Is there an artificial God?

A littl while back, my brother blogged about dealing with his anger. He has a child with cancer, so he has cause to be angry, or does he? Really, the post is about what life is and how to deal with it, and ultimately, I guess, wisdom. Money quotes are:

I'm angry that the reality of my life doesn't match the fantasy that I was living out and expecting to continue.

and

Life is messy. Get over it. Give up the fantasy. Embrace the beautiful parts of reality. Love is real and beautiful. Love cannot be fantasy.

A friend of ours, Jim, wrote a comment to that post about how his belief in Christ helps him deal with life. I can't link directly to his comment, but you can find it in the comments to the post I linked to above. Money quote:

For me, my faith in Christ--symbolized here with the act of communion--is what I desparately need and what helps me live.

Both men are struggling with, yes, the meaning of life, and how to deal with the pain and disappointment that is such a part of life. Many people, including Jim, find at least part of the answer is religous belief and a spiritual life.

I recently read, The Salmon of Doubt. It is a collection of miscelanious stuff written by Douglas Adams, published after his death. There is one piece titled, "Is There an Artificial God." The note at the end says it is an extemporaneous speech given at Digital Biota. It is a rambling piece filled with half-formed arguments and ideas. There is one thread running through it that fascinates me. Adams talks about how we are used to this top-down idea of God. The first mover creates the universe than sits astride the pyramid. Many people these days do not believe this. It is also not an original idea that God might be made in humanity's image. What Adams points out is that our understanding of the physical and biological world is teaching us that order and complexity are derived from the bottom up. What we percieve as smoothly functioning, complex systems at one level, are often the aggregate of simple and messy systems at lower orders. What if God is an emergent phenomenon arising from human culture?

Clearly this is the thinking of someone who does not accept the idea of God as taught by the great world religions. A startling consequence of this line of thinking is that not believing in a creator God, or a supernatural personality does not neccessarily lead to theconclusion that God is unimportant or does not exist. God might be a vitally important phenomenon that emerges from human activity.