything is God in a pantheistic sense, but because everything is necessarily within God, as the totality of Being itself.

This view has deep implications. If non-being is incoherent and existence is necessary, then death is not the annihilation of being — it is simply a transformation within Being. If God cannot choose, then creation is not arbitrary — it is a necessary self-expression of the infinite. If everything is necessary, then there are no accidents, no brute (inexplicable) facts, and no true evil in the ultimate sense — only the necessary appearance of limitation, which is part of the structure of finite consciousness embedded within infinite Being.

God is not a remote sovereign handing down commandments or testing His creatures. God is the one infinite reality in which all things live, move, and have their being. And this reality — however mysterious — is rational, intelligible, and inescapably necessary. We are not separate from it. We are not anomalies. We are not flukes. We are necessary manifestations of the divine whole, awakening — or dreaming — within it.

This, to me, is the most coherent and honest interpretation of God. It demands no blind faith, no appeal to miracles, no escape from reason. It begins with the undeniable and leads to the inescapable:

That God is necessary Being — and all things, including ourselves, unfold necessarily within God.

This is extremely profound and blackpilling at the same time. 

Who informed your thinking? Books? Philosophers? Scientists? 

I appreciate your mental clarity and writing style (reminds me of @Nilsi).

[Atb210201]

Great Post.

Everything Is. As It Should And Must Be.

[kbone]

2 hours ago, Michael Paul said:

In a world full of competing ideas about God — as creator, judge, person, force, or mystery — I’ve come to a very different, and I believe more fundamental, interpretation. I don’t understand God as a being among beings, nor as a distant personal deity making decisions from the beyond. Rather, I conceive of God as infinite, eternal, necessary Being Itself — the uncaused, self-existent ground of all that is, was, and ever will be.

This metaphysical view, which I call necessitarian monism, is grounded in a single undeniable fact:

Consciousness exists.

From this, it follows that something exists, and thus non-being is impossible. Being exists necessarily; it cannot not be. Existence itself has no opposite, no alternative, and no external cause. It just is — eternally, infinitely, unconditionally.

This foundational reality — which I identify with God — did not begin, was not caused, and did not “decide” to exist. God could not have created Himself or chosen to be infinite, omniscient, or eternal. That would imply a contradiction: that something caused or authored itself, which is metaphysically incoherent.

So I reject the idea that God “chose” to be who He is, or that He deliberated whether to create the world. God’s nature, will, and creative expression are all necessary, just as His existence is. There are no metaphysical alternatives to how reality has unfolded, because the very concept of “could have been otherwise” presupposes contingency — and contingency is an illusion born from finite, temporally conditioned consciousness.

In this framework, free will in the libertarian sense is impossible — not only for humans, but even for God. For a choice to be truly free in the libertarian sense, the chooser would have to be the ultimate author of their own nature, desires, and will — which leads to an infinite regress and ultimately contradiction. Since neither God nor human beings can create or author themselves, no one can be the ultimate source of their will. Therefore, all apparent “choices” are necessary unfoldings of what must be.

God, then, is not a willful agent arbitrarily deciding things. God is the necessary, eternal unfolding of infinite Being, and everything that exists is a mode, aspect, or expression of that Being. There is no metaphysical gap between God and creation — not because everything is God in a pantheistic sense, but because everything is necessarily within God, as the totality of Being itself.

This view has deep implications. If non-being is incoherent and existence is necessary, then death is not the annihilation of being — it is simply a transformation within Being. If God cannot choose, then creation is not arbitrary — it is a necessary self-expression of the infinite. If everything is necessary, then there are no accidents, no brute (inexplicable) facts, and no true evil in the ultimate sense — only the necessary appearance of limitation, which is part of the structure of finite consciousness embedded within infinite Being.

