The Jewish people can legitimately claim to have been in the vanguard of the moral growth of humanity. The western tradition of monotheism began with the insistence of the Jews that there is one God. The central tenets of Christianity and Islam are built on that belief. Millions of children have been taught the principles of the Ten Commandments, which the Bible tells us were brought down from the mountain by Moses. The central passage in the Bible, in which Jesus says that the two most important laws are to love God and love our neighbor, is not integral to the Jewish faith, but we should remember these words were spoken by a Jew to Jewish listeners in order to convince them that these are the most important values of religion. Over the centuries, Jews have made obedience to God’s laws the center of not only their religious faith but the conduct of their lives. Historically, they asked only to be left alone to practice their traditions and observe their faith.
Sometime during the twentieth century, however, this role of moral leadership became secondary to the goal of preserving and protecting Israel. The recent incident in which Israeli soldiers boarded a Turkish ship bring supplies to Gaza, and the reaction to it, is the latest illustration. It is true that some of the passengers on the ship had motives other than humanitarian ones. The soldiers were attacked with iron bars and reacted by firing their weapons. This violent confrontation should have been avoided altogether, however, by using some other approach to preventing potentially dangerous cargo from reaching Gaza. The truth is that Israel used a violent, rather than non-violent strategy, which not only resulted in the deaths of nine passengers but hurt the interests of Israel itself. It is difficult to reconcile this incident with the notion that obedience to God’s laws is at the center of Jewish life.
The tension between protecting the security of Israel and preserving the great moral tradition of the Jewish people is felt most acutely in Israel itself, of course. But it is reflected in the divisions among Jews in the United States as well. Part of the Jewish community, generally older and more orthodox, has steadfastly defended the actions of Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu, not only in the boarding of the Turkish ship, but in expanding settlements in the West Bank, and generally taking a harder line toward the Palestinians. Increasingly, younger and more liberal Jews in the U.S. find themselves at odds with these policies.
Preserving the original values of Judaism and the security of Israel are distinct goals and they are always in conflict to some extent. However, the rest of the world can hope that the Jewish people, both in the United States and Israel, will find a way to achieve both and in doing so regain their role of moral leadership.
*Correia takes a profound look at the doubt and uncertainty millions face when presented with the traditional conception of God. The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science (SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc., 2009) addresses the skepticism and indecision that plagues those who no longer find it easy to accept the existence of a supernatural creator. Confronted with the often unappealing alternatives of agnosticism, atheism, and blind faith, The Uncertain Believer offers readers a fresh look at the meaningful role God can play in our lives.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Three Scenarios for the Future of God
Assume for a moment that the most sensible conception of God is that God is not external to the world, but, instead, God is carried in our consciousness as the highest, most important – we can say “sacred” -- aspects of our existence. What could we say about the future of God? One implication would be that God is not eternal since human consciousness is not eternal. Some day our species will be extinct, although some future, more intelligent species may keep the concept of God alive. But, on the assumption that homo sapiens has at least a few millennia left, what is going to happen to God? Consider three scenarios.
One scenario is that God drifts out of our consciousness. That is periodically the prediction of social scientists, based on survey data that show the percentage of people who say they believe in God has steadily declined in economically developed countries. In this first scenario, this trend would continue and extend to other parts of the world. In a century or two, let’s say, the idea of God would become increasingly irrelevant, until it would become nothing more than an interesting subject of historical study. Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead” would be justified, just a few centuries late. In my view, this would be a tragic loss for humanity because we would lose the central unifying idea that gives us a historical link with our ancestors and a way to bridge the divide among people who do not share the same religious creeds and doctrines.
A second scenario is that the conceptions of God held by different cultures diverge even more dramatically than they do today. In the west, for example, the conception of God might become more spiritual and less anthropomorphic. God would be open to all, and there would be no favored or disfavored groups. In other cultures, the conception God might continue to be much like in the Old Testament. God would be on the side of some groups and condemn others. Those who profess to follow God’s wishes might even claim that God commands them to engage in violence in order to follow the “true path to righteousness.” As a result of these radically different visions of God, religious differences become even more stark and cultures with radically different conceptions of God find it increasingly difficult to understand each other.
