A mathematical definition of God

Reformulation 8/18/2022

For me, the word “God” is a variable, as in mathematics or computer science, that represents an unknown – the unknown prime mover. That unknown might be a single thing, or a set of things. The set might be small or very large.

As to the nature of that unknown, that is a theological question. Is God like what is described in the Bible? Does God have consciousness? Does God have intent? Does God care about me personally? Does God actively intervene in a creative, as opposed to mechanistic, way in the events of the world? When I have a mystical experience -- conscious contact, per step 11 -- is that a contact with an external God, or just an artifact of my neurology?

These theological questions, and their answers, do not form part of my definition of “God." I do not feel compelled to adopt the definitions of self appointed experts. I do not see how the terms “exist" or “don’t exist" relate to my definition as formulated.

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I put this on my AT&T website in 2001, but that website was taken down

A MATHEMATICAL DEFINITION OF GOD

11/11/01

This definition will require the reader to understand: What is a variable?  What is a mathematical definition?  What is a set?  Also, I will use the symbol “≡”  to mean “is defined as.”  If you did not do much math, particularly no college math, you probably won’t understand the following discussion.

For each person there is a list of questions, unanswerable questions, God-defining questions.  For each person, this list will be different.  Some examples of these questions follow. 

X­₁≡ Why are we here?

X₂≡ Why is there gravity?

X₃≡ Why is it wrong to kill another person in cold blood?

•

•

•

•

and so forth.  In this list, each question is assigned a variable which represents the answer to the question.

I then define God as follows:

GOD ≡ {X₁, X₂, X₃, …}

I believe that under this definition no one can say that GOD does not exist, nor that GOD is more than one thing.

There may be other questions, e.g.

©      Does GOD have consciousness?  

©      Is GOD a being?  (To which one might reply, “What is a being[1]?”) 

©      Does GOD care about us? 

©      Does GOD have gender? 

©      Does it make sense to define subsets of GOD relating to particular sub-characteristics, e.g. Shiva, Venus, etc.? 

These are interesting questions, which merit much discussion; however, I do not propose any answers to those questions.  I only put forth this basic definition, so that we may stop arguing about whether GOD exists and rather discuss what we think GOD is like, which I find much more interesting.

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reformulation 250707 -- similar to 2022

Thus the word "God" is a variable, like the letter X in algebra.  It represents an unknown: an unknown prime mover, an unknown basic nature of the universe, an unknown source of moral law; an unknown cause of that sense of presence that I feel.

I personally believe that we do not have the ability to understand God.  Different people have different perceptions -- but no perception, no description is complete.  I see with reference to this the traditional Jewish belief that the name of God is unpronounceable, not only forbidden, but also impossible.  The Tao Te Ching says that the Tao which can be named is not the true Tao.

I've read that research on the differences between atheists and believers.  Atheists have been found to be neurologically different from  believers.  I suppose that they must not have that impression of the presence of the divine that I feel.

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[1] It is interesting that in one Supreme Court case, the Court defined religion as belief in a Supreme Being, but that really begs the question.  What does one mean by a “being?”

comments about non-theism in program

Some comments I wrote about a draft pamphlet about non-theist recovery in SLAA

First I referred to my non-theist affirmations

 https://annalisse-mayer.blogspot.com/2023/09/proposed-secular-affirmations-for-non.html

Then I sent these remarks:

SLAA was not my first program.  OA was.

After joining OA, I had some dramatic emotional mystical experiences.  I had dim visions, not exactly like hallucinations, but transformative images in my mind, which I felt came from HP. 

I also had peculiar sensations in my brain. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of a limb falling asleep.  Then when sensation comes back, for me, it often feels like fluid flowing into the limb.  I had a sensation like that in my brain.  A feeling of fluid flowing — circulation returning.

Something like this happened to Bill W, the founder of AA.  He saw a flash of light.  He felt wind blowing on his face.

I have been interested in the research on ketamine, which induces hallucinations — something a bit like the mystical experiences I had after joining OA.  

I have been abstinent in OA for 20 years.  I absolutely believe that these mystical experiences I had changed my brain, neurologically, and allowed me to become & stay abstinent.  

There has been some research on what happens in the brain during ketamine hallucinations — also what happens in the brain during prayer and meditation.  

