Do I believe in God?

Totally depends how we’re defining God.

A low-level definition for me would be that God is a word we can use to describe any ultimate reality or truth that can’t be comprehended by the intelligence of the human mind because it ‘exists’ beyond it (and so is reliant on faith rather than scientific evidence).

By that definition, I absolutely believe in God. (I talk more about the origins of this belief here.)

Going higher-level, we might use a definition of God being a separate entity. A model of a human-like but non-human superior being who serves as creator, judge, and so on. Let’s call this A.

This is the definition that might typically be taught in religions like Christianity and Judaism, and the one I was brought up being told was true.

I personally find more truth and value in a definition of God as something closer to the universe in itself. Our felt experience of the joy of the universe when unimpeded by our mind or identification with our ego. Let’s call this B.

A and B aren’t different Gods.

Just different mental models.

And ultimately mental models is all that religions are. Entirely man-made: just models that we can use to approximate an understanding of that which is beyond the comprehension of human intelligence.

I don’t believe either of those models or definitions is more true or less true, because I don’t believe any of them is supposed to be true in itself. That’s the beauty of models. They’re all ‘wrong’, in that they’re lossy (and this will always be true, by definition, so that we can understand them with our limited intelligence). It’s simply for the individual to decide which ones are personally useful: which ones feel most true by their own internal compass.