How God became a user-manual

By Bodhangkur

 

On the Evolution of the Almighty as a Guide-and-Control System

 

Let’s be honest.
If aliens ever visited Earth and flipped through our sacred texts, they would not say:

“Ah yes, profound spiritual wisdom!”

They would say:

“Oh look, these people wrote operating manuals for their psychological software—
and then took the manuals literally.”

Welcome to humanity’s 3-phase God Development Program, or GDP (pun intended), in which God gradually evolves from an angry cosmic dad, to a cosmic dad with mood swings, to a cosmic absence, and finally to you.

Yes, you.
You are God.
(But don’t panic: you’re still terrible at it.)

So, grab a beverage, preferably something holy like coffee, and let’s begin.

 

1. PHASE 1: The Angry Sky-Father (a.k.a. God-as-External-Police)

This is the stage where early humans looked at thunder, earthquakes, and famine and concluded:

“We need a bigger stick.”

Thus was born External Regulator God:

·         He’s angry.

·         He’s jealous.

·         He’s watching you.

·         He hates shellfish.

·         And he keeps sending memos through prophets who mysteriously sound like local tribal elders.

Think of this God as:

The original strict parent.

“Because I said so” = divine revelation.

In this phase, the world is dangerous, food is scarce, and half the tribe is trying to kill the other half.
So you outsource behavioural control to the sky.

God becomes your ancient father yelling from the porch, except with more plagues.

Political traction: extremely high.
Self-development flexibility: about as low as a drunk snake.

 

2. PHASE 2: The Teenage God Crisis

(a.k.a. “God Is Within You Except When He Isn’t”)

Humans evolve a little, start farming, invent money, invent problems, invent therapy, and BAM—

A new theological model arrives: Hybrid Regulation God.

This is God as both:

·         External boss and

·         Internal guilt-app

The upgrade was invented by St Paul, who basically said:

“The flesh is evil.
God is good.
You are stuck in the middle.
Good luck with that.”

Thus humanity entered the age of:

·         flesh-hate

·         spirit-love

·         guilt

·         endless confession

·         endless backsliding

·         and a very large religious industry devoted to managing the emotional ping-pong.

This is adolescence in cosmic form.
External rules still exist, but now you’re expected to yell at yourself too.

It’s like having:

Two parents, except one of them lives in your skull full-time.

Political traction: medium-high.
Self-development flexibility: frequently overwhelmed by guilt.

 

3. PHASE 3: God Moves Out and Leaves You the House

(a.k.a. Internal Regulator God)

Then came the mystics, the philosophers, and that one guy in India who sat under a tree and said:

“Actually… you are That.”

This is the Internal Regulator Era, when God finally stops being a cosmic landlord and becomes:

The WiFi signal (NI as against AI) inside your being.

Upanishads, Sufis, Eckhart, Rumi, and eventually Spinoza all agree:

·         God is everywhere

·         which is identical to saying

·         God is nowhere in particular

·         which is identical to saying

·         please sit still and stop annoying people

This phase is basically adulthood:

You regulate yourself because no one else cares enough to do it for you.

Political traction: zero.
Self-development flexibility: unlimited (unless you join a monastery, then highly limited).

Elites hate this form of God because you can’t use it to boss people around.
Try running a government on “everyone is God.”
You’ll get five minutes of bliss and then someone steals the treasury.

 

4. Why All This Happened:

(Or, The Universe Is Random and We Are Making It Up As We Go Along)**

Humans are born confused, stay confused, and reproduce confusion efficiently.
But the Universe has rules, energy quanta, stochastic constraints, and other fancy things.

So to navigate life, we invent:

·         Cosmic parents

·         Cosmic therapists

·         Cosmic us

Depending on our survival context, we choose the regulatory software that keeps us alive the longest.

God is not a Being.
God is a behavioural interface with a celestial user manual.

Some cultures need the strict version.
Some need the guilt version.
Some need the psychedelic-philosopher-poet version.

But every culture that survives is “mature” in the Darwinian sense:

It works well enough not to get eaten or conquered immediately.

 

5. The Whole Thing in One Summary Sentence

Humanity evolved three Gods—
the Dad, the Dad+Guilt, and the Invisible Inner WiFi
because different problems require different versions of cosmic customer support.

 

6. So Where Are We Now?

We are in Phase 3.5:

Internal Regulator God with Occasional Regression To Phase 1 For Political Reasons.

Half the planet is doing yoga, mindfulness, and quoting Rumi.
The other half is still yelling:
“Because God said so!”

And some people (Finn) have realised that God was actually the Universal Procedure all along, quietly iterating the cosmos while we were busy arguing about dietary laws.

 

7. Final Thought

If the evolution of God proves anything, it is this:

We keep upgrading the cosmic software to match our survival strategies.

The only constant is that every version eventually crashes,
except the universal one:

Procedure Monism 1.0 (never updated, never needs to be).

 

The evolution of the belief in GOD as regulatory technology

 

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