God Concept

The Fractal Mind

Your belief system creates a mental model of the world that forms the lens through which your life is viewed. This has traditionally been organized around the concept of "god", but there are many possible forms it can take.

Forming a God Concept

Belief in god or religion creates a self-organizing psychological concept in the mind of the believer. Since god is the creator of all things, a part of all things, or even in control of everything in the universe, the believer is able to associate god with every aspect of their life. Their understanding of what god is colors their view of how every part of the universe works and why everything happens in their lives. It becomes a meme that connects to every part of the brain.

Benefits to the Believer

Christian omnibenevolence mantra

This confers many psychological benefits to the believer. Things that are painful or arbitrary can be justified as being part of "god's plan", helping to alleviate questions of "why?" that have no answer and can lead the mind into spirals of depression.

Seeing god as the ultimate source of goodness links the god concept to the brain's pleasure centers, releasing pleasurable neurotransmitters each time you think about god. And since god is part of everything, the adept believer can trigger that pleasure response in any situation, even the most dire.

Memory works by association. All memories are encoded through their associations with earlier memories and ideas. The god concept assists with memory and understanding by creating a universal pegboard on which to hang new information.

The Form Matters Less Than The Function

But the important thing is to have a concept of universal goodness, not the particular cultural form it takes. It can also be secular and not religious. Confusion over this fact leads to increasing strife in a global society where we are constantly confronted by dissimilar beliefs. And when science has become the primary source of truth, the traditional god concepts become harder and harder for each new generation to adopt.

The Fractal Universe God Concept

God is infinite.

metaculture uses the fractal organizational symmetry of the universe as a scientific metaphor for the god concept. The universe is self-organizing, it has self-similar patterns that repeat themselves from the subatomic level all the way to supergalaxies, it conforms to the rules of logic, it's infinitely complex but based on a few simple rules.[1] Seeing the universe as one big fractal pattern helps make sense of the rational order of the scientific universe while imbuing it with the beauty and wonder that people have come to expect from their spirituality.

Hypertext representation of associating god/the universe with everything

Other Modern God Concepts

As our society becomes more diverse and we no longer grow up knowing only people who believe in the same religion, and science seems to have an explanation for everything that once was god's domain, it becomes increasingly difficult to construct a proper god concept based on traditional religion and scripture. Since our brain insists upon forming connections in order to try to make sense out of the world, if it is not given an accurate model it will form an inaccurate one.

The desire to form the god concept is strong. Our brains naturally look for connections and associations. If the right pattern cannot be found, the wrong one will be (see Apophenia). Here is an diagram of a Qanon-based god concept.

Conspiracy Theories

The desire to connect all of the randomness of the world and all the forces that seem to be arrayed against our personal fulfillment as humans leads many down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Social media algorithms have not helped this either.

The Devil

Help the poor souls who envision a wrathful god for their existence must truly be hell. Focusing only on the evils of the world and the pain that we naturally wish to avoid can turn the tables on god, triggering fear and anxiety everywhere. The devil isn’t the instrument of god’s vengeance, it’s the belief in a vengeful god.

Graphic Novels

Superheroes are basically a modern polytheistic mythology, with exciting and fantastical stories that kids enjoy, and morality tales of good triumphing over evil. As with most polytheistic theologies, it becomes increasingly hard to keep track of what is canon and what is not, the stories start to get confusing as new authors contradict the old, and it relies too heavily on CGI instead of well-constructed storylines.

Jordan Peterson and the Monosphere

Since progressives aren't doing a good job at presenting their ideas in a way that is easily consumed by young men, and often seem to frame things in a way that is specifically designed to turn off the adolescent male mind, the void has been filled by the right-wing faux philosophy of Jordan Peterson and manosphere grifters like Andrew Tate. They peddle easy, hierarchical belief systems that make lonely, depressed young men feel like they are "alphas", and promote a traditional worldview that lends itself easily to misogyny and racism. They create a god concept that sees everything in terms of dominance hierarchies and competition, in a way that merges covert fundamentalism with libertarian capitalism. 'Tis a scary god.

