4. Anthropomorphism

Let’s be honest. If humans had a dollar for every time we projected our own messy personalities onto the universe, we could’ve funded heaven by now. We imagine gods who get jealous. Spirits who need sacrifices like it is Black Friday. Ancestral ghosts who remember that one time you skipped church in 2008. We give hurricanes names. We yell at our printers like they choose violence. We say “the universe wants me to…” like it wrote a TED Talk. That, right there, is anthropomorphism, the tendency to slap human features, emotions, and intentions onto anything that moves. Or does not. It is our mental party trick and one of the oldest tools in the human belief kit.

From thunder to Thor, this was our first weather app. Back when the only roof we had was the sky and the nearest weather report was the bones of your enemy’s goat, people saw lightning and thought someone up there was in a mood. Not that it was a buildup of electrical charge in the atmosphere. No, it was Thor hurling tantrums and hammers. Why? Because when something unpredictable and powerful is happening, the human brain goes full CSI: Divine Edition. We do not just want to know what is happening. We want to know who is doing it and why. And since humans are the only intentional agents we know, our brains default to a lazy but efficient conclusion. Something happened. Must be someone like me. That is anthropomorphism in action.

It is evolution at work, baby. To break it down scientifically, anthropomorphism likely piggybacks on our evolved Theory of Mind, that fancy brain feature that helps us guess what other people are thinking. It is useful when you are navigating tribal life. Is that guy angry with me? Does she like me, or is she just after my wild boar stash? Why is the chief smiling while sharpening a spear? But that same feature goes rogue in the wild. The bush rustled? Probably a lion. The river dried up? The gods are mad. My team lost? The ancestors are still upset about my tattoo. It is safer, evolutionarily speaking, to over-detect agency. Assume someone is behind something, just in case. It is a mental smoke alarm. Better to be wrong a thousand times than miss the one real fire.

God in our own image is the natural outcome. Ever noticed how gods tend to look suspiciously like the people worshipping them? Old Testament God is a strict patriarch. Greek gods are wild, dramatic soap opera characters. Hindu deities are majestic, multi-armed multitaskers. The modern Christian God feels like a chill therapist with Wi-Fi. That is no accident. When humans create gods, we reach for the most familiar template, ourselves. We want a god who feels, a god who thinks, a god who gets us. But here is the plot twist. Instead of reaching up to touch the divine, maybe we have been pulling the divine down to human level. We made gods with anger issues, favorite teams, murder quotas, and very specific dietary advice. Like, did the creator of the universe really care about shellfish?

When we talk to the sky, we talk to ourselves. Ever prayed and felt like you were heard? Ever shouted at the heavens during a heartbreak? Ever said “thank you, universe” when something worked out? Even atheists anthropomorphize sometimes. We are wired that way. We talk to things that are not human, hoping they will respond like humans. It is why kids think their teddy bears are sad when ignored. It is why we say “my car is being stubborn today.” It is why people claim “God told me” instead of “I had a really intense gut feeling.” We are not broken. We are just very imaginative apes.

So is anthropomorphism a problem? Only when we forget we are doing it. Problems start when we stop asking questions because the gods work in mysterious ways. When we use divine human-like anger to justify violence. When we assume the universe has a personal vendetta against our love life. But if we stay aware and understand the why behind our brain’s tendency to anthropomorphize, we can use it wisely. It can help us build empathy, create art, process grief, tell better stories, and remind ourselves that we still do not know everything.

The final thought is simple. Are the gods real, or just really relatable? Maybe the gods are exaggerated versions of us. Maybe they are not up there, but in here, stitched into the folds of our imagination. Maybe anthropomorphism is how we made sense of chaos before science came to the party. But whether you are religious or not, one thing is certain. We humans love a good story, and what better protagonist than a god who thinks, feels, laughs, and cries just like us? Even if they do not answer texts.