God is not a remote sovereign handing down commandments or testing His creatures. God is the one infinite reality in which all things live, move, and have their being. And this reality — however mysterious — is rational, intelligible, and inescapably necessary. We are not separate from it. We are not anomalies. We are not flukes. We are necessary manifestations of the divine whole, awakening — or dreaming — within it.

This, to me, is the most coherent and honest interpretation of God. It demands no blind faith, no appeal to miracles, no escape from reason. It begins with the undeniable and leads to the inescapable:

That God is necessary Being — and all things, including ourselves, unfold necessarily within God.

Noice.

From the stand point of Realization, one could engage the mind and say, God IS. Apparent thought is ITs mind. Apparent reality is ITs body.

Sometimes the simplicity is just too damn simple for the mind, especially when it is ignorant of its Source and almost miraculously unaware of its entanglement with appearances (all a matter of degree, and it's OK to go unconscious.... it's what makes up the tragio-comic drama).

As such, paradoxes can ALWAYS be seen as entanglements in the mind.

[kbone]

25 minutes ago, Atb210201 said:

Great Post.

Everything Is. As It Should And Must Be.

Where do you live or where have you traveled? You look exceptionally familiar.

[Atb210201]

1 hour ago, kbone said:

Where do you live or where have you traveled? You look exceptionally familiar.

I live in Iran.

Where do you live?

I don't think you have seen me anywhere if you aren't Iranian as well.

[Nilsi]

23 hours ago, Michael Paul said:

In a world full of competing ideas about God — as creator, judge, person, force, or mystery — I’ve come to a very different, and I believe more fundamental, interpretation. I don’t understand God as a being among beings, nor as a distant personal deity making decisions from the beyond. Rather, I conceive of God as infinite, eternal, necessary Being Itself — the uncaused, self-existent ground of all that is, was, and ever will be.

This metaphysical view, which I call necessitarian monism, is grounded in a single undeniable fact:

Consciousness exists.

From this, it follows that something exists, and thus non-being is impossible. Being exists necessarily; it cannot not be. Existence itself has no opposite, no alternative, and no external cause. It just is — eternally, infinitely, unconditionally.

This foundational reality — which I identify with God — did not begin, was not caused, and did not “decide” to exist. God could not have created Himself or chosen to be infinite, omniscient, or eternal. That would imply a contradiction: that something caused or authored itself, which is metaphysically incoherent.

So I reject the idea that God “chose” to be who He is, or that He deliberated whether to create the world. God’s nature, will, and creative expression are all necessary, just as His existence is. There are no metaphysical alternatives to how reality has unfolded, because the very concept of “could have been otherwise” presupposes contingency — and contingency is an illusion born from finite, temporally conditioned consciousness.

In this framework, free will in the libertarian sense is impossible — not only for humans, but even for God. For a choice to be truly free in the libertarian sense, the chooser would have to be the ultimate author of their own nature, desires, and will — which leads to an infinite regress and ultimately contradiction. Since neither God nor human beings can create or author themselves, no one can be the ultimate source of their will. Therefore, all apparent “choices” are necessary unfoldings of what must be.

God, then, is not a willful agent arbitrarily deciding things. God is the necessary, eternal unfolding of infinite Being, and everything that exists is a mode, aspect, or expression of that Being. There is no metaphysical gap between God and creation — not because everything is God in a pantheistic sense, but because everything is necessarily within God, as the totality of Being itself.

This view has deep implications. If non-being is incoherent and existence is necessary, then death is not the annihilation of being — it is simply a transformation within Being. If God cannot choose, then creation is not arbitrary — it is a necessary self-expression of the infinite. If everything is necessary, then there are no accidents, no brute (inexplicable) facts, and no true evil in the ultimate sense — only the necessary appearance of limitation, which is part of the structure of finite consciousness embedded within infinite Being.

God is not a remote sovereign handing down commandments or testing His creatures. God is the one infinite reality in which all things live, move, and have their being. And this reality — however mysterious — is rational, intelligible, and inescapably necessary. We are not separate from it. We are not anomalies. We are not flukes. We are necessary manifestations of the divine whole, awakening — or dreaming — within it.

