I characterize God as something that gives life (in this case, humanity) the ability to achieve wonderful goals. This is how I distinguish a God from a deity and a deity from a non-deity. The Earth does give humans potential but all the potential (and more) of Earth comes from the Sun. In this aspect I believe the Creator (the Sun) created the Creation (humans), and the Creation (humans) gave purpose to the Creator (the Sun). I believe divinity goes both ways; without life there could be no divinity but without the Omniverse there wouldn’t be anything at all.
When someone says, “I am God.” I immediately think of the left-handed path. Typically spiritual left-handedness is associated with believing that anyone can be God and develop a worship to and from thyself. See, religions can go in three different directions. One; they can worship a dualistic God, and believe that only spirit is validated. Two; they can worship a natural God, and believe in monism. Or three, they go can the left-handed path (be monist or dualist) and ultimately worship themselves. I believe in the second. One of my dearest Christian friends believes that I worship the Creation rather than the Creator, but I see many avenues to which anything can become a Creator. From becoming a parent to providing a service or product from your job, you are both a Creation and a Creator.
I don’t believe that one person by today’s standards could be considered a God. Not Trump, not Mark Cuban, not even Bill Gates. Nobody is God. I see things as deities and a God in part because of what potential they give life. What they really mean by saying, “I am God” is “I have control over my life”. They see right-handed religions as a scheme to control weak-minded individuals. I used to think we were all God, and even had a chant which only line is, “We are God”, but I’ve come to realize that if you deify everything it loses its luster.
As far as the difference between monist and dualist Satanists, I like to split them up to two camps. LaVeyan Satanists who don’t believe in Hell, Satan, or even a God and are typically monists. The second being Luciferians, who believe in Hell, Satan, God, and the duality of existence. Both have similar goals. They both want to achieve greater self-awareness and value things like science and progress very much, but their approach to almost any other subject is completely different. I was part of a forum that someone convinced me that I was a Luciferian because of my view on theosis. I wore that Luciferian title for maybe a few hours before someone else came to the chat room and set me straight about “true” Luciferianism.
See, I don’t view theosis as something that one person can achieve by himself. That’s glorifying a weakness; self-isolation. Only can a society achieve a greater good by together being examples of divine thought. This is why I prefer the saying “We are God” over “I am God”. It means so much more if our bloodlines become the ancestors to a divine essence that carries the fruit of our creations. Even the Omniverse couldn’t be divine without our compensation. Without the specks of wisdom and benevolence our species has shown, God wouldn’t have a reason to exist. It would just “be” and everything in it would just “be”. The physical mind (the brain) has given control to exert extropy in the mist of a decaying Universe. If we don’t fix this, soon everything will be too-far in entropy to be reconciled with.
… uuhh, what were we talking about again?