A third scenario is a hopeful one. Mankind comes to develop a shared conception of God. In this conception, God does not take sides or favor one group over another. There is no anthropomorphic God who commands us to adopt one creed and reject others. Instead, we see God as the central unifying idea that the most important -- the most sacred -- aspect of our existence is to have compassion for each other. That shared conception would not solve all of our problems or answer all our questions, but it would give us a common framework for finding answers. We cannot be certain that this vision can ever become a reality, but there is value in the vision and in working toward it.
Correia takes a profound look at the doubt and uncertainty millions face when presented with the traditional conception of God. The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science (SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc., 2009) addresses the skepticism and indecision that plagues those who no longer find it easy to accept the existence of a supernatural creator. Confronted with the often unappealing alternatives of agnosticism, atheism, and blind faith, The Uncertain Believer offers readers a fresh look at the meaningful role God can play in our lives.
One scenario is that God drifts out of our consciousness. That is periodically the prediction of social scientists, based on survey data that show the percentage of people who say they believe in God has steadily declined in economically developed countries. In this first scenario, this trend would continue and extend to other parts of the world. In a century or two, let’s say, the idea of God would become increasingly irrelevant, until it would become nothing more than an interesting subject of historical study. Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead” would be justified, just a few centuries late. In my view, this would be a tragic loss for humanity because we would lose the central unifying idea that gives us a historical link with our ancestors and a way to bridge the divide among people who do not share the same religious creeds and doctrines.
A second scenario is that the conceptions of God held by different cultures diverge even more dramatically than they do today. In the west, for example, the conception of God might become more spiritual and less anthropomorphic. God would be open to all, and there would be no favored or disfavored groups. In other cultures, the conception God might continue to be much like in the Old Testament. God would be on the side of some groups and condemn others. Those who profess to follow God’s wishes might even claim that God commands them to engage in violence in order to follow the “true path to righteousness.” As a result of these radically different visions of God, religious differences become even more stark and cultures with radically different conceptions of God find it increasingly difficult to understand each other.
A third scenario is a hopeful one. Mankind comes to develop a shared conception of God. In this conception, God does not take sides or favor one group over another. There is no anthropomorphic God who commands us to adopt one creed and reject others. Instead, we see God as the central unifying idea that the most important -- the most sacred -- aspect of our existence is to have compassion for each other. That shared conception would not solve all of our problems or answer all our questions, but it would give us a common framework for finding answers. We cannot be certain that this vision can ever become a reality, but there is value in the vision and in working toward it.
Correia takes a profound look at the doubt and uncertainty millions face when presented with the traditional conception of God. The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science (SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc., 2009) addresses the skepticism and indecision that plagues those who no longer find it easy to accept the existence of a supernatural creator. Confronted with the often unappealing alternatives of agnosticism, atheism, and blind faith, The Uncertain Believer offers readers a fresh look at the meaningful role God can play in our lives.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
What is the Future of God?
What is the future of God? Many people would say that question makes no sense on the grounds that God is eternal and constant. They would argue that God has always existed and will exist long after the human species is extinct. But that view assumes that God is like the God of the Bible -- external to the world, existing independent of man and all other living things. In this conception, God “lived” in a vast empty universe (at least empty of humans) for fourteen billion years or so after the Big Bang, until eventually humans evolved on earth. Of course, God may have occupied his attention with intelligent species that evolved earlier on other planets so divine life in the universe was not completely boring but under any reasonable assumptions about evolution of intelligent life, there were billions of years between the Big Bang and intelligent life. The point is that the existence of God has nothing to do with the existence of anyone or anything else.
If this image of God as an anthropomorphic being sitting in any empty universe does not make sense, we could choose to say, as Paul Tillich did, that God is the “ground of being.” That conception might seem to fit with a universe devoid of humans. Or, we could agree with Spinoza and say that God is all of nature, even if nature doesn’t happen to include humans. But under these conceptions, what would God be – a “spirit” occupying the vast empty spaces of the universe, or even the atoms that make up lifeless primordial galaxies? That God is certainly impressive, but what does it mean for our lives? What does it tell us about how we should live or relate to our families?
