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