This, to me, is the most coherent and honest interpretation of God. It demands no blind faith, no appeal to miracles, no escape from reason. It begins with the undeniable and leads to the inescapable:

That God is necessary Being — and all things, including ourselves, unfold necessarily within God.

Precisely because God, or Being itself, is infinite, it cannot be fully closed, totalized, or rendered wholly self-identical. An infinite field is by definition inexhaustible: it exceeds any system that tries to capture it, whether through metaphysics, theology, or rational necessity. If what you call God is truly unconditioned, then it must include not only intelligibility and necessity, but also contingency, contradiction, and excess - dimensions that no conceptual framework can finally absorb.

This means that reality is not a seamless, rational whole in which every fact is deducible from a single principle. It is an open system, not a closed one. It is precisely this openness that gives rise to contingency: the emergence of events and forms that cannot be completely accounted for by prior causes or necessity. Contingency does not mean randomness without pattern, but rather the irreducible surplus of what cannot be fully explained or integrated.

From this perspective, the wish to define God as a necessary unfolding of Being in which nothing could be otherwise is understandable, but it is also a way of trying to abolish the anxiety that comes from living in an open field - anxiety in the face of what Lacan would call the Real: the dimension of experience that is not symbolizable or domesticated by any system of meaning. The idea that all apparent contingency is merely an illusion of finite consciousness is itself a kind of fantasy of closure, an attempt to guarantee that no remainder or rupture exists.

Desire, in this framework, is not simply a symptom of ignorance or separation from necessity. It is the mark of reality’s inherent incompleteness: the structural impossibility of ever achieving perfect coincidence between the subject and Being. Desire emerges because reality is never saturated with meaning, never fully accounted for. It is the sign that Being remains open and unfinished.

So while your vision of God as necessary, eternal Being is coherent and elegant, it is also, from this perspective, a metaphysical construction that closes off the very openness it seeks to describe. If God is truly infinite, then God also includes the possibility of contradiction and the inassimilable: that which escapes determination. In that sense, what is most infinite about reality is precisely that it cannot be finally reconciled with any conceptual totality - not even the most refined metaphysical one.

To put this plainly: if God were a closed system of necessity, then there would be no contingency, no true novelty, and no desire. Because God is an open system - an inexhaustible field rather than a finished structure - reality remains incomplete and alive, marked by both necessity and the possibility of what exceeds it. This is not a deficiency or a flaw, but an expression of the infinite’s refusal to be exhausted by any scheme of explanation.

[Michael Paul]

5 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Precisely because God, or Being itself, is infinite, it cannot be fully closed, totalized, or rendered wholly self-identical. An infinite field is by definition inexhaustible: it exceeds any system that tries to capture it, whether through metaphysics, theology, or rational necessity. If what you call God is truly unconditioned, then it must include not only intelligibility and necessity, but also contingency, contradiction, and excess - dimensions that no conceptual framework can finally absorb.

This means that reality is not a seamless, rational whole in which every fact is deducible from a single principle. It is an open system, not a closed one. It is precisely this openness that gives rise to contingency: the emergence of events and forms that cannot be completely accounted for by prior causes or necessity. Contingency does not mean randomness without pattern, but rather the irreducible surplus of what cannot be fully explained or integrated.

From this perspective, the wish to define God as a necessary unfolding of Being in which nothing could be otherwise is understandable, but it is also a way of trying to abolish the anxiety that comes from living in an open field - anxiety in the face of what Lacan would call the Real: the dimension of experience that is not symbolizable or domesticated by any system of meaning. The idea that all apparent contingency is merely an illusion of finite consciousness is itself a kind of fantasy of closure, an attempt to guarantee that no remainder or rupture exists.

