Reading your response to Graham, few things came to my mind.
the gospels insist that Jesus was a Son of God, so the question is what that concept means
The best bet are John 8:57–59 (‘Before Abraham was, I am’) and John 10:33–38 (‘I and the Father are one’). Especially the latter is interesting because it references Exodus 3:14 (the name of God ‘I Am That I Am’). There is a clear parallel of these sayings with Mahavakyas (‘This Atman is Brahman’, ‘You are That’, ‘I am Brahman’).That implies that at least Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses “knew God” in the way Jesus talks about. This translates to “knowers of Brahman” and we have pretty good idea what that expression means.
The standards of skepticism in the circles Jesus would have travelled in were hardly up to par with those of modern skeptics.
I think that doubting Tomas demanding a physical proof would fit the bill.
the horrors of nature and of being arrogant or perhaps heroic enough to oppose them … natural godhood is tragic … Our anti-natural powers are temporary and perhaps illusory, since as free as we think we are, we may after all be mere puppets exploited by certain monstrous natural processes
Well, this sounds a lot like Sisyphus. Anyway, I agree the nature is scary, but human beings are that very nature through-and-through from their conception. But yes, there’s a component of tragedy if you look at things from the standpoint of particular body-mind complex inevitably moving toward death, but the godhood, which is essentially equal to what your ‘I am’ points at, is far from tragic because it sees nature as perfect (however you look at it, uni/multi-verse is mindbogglingly, well, perfect). But the only way to verify that, is to actually separate/identify/realize your consciousness, i.e. that which is aware of all your perceptions and at which ‘I am’ points.
This is the view that we’ll evolve into more permanent deities, empowered by science and technology, in which case we’ll be immortal creators of worlds.
To be godlike through technology we would have to turn the whole universe into technology. Or in other words use emergent subsystem to negate or overpower the underlying architecture. IMO, that is surefire recipe for failure. I guess, it stems from our interpretation of what it means to be god-like. The standard bias is to imagine a being such as Thanos, etc. That in turn has it’s origins in our misguided placement of “god” and nature outside of ourselves, or, from a different angle, attempt to exclude ourselves from them. But as I said, to stop imagining “god” one has to know “him”.