Ketamine researchers seem to feel that the drug actually somehow erases patterns in the brain and rearranges things into new patterns. https://360info.org/ketamine-helps-change-thinking-patterns-in-people-with-treatment-resistant-depression/

Dr Jung in the AA Big Book p. 27 

“Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences.

To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.”

This is very much the way researchers describe the effect of ketamine on the brain. 

I have not had such dramatic experiences in SLAA as I had in OA, so my recovery hasn’t been as good, I feel.  Also, my OA program was directed to stopping something — compulsive Overeating—while my SLAA program, directed at sexual & emotional anorexia, is more oriented towards starting something.  But also I have huge step 2 problems in SLAA.  I wonder if my desire for a relationship is selfish, whether it’s wrong to pray for it.  I wonder if HP maybe doesn’t want me to have a relationship.  Maybe I should surrender to that.

Here is a blog I wrote, under a different pseudonym, in 2012 about some of the research I was reading about then and how it related to my recovery. https://annalisse-mayer.blogspot.com/2012/07/musings-on-neurology-of-12-step.html

In any case, tho, with respect to the spiritual experiences I have had, I have no idea whether they come from an external God, or whether they are just an interesting neurological phenomena.  I have read that atheists do tend to have different neurology from religionists, so they possibly cannot have mystical experiences.

Yet, I feel that an explanation of program that does not mention this type of experience is not giving the whole picture.  I have spoken with several people in program who, like me, traced their recoveries to mystical experiences.  

moving technical notes from post about cindy

 

The only problem with this image is that the angels look too serious, but when I put in the word "smiling" I got angels that looked like children, which I didn't like so much, either.  Bing image creator can be very frustrating.

I did this with Gimp, which was also frustrating.  I could not put the whole text into a text box, so I did the following;

1) found a free celtic font online

2) imported the font into my mac fontbook app

3) created a word document with the prayer in that font with a cream color background

4) exported the text into pdf

5) converted the pdf text into the best quality jpg with 600 dots per inche

6) imported the jpg image into a separate Gimp file (because it didn't work inside the other file.  I kept getting blurry letters)

7) added an alpha channel to the layer

8) deleted all pixels that weren't orange

9) exported a png file with transparency

10) pasted the png file into the file with the picture

11) shrank the text

12) created a cream color background layer behind the letters

13) cut out the gibberish in the picture

14) put the picture in the top layer

Memorial prayer for my cousin, Cindy, who passed last night

3/26/25

She was very different from me politically and religiously, but I liked her anyway

Cindy

May you get the salvation that you worked so hard for in life

Believing things I do not believe

But believing them sincerely

I hope you get what you worked for

May you find your lost family members in the afterlife

May we all find each other there

Even though I do not believe it is so

I can still pray it is so.

May choruses of smiling angels serenade you to your eternal home

May you lie upon velvet cushions with shining, gold braids

May you eat the sweetest of fruits

May you sprout beautiful, huge, iridescent wings and fly through gentle, puffy clouds.

May you learn to play ethereal music on the harp

May handsome centaurs bow to you and tell you words of great wisdom

May adorable little birds sing you sweet songs

And bring you garlands of flowers in their beaks

May those flowers never fade, but instead stay fresh forever all about you

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Addendum: May 15, 2025

I don’t know why I keep thinking about Cindy . I didn’t know her very well. I only saw her occasionally at family events – and sometimes on Facebook. She was the wife of my blood cousin. They were the cousins I was most in conflict with. The husband teased me as a child. they were fairly far away. Their religion and politics were different from mine. He unfriended me on Facebook, but she didn't.

I once asked her to pray for my niece, when my niece was in the hospital, because I knew she was in a very large church and maybe could get lots of people to pray for my niece. this was not supposed to be public knowledge, that my niece was in the hospital. My brother‘s family doesn’t believe in God. I’m not sure if prayer really makes a difference outside of our heads. I think it’s very good for behavior modification as in 12 step programs. So I thought it was worth a chance to have a lot of people praying for my niece.

Yesterday, I was imagining myself speaking at her funeral. There was a funeral near her home shortly after her death. There will be a second one in our vacation community. The speech went as follows:

I first met Cindy, as I recall, at her wedding to my cousin – a pretty, young, happy bride. I didn’t see her very often… A few family events… Posts on Facebook. 