Desire, in this framework, is not simply a symptom of ignorance or separation from necessity. It is the mark of reality’s inherent incompleteness: the structural impossibility of ever achieving perfect coincidence between the subject and Being. Desire emerges because reality is never saturated with meaning, never fully accounted for. It is the sign that Being remains open and unfinished.

So while your vision of God as necessary, eternal Being is coherent and elegant, it is also, from this perspective, a metaphysical construction that closes off the very openness it seeks to describe. If God is truly infinite, then God also includes the possibility of contradiction and the inassimilable: that which escapes determination. In that sense, what is most infinite about reality is precisely that it cannot be finally reconciled with any conceptual totality - not even the most refined metaphysical one.

To put this plainly: if God were a closed system of necessity, then there would be no contingency, no true novelty, and no desire. Because God is an open system - an inexhaustible field rather than a finished structure - reality remains incomplete and alive, marked by both necessity and the possibility of what exceeds it. This is not a deficiency or a flaw, but an expression of the infinite’s refusal to be exhausted by any scheme of explanation.

Thanks for engaging deeply with my post. It’s refreshing to hear your thoughts and perspective on this, and I appreciate your input.

Just to gain a better understanding of your position, I’d like to ask you a few philosophical questions.

Do you hold to the view that the classical laws of logic (Identity, Non-contradiction, Excluded Middle) are necessary truths? I take these three principles to be bedrock for any coherent metaphysics. I don’t really see a way around them, as rejecting them requires that one appeal to them in the process, but I’m totally open to discussing this and having my view evolve with a different understanding.

What is your own understanding of necessity and contingency? I want to see what you say about this, it’s definitely going to be an interesting conversation between us.

Do you think we can coherently quantify over everything that exists? My take on this is that even though God/Being is infinite, we can talk about the totality of existence without falling into paradox or contradiction. Everything that exists is part of or an aspect of the same infinite Existence.

What do you think of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)? The PSR states that everything that exists has a sufficient reason for being the way it is rather than not. If we reject the PSR, we’re admitting at least one brute (inexplicable) fact into our ontology, which undermines the intelligibility of reality as a whole. I don’t think it makes sense to say that reality is only partially intelligible.

Also, as an aside, I don’t think anything can exist “beyond” or “outside of” Existence in its entirety. That doesn’t make sense to me and seems contradictory. 

Anyway, thanks again for your response and I’m looking forward to engaging further with you on this.

 

 

[Inliytened1]

On 7/4/2025 at 5:41 AM, Michael Paul said:

In a world full of competing ideas about God — as creator, judge, person, force, or mystery — I’ve come to a very different, and I believe more fundamental, interpretation. I don’t understand God as a being among beings, nor as a distant personal deity making decisions from the beyond. Rather, I conceive of God as infinite, eternal, necessary Being Itself — the uncaused, self-existent ground of all that is, was, and ever will be.

This metaphysical view, which I call necessitarian monism, is grounded in a single undeniable fact:

Consciousness exists.

From this, it follows that something exists, and thus non-being is impossible. Being exists necessarily; it cannot not be. Existence itself has no opposite, no alternative, and no external cause. It just is — eternally, infinitely, unconditionally.

This foundational reality — which I identify with God — did not begin, was not caused, and did not “decide” to exist. God could not have created Himself or chosen to be infinite, omniscient, or eternal. That would imply a contradiction: that something caused or authored itself, which is metaphysically incoherent.

So I reject the idea that God “chose” to be who He is, or that He deliberated whether to create the world. God’s nature, will, and creative expression are all necessary, just as His existence is. There are no metaphysical alternatives to how reality has unfolded, because the very concept of “could have been otherwise” presupposes contingency — and contingency is an illusion born from finite, temporally conditioned consciousness.

