When you think of God, what images come to your mind?

Do you think of a supernatural being who sits outside the four dimensional (space + time) universe who created us as a potter might?  Do you picture God as a supreme designer who built the intricate laws of the universe as a watchmaker might assemble a fine timepiece? Do you see God as a grand chess master who has an elaborate plan for the figures on his cosmic chessboard? Do you picture the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where the outstretched hand of Michelangelo’s God (who looks like someone’s muscular grandfather!) reaches toward Adam?

These popular images of God often resemble a Zeus-like figure, even with the white beard, who lives in “heaven” rather than on Olympus. When we think about it, this God seems a lot like us, only much more powerful. He has emotions: he can be a “jealous God”; he can be an “angry God” or a “loving God.”  We may address him as Father, Lord, or Judge. We even use the personal (and masculine) pronoun “He” in referring to God, but we capitalize it to show that He is greater than we are. In other words this God is strongly anthropomorphic.

However, to me this view of God is fraught with problems.  As a teenager when my interest in science blossomed, I began to question the perceptions I had been taught as a child.  Why would this God allow millions of children to starve in Africa or die in a genocide, yet he just might intervene on behalf of our favorite sports team if we prayed hard enough? Why is it that two thousand years ago (when human understanding of science was very different than it is today) during the age of the Biblical writers, God seemed to intervene in the world a great deal more than he does today: causing worldwide floods, parting seas, speaking from burning bushes, stopping the sun from moving across the sky, raising dead people, and sending angels to earth to deliver his message?

This common view of God as a supernatural being like us, only more powerful, is one of the principal reasons behind the rise of atheism in the Western world and the spiritual antipathy of many young people today.  It certainly contributed to my own questioning of the usefulness of religion. This view of God opens itself up to critiques from the likes of eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume who pointed out the logical fallacies in the traditional arguments for the existence of such a God, Sigmund Freud who in the beginning of the twentieth century characterized such a God as nothing more than a “projected father figure,” and twenty-first century biologist Richard Dawkins who points out the incompatibility of this God with science.  Our modern lifestyles depend on scientific principles working, not some of the time, but all of the time: would you fly in an airplane if the laws of aerodynamics only worked occasionally? We take for granted the physics behind our cell phones and TVs.  We have faith in the biological principles that allow for the medicines we create to treat our diseases – diseases that we understand today are not caused by evil spirits but by bacteria, viruses, and biochemical processes. In this post-modern age of reason and science that underlies every aspect of our daily lives, which concept will lose out in the battle between God and science?  I think we are seeing (unfortunately) that God is losing this battle.

Even more problematic to me than the incompatibility of the conventional view of God with modern scientific and logical thought is that this God opens Himself up to the critique of being an incompetent watchmaker, an unartistic potter, and a cruel chess master. This view of God leads to the philosophical problems caused by the existence of evil, the reality of human suffering, and the multiple religions around the world with opposing doctrines about God. How can such a God be omniscient, omnipotent, and loving at the same time? Finally, for me, the ultimate critique of this God is that He is too small. A God that is seen as some kind of intelligent being living in an extra-dimensional heaven becomes just one more thing in the universe (although a powerful thing nonetheless). In other words, this God is finite.

Does this mean that the only alternative is the atheist one?

No...

As much as my rational mind wanted to reject God, something deep in my core sensed a fundamental meaning to existence. I then began to ask the question:  What if God is not as a being at all?

How then could we think of God in a way that works for the 21st century?