'God' is the mean opinion of your tribe

I reckon this &quot;shower thought&quot; could use some workshopping. Religious &#x2F; metaphysical &#x2F; supernatural figures almost by definition don&#x27;t represent the typical opinions of adherents, they being supernatural and all. Perhaps there is a case to be made that they are manifestations of moral aspirations or &#x27;superego&#x27; commonalities but it might be hard to make a case that those are the same as mean opinion. Further, concepts of god are conserved concepts passed down from previous generations, so if they represent mean anything they are a lagged moving average mean with a lot of smoothing applied. In even simple societies there are typically some people closer to the god than others, and who interpret or get a greater say (i.e. priest or shaman) on what the nature of god is, so the mean would also be strongly weighted.<p>Insofar as it is true as written in that you are a dissident if you are in the minority in religious belief, I suppose that&#x27;s self evident.

&gt; Given a person, define “God” to be the mean opinion vector, taken over the members of this person’s tribe.<p>Most people on the planet would have an opinion that “having more money” is a good thing. Does this mean money is god for most people? Money has the ability to bring power, happiness, peace of mind. It also has the ability to bring suffering, anxiety, worry. All these are things that happen to people who believe in a god or multiple gods.<p>Instead of looking for shared opinions, it may be better to look at the human condition and the sheer uncertainty of bad events and good events. That things can be, and frequently are, out of our control is what makes people create gods as a support system.

I think God represents the unknown instead of a specific person. God is what is beyond the universe, and no one has any idea what that is or where the universe came from. So we supplant that absence with a named deity.

Mean but heavily weighted towards the opinions of the powerful and influential

Define the word tribe with modern terms related to this article