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.