“Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer”, said Voltaire, in 1768. ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’ Voltaire’s argument was that belief in the existence of a supreme being was essential to the functioning of society and as a deterrent to criminal activity even in the absence of policing.
Pascal created a famous wager to work out whether or not to believe in God. Infinite value (if God exists) and finite punishment (if she doesn’t) for believing in god trumps infinite punishment and finite value correspondingly for non-believers, in his argument. It made probabilistic sense to believe in God, he concluded.
Yuval Harari takes a rational view to the evolution of God. In the beginning we worshipped gods as the arbiters of natural phenomenon which we could not understand or control. Appeasing gods was an attempt to escape being struck by lightening or avoiding floods, storms and other dangers. As our understanding of natural phenomenon grew, gods became symbols of abstractions — war, love, beauty, and so on. It was always in the interest of the religious elite to create and nourish the idea of gods and deities.
Richard Dawkins goes to war against religion in the God Delusion — where he argues against the existence of God. In an argument specifically aimed at current monotheistic religions, he says “We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
Stephen Fry went even further and when asked what he would say to God, replied “I’d say, ‘bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I would say.”
My personal view is that we have an unanswered question about ‘why the universe was created’ and ‘what was there before big bang?’ Science has been knocking on the doors of this question but we don’t have answers yet. And while I don’t believe in the anthropomorphic versions of gods that are sold to most of us from childhood, I’m open to being influenced by the idea of a grand design that we haven’t understood yet.
Being born in India in a largely liberal Hindu environment meant that we celebrated Christmas and also respectful of Muslim and Jewish festivals almost as an extension of the vastly diverse and divergent Hindu faith. There were already so many gods, festivals, rituals, events, and beliefs within what we understood of Hinduism, that all other religions felt like further branches on a tree of religious evolution. Different but connected. Also the plethora of deities in Hinduism has been facetiously referred to in some discussions I’ve been in as ‘Object oriented gods’, taking a phrase from software development. Rather than a single monotheistic God, we have gods with specific powers and functions, that can be invoked for specific needs — the rain God in droughts, and the God of war when enemies were at the gate, for example. And I’ve certainly heard Christmas referred to as ‘Santa Puja’ on the streets of Kolkata.
As I’ve grown older, I look more objectively at religion now. I have a far more cynical view of practicing religions. I know that organised religion weaponised the idea of God and has also became deeply political and obsessed with power since the middle ages, and continues till today. For their part, politicians tactically invoke religion for their means. Religious leaders and politicians use their nexus with each other to extend their power. And that ‘religious’ beliefs invariably tend to repress the growth of knowledge and questioning, because faith rather than data drives religious principles. And finally that political religion is largely a divisive force in society.
The world today is more complex than ever before and it feels like the complexity itself is increasing at an exponential scale. Most people struggle to comprehend the nuanced back story of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the impact of NATO and Gorbachev. Or the creation and spread of Covid19, or how mRNA vaccines work. Or how generative AI creates plausible answers to questions. This is fertile ground for religion and conspiracy creators. This is why the Harari view of religion is enjoying a Frankenstein-esque rebirth. Faced with complex phenomena, humans have always reached for simple (usually wrong) answers. Where this would once be the envisioning of gods and deities who controlled the phenomena we didn’t understand — for example diseases or earthquakes, today we have conspiracy theories. The logic is the same, a simple though incorrect answer often takes root because the truth is complex and beyond the intellectual reach of many people. So 5G is accused of aiding the spread of Coronavirus and mRNA vaccines are decried as a means of psychological control and coercion by the government. Some days I actually think that God and religion may well be forces for good if they can give people simple and positive guidelines to live life by.
Sadly it never stops there. And the idea of god continues to be an alluring one for many. And as Voltaire argued, even if we had to invent a god, it might be worthwhile. What properties would such a god have? What properties does God have today?
Let’s start with a few which most people would agree with irrespective of faith.
(1) Omnipotence: god tends to be all powerful whichever religion you believe in. Although she seems to use her powers selectively rather than for universal good. All powerful but non-meddling.
(2) Omnipresent: god is everywhere. Although I’ve always been mystified that we still need temples and churches.
(3) Omniscient: God sees everything. No act is ever performed beyond the eyes of god.
(4) Indestructible / Immortal — clearly god is indestructible and immortal — although there are some Hindu deities who are known to have been mortal in mythology.
Now to some less universal characteristics:
(5) Inconsistent / Complex: gods can be capricious — especially in polytheistic religions — prone to occasional spikes of jealousy or outbursts — gods can suffer outages too.
(6) Differently viewed — depending on your faith, you might see other gods in different light. Even within a religion different sects can have differing views of the characteristics or primacy of certain gods.
(7) Distributed — is god a singular entity? Are there many gods? Are they all incarnations of the same god? Is god distributed or federated?
As to the truly debatable ones:
(8) Benevolence: this is a big one — clearly god isn’t universally benevolent — there’s just too much suffering. Stephen Fry can tell you more. Though we’d like it if it were so.