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that God is not external to the world, existing independent of humans? Instead, the existence of God is dependent on the existence of man because God is carried from generation in our consciousness as the highest and most sacred aspect of our existence. Doesn’t it make more sense to say that man created God, rather than that God created man, but that reversal of the creation story does not undermine the significance and sacredness of the idea of God? If we go down this path, then we see that the future of God becomes a very important question.
Hegel believed that the Absolute Idea – his notion of God – exists in the consciousness of the community. One does not have to accept Hegel’s view of history to agree that the highest values of humans are carried from generation to generation in human consciousness. If God is the central unifying idea of what is sacred in human existence – and if that idea is carried through history in human consciousness – then we have a window into the future of God. God will disappear when human consciousness ends. The more troubling possibility is that God may disappear long before humans disappear because humans stop taking God seriously.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that “God is dead.” Although he probably believed in something like the God of the Bible, I believe his point is roughly equivalent to the popular expression, “You’re dead to me.” In other words, if we stop taking the idea of God seriously, if God is no more than lip service, then God becomes dead to us. We do not have to accept Nietzsche’s conception of God to conclude that much of the world is at that point. In order to start taking God seriously, we have to rethink our conception of God. An essential step in that process is to find a way to reconcile God with science. If we do not, then at some point, not this century or the next, perhaps, but eventually, God will fade away.
Correia takes a profound look at the doubt and uncertainty millions face when presented with the traditional conception of God. The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science (SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc., 2009) addresses the skepticism and indecision that plagues those who no longer find it easy to accept the existence of a supernatural creator. Confronted with the often unappealing alternatives of agnosticism, atheism, and blind faith, The Uncertain Believer offers readers a fresh look at the meaningful role God can play in our lives.
If this image of God as an anthropomorphic being sitting in any empty universe does not make sense, we could choose to say, as Paul Tillich did, that God is the “ground of being.” That conception might seem to fit with a universe devoid of humans. Or, we could agree with Spinoza and say that God is all of nature, even if nature doesn’t happen to include humans. But under these conceptions, what would God be – a “spirit” occupying the vast empty spaces of the universe, or even the atoms that make up lifeless primordial galaxies? That God is certainly impressive, but what does it mean for our lives? What does it tell us about how we should live or relate to our families?
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that God is not external to the world, existing independent of humans? Instead, the existence of God is dependent on the existence of man because God is carried from generation in our consciousness as the highest and most sacred aspect of our existence. Doesn’t it make more sense to say that man created God, rather than that God created man, but that reversal of the creation story does not undermine the significance and sacredness of the idea of God? If we go down this path, then we see that the future of God becomes a very important question.
Hegel believed that the Absolute Idea – his notion of God – exists in the consciousness of the community. One does not have to accept Hegel’s view of history to agree that the highest values of humans are carried from generation to generation in human consciousness. If God is the central unifying idea of what is sacred in human existence – and if that idea is carried through history in human consciousness – then we have a window into the future of God. God will disappear when human consciousness ends. The more troubling possibility is that God may disappear long before humans disappear because humans stop taking God seriously.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that “God is dead.” Although he probably believed in something like the God of the Bible, I believe his point is roughly equivalent to the popular expression, “You’re dead to me.” In other words, if we stop taking the idea of God seriously, if God is no more than lip service, then God becomes dead to us. We do not have to accept Nietzsche’s conception of God to conclude that much of the world is at that point. In order to start taking God seriously, we have to rethink our conception of God. An essential step in that process is to find a way to reconcile God with science. If we do not, then at some point, not this century or the next, perhaps, but eventually, God will fade away.
Correia takes a profound look at the doubt and uncertainty millions face when presented with the traditional conception of God. The Uncertain Believer: Reconciling God and Science (SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc., 2009) addresses the skepticism and indecision that plagues those who no longer find it easy to accept the existence of a supernatural creator. Confronted with the often unappealing alternatives of agnosticism, atheism, and blind faith, The Uncertain Believer offers readers a fresh look at the meaningful role God can play in our lives.
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