Divine Personality Model Hypothesis:

Divine Personality Model Hypothesis:

Human minds are pattern-recognition machines. Patterns allow you to make predictions, and predictions help you survive.

Collections of patterns that can generate predictions are called “models”. Gathering more data leads to more robust models. Gathering biased data leads to warped models.

When you collect data about a person’s behaviors, your mind builds a model of them. When you dream, your mind can tap into different models of different people and generate a simulation where they all act on behaviors that are typical of the patterns you have collected.

Similarly, when you collect data about a deity’s behaviors (via scripture, sermon, or testimony), your mind builds a model of the deity. When you have revelatory hallucinations, your mind can tap into your model of God and generate a simulated response, where the God speaks words that are typical of the patterns you have collected.

Prediction: When people hear the voice of God speak, the linguistic patterns associated with God’s voice should be detectable within their sample of data they have used to construct their idea of God. People of more similar religious data should have more similar religious revelations. People of more divergent religious data should have more divergent religious revelations.

Test: Alter an aspect of a person’s religious data and see if it alters an aspect of the person’s religious revelation. Query people before and after religious paradigm shifts. See if there is a change in the pattern of revelation before and after paradigm shifts that matches the introduction of new data and the abandonment of old data.