272. God, defined

God : def­i­n­i­tion: A form of socially shared delu­sion imply­ing a sen­tient, omni­scient, omnipo­tent, non-human force which is nev­er­the­less con­cerned with human actions. Often used sub­con­sciously by indi­vid­u­als to avoid ego respon­si­bil­ity for cer­tain thoughts and actions. Used socially by power seek­ers as a proxy to val­i­date and enforce con­trol over the thoughts and behav­iours of oth­ers. Often a con­ve­nient metaphor or fig­ure of speech to indi­cate a total­ity or unseen force, and used as such even by those uncom­mit­ted to any reli­gion. As a soci­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non the com­plex God sym­bol has much in com­mon with other sym­bols of abso­lutist ide­ol­ogy (e.g. in mod­ern times, Com­mu­nism, Cap­i­tal­ism .. etc). Ide­o­log­i­cal sym­bol­ism, includ­ing the God delu­sion, is often defended vio­lently since it becomes entwined closely with feel­ings of per­sonal iden­tity and group iden­tity, as well as reflect­ing much shared cul­tural behav­iour. In many juris­dic­tions God/Ideological sym­bol­ism is con­structed into for­mal pro­vi­sions of com­mu­nity law and used to divide good (those who com­ply with the entailed beliefs and behav­iours) from bad (those who do no com­ply with the entailed beliefs and behav­iours). In all national and cul­tural juris­dic­tions large num­bers of prag­matic indi­vid­u­als have always remained silent in pri­vate rejec­tion of widely accepted God/Ideological belief and insti­tu­tional frame­works since for social and pro­fes­sional rea­sons a pub­lic chal­lenge would usu­ally yield lit­tle per­sonal advan­tage, but ensure sig­nif­i­cant per­sonal dis­ad­van­tages.