This is the brainstorm that transforms a universal creator into a local mascot. It’s the "God is on our side" mentality used to justify conquest and exclusion.
This views the divine as a celestial vending machine. Through "Prosperity Gospel" or rigid legalism, the brainstorm becomes a contract: "If I do X, God must provide Y."
Ultimately, "Conceiving God" is a cycle of building a mental model (the brainstorm) and then realizing its limitations (the perversion). It is a process of "un-knowing"—breaking the old images to find something deeper beneath the brainstorm.
The term "perversion" in this context doesn't necessarily mean something illicit; rather, it refers to the perverting or twisting of a concept away from its original or ideal state. Throughout history, the conception of God has been frequently hijacked to serve human ego or political power:
Psychoanalysts might argue that an obsession with a punishing God is often a perversion of human guilt or a desire to see one's enemies suffer, externalized into a divine mandate. The Brainstorm as Revelation