The God Model

Feeling rather thirsty after my early morning exercise, I decided to go to a place where I could have a cool beer while I dive into my weekly blogging routine. And so here I am now, seated comfortably outdoors with a pint of Tiger, tapping out these words, figuring out the topic for today's blog.

Part of my reason for blogging is to allow myself to figure out my personal philosophy of life. Being someone with "no religion",  I'm simply devising my own system of values to live by. What are the fundamental beliefs in this personal philosophy of mine?

Fundamental belief number one is that there are no fundamental beliefs. Everything can be challenged. Religious people would say that one must have faith in something, say God, to be a moral person. If one does not believe in a higher authority, a creator whom we have to answer to in our afterlife, wouldn't one end up as a morally degenerate person leading a purposeless life?

I have no problems with the belief in God. If that model works for you, by all means, go ahead and live by the precepts set forth by the religion of your birth or adoption. If it gives you meaning, purpose and joy, all the better. 

I personally learned a lot from all the theistic religions of the world and do enjoy the wisdom of their scriptures and the beauty of their rituals and liturgies. But to ask me to swear allegiance solely to one particular faith is like asking me to declare that Jazz (or any other genre of music) is the one and only true music. No, my life will be a lot less meaningful if I listen only to Jazz and consider Baroque music, keroncong or rap music 'heresies'.  I will continue to listen to all types of music and appreciate the pleasure and insight that comes from them.

Now, if I don't strictly follow the tenets of any religion, how would I know what's good or bad? With no fear of God, wouldn't I degenerate into an evil person? 

Does anyone seriously believe that would happen? Think about it. It takes a lot of skill and hardwork if one were to cheat, rob and kill for a living life. The bulk of humanity has to live together with their fellow humans. A small group of misguided individuals might resort to unethical means to get certain advantages in life, but at what cost? 

If you are a selfish person with no integrity, do you think you would be able to secure a good job for long? You simply ostracise yourself from the society of people. You wouldn't have any friends. Your own family members will despise you. And in extreme cases, you could even run foul of the law.

It is practical to be moral and ethical. You don't need any holy book to tell you that. What holy books do is something more than morality. It attempts to answer deeper philosophical questions about your existence and its purpose. That's the real appeal of religion. If religion exists simply because of a need for a code of ethics, then it is superfluous. 

God created you and the universe. And there are some expectations on how you should act and believe so that you are saved, avoid pain, transcend death and find eternal joy. 

Wouldn't I lose out on that, if I don't belong to a creed that promises those things? Perhaps. It doesn't bother me because I think it is a bit insulting to God (if He exists) to consider him a kind of paternalistic figure who loves his children, gives them free will to choose and then proceeds to punish them by banishing them to the fires of hell if they disobey Him. 

Well, I certainly wouldn't punish you if I were God, because I would understand why you went astray, given your life experiences. Some of your flaws were even genetic, which is God's own handiwork. Why blame the product, when there are factory defects?

In electrical circuit theory where a physical network is modelled using idealised discrete components such as voltage sources, resistors, inductors and capacitors, we understand that these ideal components don't exist in real life but it is a close enough mathematical model that will help us calculate and predict the behaviour of a circuit. Without these 'gods', the human mind will not be able to accomplish all the electrical engineering feats that we all see today.

The mind needs such conceptual models to navigate the real world. There are materials in the world that produce resistance, converting electrical energy to heat but they are not perfectly discrete lumps that are localised in an ideal conductor. In some circumstances, we would need to use calculus and Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism to really model the behaviour of networks more accurately but for most practical purposes, we don't. These idealised discrete components are good enough. The God model is good enough too, for most people.

We are life forms perceiving our environment through our finite array of senses and have brains that tend to process information in a very specific way. So we devise models to explain and navigate the world around us. These models of the world arose naturally, almost inevitably.

We like myths and stories, because for some reason, the circuitry of the human brain has a facility for narrative arcs, something with a beginning, middle and end. There must be tension and release; agony and ecstasy; damnation and salvation. Thus we resonate with the eschatology of religion.

We have certain expectations on how the universe should be, because we live in an every day world that has creators, objects and purposes. Our vocabulary is limited to that. So God and gods are true in this very specific view of the universe.

Does God exist? Do resistors exist? Yes, of course. Can we come up with better models? Most certainly. But understand that the human mind can only comprehend things using models, described using a human language that grew out of every day experiences. 

One must be aware of the limitations of every conceptual model. Insisting that your model is the only true one can only be a recipe for disaster. The God model, like any other model has its flaws. But it is an inevitable model which fills a specific psychological need in humans. One thing's for sure: it will be endlessly modified, recast and reframed to meet the changing needs of the times.