In this framework, free will in the libertarian sense is impossible — not only for humans, but even for God. For a choice to be truly free in the libertarian sense, the chooser would have to be the ultimate author of their own nature, desires, and will — which leads to an infinite regress and ultimately contradiction. Since neither God nor human beings can create or author themselves, no one can be the ultimate source of their will. Therefore, all apparent “choices” are necessary unfoldings of what must be.

God, then, is not a willful agent arbitrarily deciding things. God is the necessary, eternal unfolding of infinite Being, and everything that exists is a mode, aspect, or expression of that Being. There is no metaphysical gap between God and creation — not because everything is God in a pantheistic sense, but because everything is necessarily within God, as the totality of Being itself.

This view has deep implications. If non-being is incoherent and existence is necessary, then death is not the annihilation of being — it is simply a transformation within Being. If God cannot choose, then creation is not arbitrary — it is a necessary self-expression of the infinite. If everything is necessary, then there are no accidents, no brute (inexplicable) facts, and no true evil in the ultimate sense — only the necessary appearance of limitation, which is part of the structure of finite consciousness embedded within infinite Being.

God is not a remote sovereign handing down commandments or testing His creatures. God is the one infinite reality in which all things live, move, and have their being. And this reality — however mysterious — is rational, intelligible, and inescapably necessary. We are not separate from it. We are not anomalies. We are not flukes. We are necessary manifestations of the divine whole, awakening — or dreaming — within it.

This, to me, is the most coherent and honest interpretation of God. It demands no blind faith, no appeal to miracles, no escape from reason. It begins with the undeniable and leads to the inescapable:

That God is necessary Being — and all things, including ourselves, unfold necessarily within God.

Well..God is all of that and more.   God is Perfection.  Think about what that means.  If you want to label God you cannot.  If you want to say that all is God's will you would be correct. And if you want to say all of it isn't God's will you would also be correct.  God must be paradoxical in this way because God is all things and more.  And less.   But you're right about Infinity.  There must be existence although for something to truly be infinite it must also be able to not exist.  Yet the thought of infinity exists so you have a paradox within infinity.    Paradox must be embraced here.  And the moral of this story is that existence is Infinity.  And this is absolutely mind blowing because it has the capacity to literally create itself.  To bootstrap itself.   But why do you equate infinity to free will among humans?  That's a big jump.  Yes. God has nowhere to go..I guess that's the true trap he puts himself in..He's so almighty that he can't eacape.himself or erase his own existence.  But in fact there is a way for that.  Can God destroy itself? Yes. The paradox holds up and has a resolution  because God can simply not exist by going unconscious.  Into an Absolute void. Not a void of emptiness but of actual nothingness. I believe its called a cessation in spiritual circles.   I have not experienced it and it cannot be fathomed. But it exists.  Or doesn't exist.  It doesn't exist.

.   

So..is there anything else you want from Infinity?  Or from God?  I think God will be able to accommodate 😀 

Edited Saturday at 05:53 PM by Inliytened1

[Inliytened1]

@Michael Paul in reading @Nilsi it.seems like he engaged AI.

Edited Saturday at 05:12 PM by Inliytened1

[Nilsi]

19 hours ago, Michael Paul said:

Thanks for engaging deeply with my post. It’s refreshing to hear your thoughts and perspective on this, and I appreciate your input.

Just to gain a better understanding of your position, I’d like to ask you a few philosophical questions.

Do you hold to the view that the classical laws of logic (Identity, Non-contradiction, Excluded Middle) are necessary truths? I take these three principles to be bedrock for any coherent metaphysics. I don’t really see a way around them, as rejecting them requires that one appeal to them in the process, but I’m totally open to discussing this and having my view evolve with a different understanding.

What is your own understanding of necessity and contingency? I want to see what you say about this, it’s definitely going to be an interesting conversation between us.

Do you think we can coherently quantify over everything that exists? My take on this is that even though God/Being is infinite, we can talk about the totality of existence without falling into paradox or contradiction. Everything that exists is part of or an aspect of the same infinite Existence.

