Freeing Pharaoh

What if I told you that absolutely every person, whether consciously or unconsciously, believes in God? The basics of my theory are that, when interacting with another person, I interact with an aspect of myself which has an innate sense of truth. The choice I make relative to that truth sets me up for judgement and subsequent salvation or damnation. This aspect of myself is what I am calling God, particularly because, as I hope to show in this post, this aspect aligns with the understanding of God from Judeo-Christian theology. Whenever I interact with another person, I have a choice: treat them like a person or treat them like an object. If I choose to treat them like a person, my mind gives me a path forward which exhibits treating that person like a person. If I choose to treat them like an object, I must supply a reason that the person is an object, and then I get a path forward which exhibits treating that person like an object.

I talk to ghosts. Phantoms, really. Every day, I have conversations—sometimes arguments—with people I think I know. My friends, my family, the waiter who messes up my order. But here's the kicker: they're not real. Not the versions I'm talking to, anyway. Every person I interact with exists in my head as a mental model—a flimsy, half-baked caricature I've pieced together from scraps of time spent with them. A few shared laughs, a handful of stories, a quick exchange about the weather. That's it. That's all I've got to work with. And yet, I convince myself these models are the real deal. I talk to them, confide in them, get mad at them. But they're not the actual people. They're shadows I've cast on the wall of my mind, and I'm the one holding the flashlight. Take my friend Alex, for example. In my head, Alex is reliable, always up for a deep conversation, and perpetually amused by my terrible puns. That's the Alex I hang o...