THE MODEL:
Reality depends on interpretation which depends on a learned conceptual Model. We learn the model from our parents and later from other people. For example how and what to eat, what talk means, what not to touch, and how to define "cool" and react to certain stimulus.
The model defines the world and contains everything we know. Some things are products of the model itself: like the concept of society, space travel, time & gravity. Someone thought the stars looked like campfires on distant islands, and wondered if they could go there. "I'll need a ship ..."
The model contains the concepts of similarity, opposites, and negative values (in fact any thing you can think of). But that allows the possibility of things we can't think of. Like magic & ghosts, that can affect the "real" world.
The Model is always in control. Without it, there's nobody home. Social concepts like "cool", responsibility, & guilt predefine an appropriate response (to those situations that require it). Summoned in some reverie without possibility of action, become a stress, PTSD, the model turning on itself like cancer. But it's the model, and the model, like science, is never complete.
It's my opinion that religion is a primal form of science & government that was/is meant to be a psychological process to homogenize a society. Probably going back before the Homo genus evolved, it used the best science available at the time. A map of ones self & a plan of how & why people & animals behave the way they do, why things work out, or don't, etc. With no authoritative reference, it was (& is) prime soil for multiple (self serving & expedient) interpretations.
Saying hallelujah, Allah akbar & so forth as in "praise god" must have (IMHO) originally been an affirmation. That gives a different meaning to the gesture (other than "please don't hurt me"). So then what's praise? It's encouragement and recognition. Admonishments to "fear god" mostly reflect the attitude of the advisor. If a person focusses on strife & contrariness, the model becomes that way too.
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