Constructing God

Expanding on my previous post here , Bemused points out another reason why people might find the concept of God so necessary:

“You could also say that people make up their version of god because they are lonely. They'd like to know that no matter where they are, or what situation they are in, that there's someone out there who will never turn their back on them -- if they follow the rules.”

This made me think that perhaps everyone has their own personal needs that their religious or spiritual ideas must help them cope with. Also, consider this: people with a strong belief are more likely to have a stronger resolve.

For instance, let’s say two different people were being held at gun point. One has no particular spiritual or religious beliefs. They may more readily be fearful for their life. On the other hand, the person who has a strong belief or even just a strong determination (perhaps to protect someone that is with them) is more likely to have a stronger resilience to fear in the situation because they have a definite position originating from their beliefs.

This takes the idea of faith/belief and makes it some sort of hyper ability, but really it is just a change in perspective; another way of viewing the outside world. You can get comparable effects by stimulating specific brain functions or human emotions. However, I want to continue to explore the idea that there are as many different needs for god as there are people in the world. In fact, I want to make an experiment out of it.

I’m going to construct my god, right here, right now, just to test the theory. Ideally, the god I envision and the “rules” I create should give me a sense of resolution. They should answer life’s greatest mysteries, even account for detailed issues like why children have to die and how hurricanes and earthquakes fit into the equation.

Well starting off, my god has to be a female. I’m not really looking for a spiritually/politically correct, androgynous god, I tend to see woman as authority figures (remember, this god is here to make sense out of “my” world). I would assume all life came from her like I came from my mother, begot by some celestial phenomena that my human mind cannot yet grasp, but upon death I will know it all. So the mystery of my origin has now been defined and I am satisfied with it.

Next I’ll consider life and death. What’s the point of me being here and where will I go after I leave. Without getting too in depth, let’s just say I have a purpose that will be revealed to me should I make the proper choices or pass the challenges that god sets in front of me. It’s like a video game really. When I die, it is like hitting the reset button, I’ll return to god with no memory and be reborn in some form to “play again”. This could go on and on, so long as I am satisfied with the theories I concoct. But here’s where things can get interesting.

After I have created all the theories that explain the world as I have experienced it, what happens when I pass that on to someone else; someone who has yet to be influenced by other beliefs; someone, like a child? I mean, if it answers all the hard questions and it gives them something to believe in, then what’s to stop them from whole-heartedly believing it to be true? This is even more complicated because they don’t understand the origins. They have never had the opportunity to consider these things for themselves. They feel it is coming from a “higher” source or authority (their know it all parents) and so they pretty much accept it without question.

I could even start to weave in symbolism, making the god take a physical form. I could Create a plethora of allegorical tales emphasizing my ideology that would resolve life’s conflicts in detail (i.e. why babies die, why people have to suffer in horrible ways). It doesn’t really matter how ridiculous it is, if the child buys into, then as a spiritual ideology and as a god, it works.

Tack on two-thousand years and a lot of proselytizing and I’ve created the next great religion. Hey, it can happen and has happened in this day and time. There is a village out on an island in the south pacific that worships an American named “John”. They truly believe that he and America are their saviors and their holy symbol is the American flag.

They believe this because after living so long in isolation, they met a white man in strange clothes for the first time. He promised them that America would save them and deliver them to a better life. They think America is god and John is their savior. Each generation the kids get more emotionally invested in that idea so much so that they have built their entire life around this belief. But does it really matter if it’s true or not? Well, who is to say? You really can’t prove that “John” is not their savior and that America is not “god”, you can only argue what you perceive to be “the facts”, just like we can only argue that the Bible is simply a spiritual book written by men. We can’t prove or disprove that they were divinely inspired to write it by “God”.

I find it interesting that most of what people believe in today is the same as what people believed in two-thousand years ago. Even though we have gained more insight into the workings of the world and the capacity of the human being, our spiritual ideas are often ancient and unchanged. So while we fight holy wars over our aged gods (many of whom are saying the same things and answering the same questions in slightly different ways) or are abandoning them all together (due to the conflict and unease they create amongst human social interaction) I wonder if it’s too avant-garde to think that maybe we’d all be better off constructing our own personal gods.

So long as it satisfies you and tends to your fears, concerns, and questions, why not? There’s no way to really prove or disprove that any god exists and if everyone constructs their own, it would be a lot harder to fight over who’s is right or wrong heh.

-Kaz

Proving God

You know, I had one of those interesting thoughts the other day. I think the reason religion and spirituality are so alluring is because they satisfy and define unknowns. What happens when we die? Do we have a purpose? Who put us here? Why do men have a choice to act positively or negatively? Why do we even have the option to ponder about such abstract concepts?

I mean, there are no “logical”, “provable” explanations for any of these issues (so far). So religion and spirituality reverse engineer creation and answer or address these human concerns and us being human, we are comforted by that sense of knowing. It’s like we feel more connected to life or complete because we allow ourselves to believe that all the parts and pieces are in place.

So is it the mere belief of completeness that acts as the key to spirituality? I mean I could teach my child that this computer is god. It created us and the world and we will return to it when we die. If the child intently believes that, they may feel complete. They may live a longer, healthier, natural life because of the chemical effect that feeling of completeness and harmony has on their body, but does it matter if what they believe is necessarily true?

Humans have always scrambled for something to worship be it an idea, idol, or their source of food (i.e. Native American Buffalo gods are important deities). So perhaps the nature of our mind is simply wired to find such an association and satisfy that craving. I mean, it is really hard to determine if our beliefs will have any overarching impact on the world outside of our own actions stemming from our spiritual ideology.

Using myself as an example, I tend to think balance plays a key role in the governing of universal forces on a grand scale. Although I can’t prove it to be 100% and absolute, I feel that when I do something “negative”, something “negative” happens back to me and the same holds true if I do something positive”. Of course there is no way to accurately prove this, because sometimes the negative or positive feedback may not appear instantaneously.

At times it appears to work like a cosmic credit card, storing my Karma points and dishing out justice and mercy based on my collective karmic history. If I charge a small negative action today it might be concealed by a greater positive payment. If the negative charge was a bit too large, I may incur fees on that and still reap the benefits of the positive payments I made. I’m not even going to get into the complexities that interest might bring. Though just for a fun second, imagine if the universe had its own interest rate hikes based on a larger flow of positive and negative “markets”. That would mean there would be times when your negative actions could really bust you and other seasons when you get rewards and bonuses just for making your regular positive payments. (Ha! That would mean I have an A+ credit rating, universally speaking heh heh heh).

This is all just an analogy of course. The point is, in my mind I have it all worked out. I have taken the time to consider many variables and somehow devised this system that explains “most” of what takes place in my life. So to repeat my initial question, does it matter if it’s true and how could it even be tested, proven, or disproved in anyone else’s life outside of my own?

There are many theories around that attempt to explain this perspective. One is solipsism. It basically states that reality is subjective and that you are everything there is. There is not even a way to prove that anything else really exists. The twist on that is Panpsychism or the idea that everything—including you— is consciously one and the same; a sort of schizophrenic organism full of amazing contradictions and harmonic subtly. Crazy.

If you’d like to explore some of the prevailing theories around, here are a few interesting links with more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

-Kaz