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The God paradigm: Reconciling religion with reality [1]
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Date: 2025-06-21
It’s a truism that there is no such thing as a stupid question, only a stupid answer. But there are questions that themselves reflect mainly on the one doing the asking, that suggest a narrow viewpoint. Such questions cannot be answered simply, as that would require accepting their poor framing. And one such question that we so often hear is this one: “Do you believe in God?”
Discussion or even mention of religion tends to draw strong responses. There are devout atheists who mock any mention of religion or a diety. And there are those who adhere to a moral framing within a religious context, and devote their lives to religion. The bulk of a liberal crowd may belong to one religion or another but is not doctrinaire or fanatical about it. And the growing number of “nones” indicates that traditional religion’s appeal is narrowing, at least among educated society.
The problem with the question is that it presupposes that there is some specific entity, some spiritual or even corporeal one, that the one doing the asking has in mind, called “God”, and one either does or doesn’t accept its existence. Yet there are many different ideas of what “God” may be. Even within the Jewish tradition, the nature of the diety — the one diety — has changed over time. A Reform Jewish rabbi described it as nine different, distinct Jewish theologies — notions of the nature of the one diety — from the past three millenia. You can find several of them in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible). Other religious traditions have many of their own. So then who is this “God” of whence one speaks?
Religious beliefs can be divided many ways, but one that can be applied across many different religious traditions is to divide beliefs into two specific categories. One is often called fundamentalist, and is mainly literalist about its scriptures. This tradition tends to assume a sentient, powerful diety (or pantheon) who intercedes on Earth. Such an intercessional diety must be feared and placated. Such a diety responds to prayer and sacrifice.
The other category takes the religious tradition as not literal or intercessional but as paradigmatic, its deity not necessarily a corporeal or supernatural thing (let alone a white man on a throne) but which, as a concept, is nonetheless useful. In this latter category, a diety is as real as any other paradigm, a memeplex, a set of ideas. Prayer to such a diety, then, is a social act, a way of preserving and learning from tradition, but not an actual petition for divine intercession.
Two pop culture references come to mind when I think about this, and how people raised to believe in an intercessional religion feel when they realize it isn’t real. One is from John Lennon, who so aptly sang, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” That carries a lot of truth: People in pain do tend to fall back on religion. Some hope for intercession, though others use religion to seek community and guidance. The other reference is Jim Morrison’s, who cried out, “You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!” That was his rejection of intercessionalism and what came along with it.
Intercessional religion can be harmful both to the individual believer and to society in general. It leads to war. It leads individuals to give up their own lives on behalf of a religious belief, and leads some to take the lives of others hoping that they will benefit in this life or, more typically, some next life.
On a smaller scale, it leads to self-harm such as relying on faith healing, and more recently to prosperity gospel, the grift wherein a preacher promises that “God” will make someone prosperous if they sacrifice from what little wealth they have by giving it to the preacher. It was kind of funny when Reverend Ike did it, though only in the cruel sense of laughing at others’ foolishness. It is tragic now that it is so normalized that the official White House faith advisor suggested that for $1000 she would make “seven blessings” on behalf of the donor, including “give you prosperity” and “take sickness away”.
Paradigmatic religion, in contrast, reconciles rationality with religious tradition. It does not demand faith, nor make promises. It does not assume the existence of something that a rational mind rightfully rejects. It accepts that thousands of years of human existence have taught us something, and that teaching is often framed through the paradigm of a diety, or dieties. Perhaps the ancients took them literally but that does not matter to us now; we can reframe the religious tradition as paradigmatic, learn from it what helps, and reject what doesn’t.
We can recognize that the relationship between the human and the diety is a two-way street: Humanity thus created God, but God likewise created what we know as humanity. Memes (not the sense of cartoons, but in the original sense, of ideas that propagate) shape those who carry them, as the diety memes themselves are shaped. This is real, just not corporeal. It doesn’t require superstition or faith; it’s just part of how people are. Intercession thus still happens, but not supernaturally, but by humans.
I consider myself a fully rational member of a 3000+ year old religious tradition. I accept that the ancients had wisdom; I don’t however accept their injunctions blindly. I am perfectly happy to engage in communal worship services, recognizing that no supernatural being is going to strike me down with lightning or disease if I don’t. I do not fear the diety, but I respect the teachings associated with or attributed, by tradition, to it. I reject fundamentalism and literalism and all of the harm that flows from them, and hope that more people can recognize the value of paradigmatic religion as a way to retain one’s heritage while being rational and moral. So it’s not whether you “believe in God” or not, but whether you accept that there are religious paradigms that may be called “God”. Of course there are — such paradigms exist whether you follow them or not.
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