A secular God concept



All that is good

In a first approximation, God is a catch-all concept about everything that is unexplained about the world and human life. Such God concept is consistent with most religious beliefs that I know. Most modern religions that contain some kind of "Evil" concept will associate God mainly with things that are good for humans. Here we will use this conceptual dichotomy between God and Evil.


The mystery

A God that contains all the unexplained features that are favorable to humans is inherently mysterious, even by the above definition. Why life exists rather than not? How that human life exists?

We can find "big bang" models to explain how Universe evolved, however it remains somehow mysterious how that we happen to be in a corner of the Universe that is suitable for life. If we put a little value on the fact that we exist, we can only thank to a "Providence" that we are existing. If we want to call this God it is fine by me.


The Creator

As most objects we know are created by something or someone, we naturally wonder who created life and humans. As we learn more about other planets, it becomes even more amazing that this planet has the right mix of properties to sustains life.

We are naturally inclined to consider that human life is good. However, we cannot rationally derive this goodness of human life from some other objective. Then we are forced to assume that there is a higher and mysterious purpose, and from that purpose the goodness of life derives. We often call this the God's plan.


The Evil

We also see things that are adverse to human thriving. Natural disasters destroy what seemed like a safe life. As we learned to protect ourselves better and better from natural forces, we turn our attention on human traits that destroy human life. Greed, stealing, killing, are human traits that destroy the wellness of individuals and communities. Such trains are obviously bad in nature and deserves to be includes in the concept of Evil.

While human collaboration dramatically improved the human life, some selfish traits in humans are permanently threating the harmony of society, so they deserve to be called Evil. Unfortunately starting a war is not sufficiently blamed by religions, while it is obviously a great departure from the good.

Here we can make a little amend. Not every selfish act should be considered Evil. We should only condemn the kind of selfishness that destroys other's wellbeing. When someone does no obvious harm on others, we should refrain to condemn such selfishness. Of course, we would like that people should make a little effort to save someone in great need. Let's put this on the "good" traits.


The God' laws

We use religions and philosophy to orient our actions so that we live a "good life". While philosophy can tells us how to think more clearly and to be consistent, what is a "good life" is hard to derive from other means. Traditionally, religion was answering such questions.

We humans have an innate intuition that human thriving is good. Such attachment to human thriving is seen in most "laws of God", from most religions. Such God's laws are often recommending to help others in need, to reduce selfishness that can do harm. Such laws often contains advices to live a good long life for individuals, by delaying gratification. Many "God's laws" contain commandments that prevented various diseases, including sexual transmitted diseases.

We name "sins" certain traits or actions that are harming long term humanity surviving. While long term is... a long time, we often evaluate our actions based on current effect on humanity. What does harm to individuals must be bad for humanity. It is acceptable to do harm on an individual to prevent an even greater harm - like killing a terrorist before he/she kills innocent people.


The holly spirit

We share this life with all the other humans. We are depending on each other and we also depend on other forms of life. Our life is only possible in this web of inter-connections between life forms. It remains somehow miraculous that such information flows in all humans such that we can collaborate to make our life better. We can even call such "spirit of good" that we share as "holly".

There is also the spirit that keeps the Humanity thriving over generations. While we don't see evidences that something global and indivisible from us will exist after our death, we can see how a part of us continue to live in other's memory. What unites us is this spirit that we share - that is informational in nature. We live in a favorable part of the fabric of the Universe.


The after life and hell

If we take it a little further, everything we do has an effect on long term humanity thriving. Our "good deeds" count for long term thriving of humanity. The same for "bad deeds" - aka sins.

There is no individual salvation for each soul. We can only thrive together with Humanity or we can all fail. The Hell is not full of fire and sufferings. The Hell is even worse: nothing at all - the total destruction of Humanity. 

We can find glory for our temporary existence by helping Humanity to thrive. We can find shame for our existence by hurting other that can help humanity to thrive. Helping Humanity is the only meaning we can find in our life. 


Helping Humanity to thrive is the "bigger than ourselves" objective that we should dedicate our life to. This is the "God's will".



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