(9) Fairness — assuming capitalism too is part of god’s plan, god clearly isn’t always fair. There’s an huge disparity in the distribution of wealth, but also of happiness, luck, opportunity, misfortune — and it doesn’t actually even out. Certainly not within one life span. We would have to conclude that god isn’t fair, or the gods aren’t fair. Either it is by design, or we have to revisit the idea of omnipotence.
Does any group of individuals have agency in matters of god? Can anybody influence god more or less? Who does god support in a war? Bob Dylan in his song ‘With God on Our Side’ asked a couple of interesting questions about if and when God takes side:
Through many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side
(10) Justice — Forgiving vs score-keeping : is god just? Often but not always. Miscreants are not always brought to book, and often not in time. is god forgiving? And how does that square off against justice? If god forgives everything, how can god be just? In Hinduism we have the idea of Chitragupta, the ultimate accountant who has entries of all your good and bad deeds. Like a universal Santa Claus — he’s always noting down who’s naughty and who’s nice.
There are of course other features of our humanoid gods — most of them are presented as super-heroes (Marvel agrees) and occasionally anti-heroes. This is usually more true of polytheistic cultures where gods have special powers but are also fallible, versus the one supreme deity.
Apply Within
If that’s a useful starting list for god’s properties as we know them, it’s worth thinking about how we might construct a god that can aspire to all of these properties. Or where we might find candidates for such a daunting job description. Yuval Harari’s argument in Homo Deus is that humans are trying to use technology to become gods. I want to suggest instead that technology is in fact the god of our times. Let’s go through our list:
(1) Omnipotence: technology is increasingly achieving omnipotence. It’s certainly closer than anything else. It’s curing cancer and exploring the universe. Can it stop wars or earthquakes? Not yet, but on recent evidence there’s no sign that God can (or wants to) either.
(2) Omnipresent: all of us see and know this today. Technology has seeped into every part of our lives — our homes, our cars, our conversations, our shops, our schools and hospitals. We carry technology with us wherever we go. You might even feel that whether or not you feel the presence of God you always feel the presence of technology.
(3) Omniscient: this is definitely true — consider a simple example. Every time we drive over the speed limit or park where we aren’t supposed to, we are breaking the law. But we do it sometimes knowing we won’t get caught. This is a constant game of hide and seek we play against traffic enforcement. But actually, every car today is connected and has computers on board and knows exactly what speed it’s going at. Technology knows and sees this. Geolocation enables accurate knowledge of exactly where your car is so technology knows when you’ve parked illegally.
It’s a particularly interesting point as to whether a machine knowing and taking decisions with no human intervention is still a concern for privacy and intrusion. But the candidature of technology to be our new God is definitely driven by its omnipresence and omniscience. Whether you had an affair, or skipped work to lie in bed all day watching TV, technology knows.
(4) Indestructible / Immortal — technology as an abstraction is obviously indestructable. You can break a phone as you can an idol or a church but you can’t destroy technology.
(5) Inconsistent / Complex: technology is definitely both complex and inconsistent. It works in different ways, not always well, and can occasionally let us down. It has not yet resulted in the scale of losses that we can ascribe to acts of god but as it becomes more and more powerful, this is not beyond the realm of possibility. In coming years, when we run critical infrastructure on technology this will get tested for sure.
(6) Differently viewed — this is easy, for every person who doesn’t believe in god, there are people who don’t believe in the power of technology. For every my God vs your God debate, there is a similar tribal behaviour over technology — it hasn’t led to wars and destruction yet though.
(7) Distributed — Clearly technology works quite well as a distributed entity. In fact the reason for the power of tech is that it can simultaneously be distributed and aggregated. Every smartphone, sensor, and surveillance camera are the eyes and ears of technology. You could argue that technology isn’t one thing, but who’s to say that god is?
(8) Benevolence: Technology as we know it today is largely controlled by humans. As long as this is the case, we can argue that it doesn’t compare with the properties we need from a god. But we are on the cusp of creating intelligent systems that can run significantly large decision making environments with little or no human involvement. When we get to that stage, we will have reason to evaluate the ‘benevolence’ of the system or of technology as distinct from humans.
(9) Fairness — this is going to be one of the most discussed areas of tech over the next 10 years. As we cede more complex decision making to technology we will be asking ourselves more and more whether technology as a whole, as well as every individual piece of technology is actually fair. Will technology do better than the ‘God’ we know today? To be clear, God’s record on fairness is spotty so far. So it’s arguably a low bar. Amongst all of God’s known properties, fairness, justice, and benevolence are probably the most debatable.
(10) Justice — Forgiving vs score-keeping: technology as yet doesn’t act as judge and jury, so this might be a premature question. We don’t yet require technology to sit in judgement. God’s justice system is not particularly well understood by us, but technology’s ability to consider vasts amounts of data will make it better than human justice models. And technology is definitely an excellent score keeper.
Overall therefore technology has a good resume when it comes to applying for the job of a God should we need to invent the role. It’s worth noting that technology’s powers are if anything on the rise, and year on year it will likely get more suitable. You might pass on giving it the job for now, but it’s entirely likely that in the coming years, you will end up trusting technology as a supreme being as devoutly as you follow God today.
Other reading
God And Technology — Technology In Search Of God’s Existence !