I remember the wedding, in a church. My cousin, who is an evangelical Christian, had his arms raised over his head, praising God, which is something other people in our family generally didn’t do. I was sitting in the audience, in pews, with other members of our family.  Maybe that was the wedding where we had to be in the back, because my autistic son couldn't tolerate organ music -- tho we put hearing protectors on him that time, I think, so he was able to stay.

It never occurred to me that someday a lifetime would’ve passed, that she would’ve had children, grandchildren – possibly great-grandchildren? And, I think, a career – possibly in education?  And, then, seemingly in a flash, I would be sitting in another church, in pews with my family, and it would be her funeral. 

 

The wedding doesn’t seem so very long ago. It doesn’t seem so very long ago that she was that young, happy, pretty bride — sort of perky, with a lot of spirit. 

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This wasn’t part of the fantasy speech, but I’m thinking it:

Her mother didn’t look very well at the time. Cindy hadn’t been looking well recently. I never mentioned it. I remember her face changed. My father’s face changed when he had cancer. We didn’t realize until later that the changing in his face reflected the cancer inside his body, before it was diagnosed. It never occurred to me that the change in Cindy‘s face meant that she might have undiagnosed cancer. 

She wasn’t that old. I think she may have been over seventy, but just barely. Perhaps I should’ve warned her.

Is that it?  Do I feel guilty?  Is that why I keep thinking about her?

I asked Bing image creator to create images of angels with harps and a rainbow.

I tried putting the whole poem into Bing image creator.  Then I got  images with good looking gibberish similar to my prayer.  So I took one of those images, deleted the gibberish, and put in my prayer.

Use of mnemonic acronyms in Overeaters Anonymous

  

The image shows a mnemonic acronym that I learned from other fellows in the Overeaters Anonymous [OA] program. The text is:

• B— binge
• I —  I’m
• N — not
• G —good 
• E —enough 

The idea is that negative self talk is a character defect that can result in overeating. 

There are several problems with this image:

1. Mnemonic acronyms can’t be readily translated into other languages 
2. OA World Service [aka WSO] doesn’t want us to use acronyms in general.
3. Images don’t translate automatically on the VR website, so we prefer text.

Still, I find that this sort of acronym is very useful for people.

I have been in text meetings online, where they used acronyms, such as COE for compulsive overeater. That other type of acronym is very useful for saving time, but confusing for newcomers. In fact, that meeting had a whole glossary of acronyms that attenders were supposed to learn in order to attend the meeting. I can understand why World Service felt that these acronyms were confusing for people, and therefore should be avoided.

Nevertheless, I find that mnemonic acronyms, as in the graphic above, can be very useful. My first sponsor loved acronyms and slogans. Many slogans also have puns or wordplay in them that don’t translate well.

Even though World Service doesn’t like acronyms, I feel that it would be nice to make some use of mnemonic acronyms. It might be fun to challenge the international community to see if they could come up with something similar in their own language.

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Working on some more images

Gloomy thoughts about Trump destroying our institutions

This started out as a brief dream as I was falling asleep

Closing down a building

It’s been regularly closed every day for years, at least on weekdays

The closing is no different this time

Except it won’t be opened again

The locks that are now freshly oiled, will  corrode and may not be able to be opened again

The shades over the windows will deteriorate in the sun

The roof, freshly patched, will develop holes

The papers out on the desks, now all current, will gradually become antiques

The people leaving today do not know for sure that this will happen

they hope they will return in a few days

but they do not know

A man touches a doorknob as he leaves

Thinking he will never touch it again

It’s a working doorknob now

But likely the next time someone comes through

it will be too old to use

or the door may have fallen off its hinges

The corridors, up until now filled with busy people, working

Will now be empty

There may be mice and spiders, at least for a while

There is still food in some of the desks

And in the  refrigerators on each floor

People don’t have time to get it out

The people hope they will be back in a few days to eat it

But they won’t  and the mice will eat what is left

A feral cat lurks in the shadows behind the building

He will get to eat some of the mice

He won’t be there long, though.  

He’s been raiding the garbage and there won’t be fresh garbage

The displaced people go back to homes that they can no longer afford to pay rent on

The homes will be abandoned too 

As the city turns into a ghost town

There is no future