Trauma and Disorder

An increasingly popular god concept in the information age is trauma and mental disorders. By identifying some formative trauma that has led to post-traumatic stress, or identifying one's personality with disorders like depression, OCD, bipolar, etc., these can become associated with an increasing number of trigger stimuli, until the whole world is full of fear and anxiety and pain. It's not a good god, but it is the chosen god of many people. Of course, since free will doesn't exist, it just means we have a really terrible and traumatizing culture that leads people to believe in a trauma god over an omnibenevolent one.

Making Sure God is Good

Islamic omnibenevolence mantra

While universality is universal, positivity requires mindfulness. The believer must tell themselves that god is good over and over like a mantra in order to reinforce the link between the universe and those happy brain chemicals.

This is built into many traditional rituals, prayers, and mediations. For example in Arabic culture, Allahu Akbar ("god is the greatest") is used throughout everyday conversation. These can be referred to as "omnibenevolence mantras".

By demonstrating the fact that one can turn their brain into an automatic generator of happiness by adopting a god concept and associating it all the good things we seek in life, the pursuit of goodness, wonder, and altruism becomes the greatest act of selfishness one can make. Science says pick a happy god if you want to be a happy human.

From Concept to Reflex

Understanding the concept of a universal god intellectually is only the first step. Each time you look at some object in nature, observe its fractal form, and think about the wonder of the universe, you build the neural pathway that forms the god concept. After several repetitions it gets easy. After putting in your "10,000 hours" it becomes second nature, a reflex reaction that happens without thinking about it.

What starts as an intellectual pursuit becomes automatic mindfulness, where the reactivity of our habitual response is channeled away from emotions like anger or fear, and towards presence, appreciation, and enjoyment of each moment. When anything you experience reminds you of the wonder of the universe, negative reactions are minimized and the mind is free to focus.

It's Basically the Holy Spirit

The Fractal, the Atom, and the Holy Brain

In the Christian Trinity, the god concept is represented by the Holy Spirit. See the Sierpinski Trinity for a detailed analysis of how the Holy Spirit is an allegory for the god concept.

The Evolving God Concept

As our knowledge of the universe advances through the ages, we are able to conceive of a god that is "more generalized" than the ones that came before it. This is similar to how our theories in science become more generally applicable. Newton explained large objects, Einstein generalized it to really fast ones, and quantum mechanics generalized it to tiny ones. Eventually a theory of everything will create a single framework for understanding all of these.

Knowledge of god proceeds the same way. We started with Animism where everything had its own individual spirit. Eventually these were formed into categories with Polytheism and finally generalized to a single god with Monotheism. The next step is to create a generalized theory of science and spirituality that resolves all of the monotheistic traditions as well as science into a single, Universalist, unified theory of everything. metaculture refers to this theory, whatever form it ends up taking.

This is very similar to the concept of Progressive Revelation in the Bahá’í tradition.

Conclusion

Using the fractal god concept, metaculture creates a solid mental framework for understanding the universe and triggering universal positivity while eliminating the cognitive dissonance required to hold supernatural belief systems in an age of science, as well as the dissonance required to deny the inner truths of our traditions.

It generalizes the concepts of science, the universe, morality and spirituality into a single working theory, allowing the expansion of the god concept into further reaches of the brain and increasing its effectiveness.

This hypothesis is being proposed based on conclusions drawn from a wide range of scientific and spiritual literature, rather than any specific established theory. It is definitely subject to confirmation through experiment. If for some reason future evidence disproves this, or provides a better framework for understanding the mental health effects of belief in god, then this page can be edited.

What if God Was One of Us?

For a Pantheist, god is all of us, not just one of us.

These videos detail the social value of participation in organized religion, which is the aspect of the impact that belief in god has on happiness that science has been able to study so far.

Why Are Religious People Healthier and Happier?

Science, Faith, and Happiness

Not sure why the thumbnails for these videos are so similar. Maybe it's a 90s thing.

Joan Osborne - One of Us

Tori Amos - God