The thing is, said in the scans, as God,
Ivarage had no consciousness, desire, emotions or feelings, so even her "feeling" or "remembering" that feeling is, quite literally, impossible if God doesn't have those things to begin with.
The next conclusion we can get from that is that the Avatars become automatically self-consciousness that they are avatars of God, or well, at least that their true form is ultimately the All-in-one, as the same happened to Veldanava as well.
so the "she gained intelligence"(self sentience, not emotions) refers to "when" she was manifested. When is here because ultimately, even if God itself is all-encompassing, the avatars aren't. From external pov, they were manifested at some point.
The whole narration of the novel is in external pov, aka from the house imaginary next person's perspective, except for the things narrated by the characters themselves in quotes. Even for the main character itself, the tone is kept as if the MC is narrating his own past experiences that already happened. So the problem of PoV is also to consider here. Therefore, the "was once God" is most likely just referring to her true form before she was manifested/created.
The whole thing about this is that it's contradicted by many things in-verse:
- Michael was reduced to God, which cannot happen if God does not exist.
- The fact that the whole "illusions converge into the ethereal" is stated as something that "does happen", not "does not happen anymore". (It was translated by the translation staff here at the end)
- Also the fact that the entire "The being is released from the cycle of reincarnation, unbounded by any and all limitations, and travels to the promised land" is also said as if "it happens", rather then it being a thing of the past. (translated here at the end)
- Ultimately, the biggest evidence, the fact that Ramiris is a guide to the Holy One (referring to God) and gives blessing of the Holy Spirit (God) to the heroes. The thing about this is that for a "blessing" to remain true, the superior entity (in this case, God) must exist. This is stated as when Rimuru was BFRed to the end of time and space, the void outside the world, his subordinates thought he has dead AT FIRST, but later on they realized he was not dead at all since they still had his blessing.
All this ultimately means that God still exists.
There was only one scan where Veldanava himself narrated something, and that's this one.
And the only thing strange about this is the "when I was born", which is previously already explained before here.