The God concept

Let's start by observing that most civilizations and individuals are developing a concept of God or Gods, even without outside preaching.

Polytheistic religions

Ancient Greeks and Romans had many Gods. Each God was powerful over a certain aspect of life. For example, Poseidon/Neptune governed the sea, storms, earthquakes.

Each God embodied a certain aspect of live where human had little understanding about causation. Aphrodite/Venus governed the love, where humans still struggle to understand the causation.

Humans naturally develop the "theory of mind", so they can conceptualize the mental state of other individuals, and the intention behind their actions. It is not a far leap to assign intention to any unexplained natural phenomenon. A psychology experiment shows that people thinking about God are activating "theory of mind" brain regions, along with imagination. 

Once an intention is suspected, the next step is to attempt to turn such intentions to one's own benefit. While most human leaders can be appeased by gifts, by generalizing we should attempt various offerings to gods, in order to motivate them to help us. When one of the offerings resulted in good outcome, basic reinforcement learning motivates us to try again next time.

This was a little mercantile concept of God(s). You just trade goods for good. But later, more complex, monotheistic religions emerged.

Monotheistic God(s)

Monotheistic religions tend to organize unexplained Universe forces by what is beneficial to humans and what is not. God is usually good and benevolent. Most monotheistic religions also conceptualize a malevolent entity (Devil) that is responsible for all bad things that happens to humans.

Then "God's will" emerged. Such monotheistic God not only requires offerings, but he has also special commandments (sacred laws) that must be obeyed for him to show his mercy on people.

The "God's will" commandments often matches behaviors that are needed to mutual benefit collaboration between humans like "should not steal", "should not kill". The commandments can also contain "replication code" assuring that adepts are not easily took over by another religion.

Monotheistic religions also contains practical rules to avoid common disease vectors - like was pork in some regions and time periods.

Some animals had economic value far beyond eating them, so camels and cows in another regions became forbidden to eat.

Sexual promiscuity was both a disease vector and a reason for quarrel in community, so it is also forbidden by Abrahamic religions and many others.

The God image

Humans are  born with some tribal instinct to respect a leader, that is often old and presumably wise. The God's image often starts with this image of an elderly man wearing a white beard.

Most properties attributed to such God are derived by attributes of tribal leaders. Such leader generally desires good for its tribe. However he can punish the ones that do not obey his will. Such leader can help people in need if he chooses to do so.

More recent God figures (Jesus) has also a dimension of sacrifice for the people. Such leader preaches forgiveness that is often an even better social strategy than mere revenge. Recently game theory discovered that forgiveness is an ingredient that improves over the ancient "eye for an eye" strategy.

The useful God

While we understand today many natural phenomenon - that were traditionally seen as God's acts - the God concept can still be useful.

On the low side, for many people it might be easier to do good for the sake of God's will - than thinking about social harmony. Thinking about after life provides comfort for many, and studies found that religious people live longer and happier. Many religious people have tremendous social contributions, partly due to their beliefs.

Individuals are born with simple urges that are not always benefiting the individual on the long term. Religious commandments brings a cultural layer that usually creates a better adapted individual and often creating a better society overall.

Many religions contains refined knowledge about how to live life. Such knowledge is arguably better tested by time than any strategy that we could come by thinking rationally. However, some religious precepts might mirror outdated environment constraints and need to be updated to the new realities.

Metaphysical God

Is God only a useful metaphor for what is good for humans as society?

I think there is more to it. I believe we can recover the God concept that captures many metaphysical intuitions of humans over thousands of years. We just need to strip the God concept of all animistic properties. Most of these properties are inspired by how humans are: merciful or revengeful, helping or punishing, seeking glory or seeking the punishment of other humans.

What is left, I believe, is a metaphysical concept that is hard to name otherwise. Why we struggle to live, why we try to conserve our life, why we feel we want to help others? Such God concept doesn't have to have the absolute properties that comports philosophical contradictions - when God "allows" bad things to happen to good people.

We can still conceptualize the above in more informational terms, but we will still need to give a name to this concept. For this concept, God is the closest name we have for now. It is not the God of religions, but it might be more universal than any god we had before. Maybe mysticism is an even closer proxy to this concept, however I think we can derive more to it than mere wonder.

Future work

Stand by for a future article where I will analyze how old religious precepts can be mapped to secular  metaphysical concepts about human life. This will be a rational concept, however it will also need a little grain of wonder to really fly.

In the meantime you can check my morality essays.

Next: A secular God

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