What do you think of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)? The PSR states that everything that exists has a sufficient reason for being the way it is rather than not. If we reject the PSR, we’re admitting at least one brute (inexplicable) fact into our ontology, which undermines the intelligibility of reality as a whole. I don’t think it makes sense to say that reality is only partially intelligible.

Also, as an aside, I don’t think anything can exist “beyond” or “outside of” Existence in its entirety. That doesn’t make sense to me and seems contradictory. 

Anyway, thanks again for your response and I’m looking forward to engaging further with you on this.

 

 

I appreciate the questions. But before I address them point by point, I want to be clear that the way you frame these issues is not a neutral or purely rational starting point. It reflects a particular image of thought - a historically contingent set of assumptions about what counts as legitimate philosophy and which forms of explanation are considered necessary. As Foucault emphasized, any conceptual framework also functions as a regime of knowledge: it determines in advance which questions appear meaningful, which distinctions seem self-evident, and which possibilities are excluded as unthinkable. This framing is not simply an intellectual preference; it is already a political act, because it defines the space in which thought is allowed to move. I don’t regard this framework as self-evident or beyond critique. I can engage with it provisionally, but I don’t accept it as the only horizon for philosophy.

Classical logic, especially in its Aristotelian form, begins by positing identity as primary: A = A. Everything else - difference, change, relation - is defined as a deviation from this foundational sameness. My position draws on the critique that identity is never original but an effect - a temporary stabilization of forces that are fundamentally in motion. From this angle, it is difficult to sustain the idea that reality is a fully necessary, self-identical system. If reality is process rather than structure, contingency is not an illusion - it is the condition of becoming.

The distinction between necessity and contingency, in this view, reflects a commitment to closure rather than an unavoidable fact. If reality is an open field, contingency is not an interruption but a primary aspect of existence. Bergson’s concept of duration clarifies this: time is not a succession of discrete, measurable instants. It is an indivisible unfolding in which past and present interpenetrate. What appears as order or necessity is only a perspective imposed on this continuous movement, never an exhaustive accounting of it.

The distinction between the movement-image and the time-image makes the same point in another register. While these concepts come from thinking about cinema, they are metaphysical as well as aesthetic. The movement-image presupposes a world organized by stable coordinates - a closed system in which events unfold deterministically. The time-image, by contrast, shows moments when that apparent order fractures, revealing the contingency and incompleteness that any totalizing framework must suppress. For me, this is not merely an artistic observation but a way of describing the character of reality itself: an open field, not a bounded container.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is another expression of the same impulse toward closure. It presumes that every phenomenon must be integrated into a single framework of explanation. But there is no necessity that reality should comply with such a demand. To insist otherwise is to reaffirm the priority of stability and completeness, whose contingency has already been demonstrated.

Finally, regarding your idea that non-being is incoherent and that existence is therefore fully necessary: I am not claiming there is some separate realm “outside” existence. Rather, I am saying that existence itself is not closed. It exceeds any conceptual totalization. Any division between “inside” and “outside” is provisional - a way of mapping what can never be exhaustively determined.

Even in your Spinoza, necessity does not amount to a closed system that abolishes all differentiation. As Deleuze emphasizes, the single substance expresses itself through an infinity of modes and relations that never collapse into a single plane of identity. Thought and extension remain irreducibly distinct attributes whose expressions are parallel but heterogeneous - two orders of articulation that can neither be reduced to each other nor fully synthesized. Any claim to total closure is therefore never more than a contingent gesture - an attempt to fix what by its nature exceeds every determination. The very fact that substance unfolds through an infinity of modes means that no concept, including the concept of necessity itself, can exhaust the field it tries to describe. If anything, this is precisely what allows reality to remain alive: an immanent process whose expressions always surpass the frameworks imposed upon them.

[Nilsi]

19 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

@Michael Paul in reading @Nilsi it.seems like he engaged AI.

???