“There is a deadly serious problem in our minds, as a species. It goes something like this. Under certain kinds of pressures, our minds apparently ‘assemble a god’. This god is not like whatever god may or may not exist beyond our stories. It -is- like the god of our stories, which is to say, confusing, hateful, admonitory, damning, belligerent, hubristic, jealous, and ‘a lot about language, and voices in the head’.

And you can encounter this. In fact, the direct experience of this ‘admonitory deity’ can actually be triggered by a combination of stress and programming, or, even just as a result of suffering certain forms of stress and abuse, or neglect.

Bluntly, this isn’t a god. This is (approximately) the -equipment we might use to otherwise investigate these matters- deciding to masquerade as what we are seeking with it. That is, approximately, a part of our own personal and social mind(s) goes mad, comes back a god, and demands we obey it. And it can do some miracles, believe me, but they aren’t the sort we are hoping for, and if we follow that ersatz deity it will consume our minds, cultures, bodies, future, and world.

So what we have is confusing. We have the possibility of some kind of accessible universal being/intelligence, and bizarre, weaponized cartoons of a sky monster made in the image of the shadows of our psyche.

We haven’t met the former yet, the latter has ten million books and 2 billion hearts. Nearly all human effort directed ‘toward god’ is actually in the service of the monster. If the situation were not so agonizing and horrific, it would comprise high comedy. But we must resolve it, because the people who serve the monster are demanding our membership in their agendas, and, worse still, they think they are serving god, who I say to you, remains largely undiscovered among the people of the books.”

— wonder scout O12