A God Even For Atheists

Mike Conversation Continues
July, ‘82


"Okay," I said, "but what I'm about to say is not exactly user
friendly. It's about a different kind of God, one that, as far as I
can tell, nobody is familiar with."

"Well, does God have foreknowledge or not?" Mike responded.

"He knows everything that is known," I said. "It's hard to describe,
but He knows it all without foreknowledge."

"You've got my attention now," Mike replied, "How exactly does He
pull that off?"

"It's in his freedom," I said. "In nature, life, and culture we find
God's `self-expression', and that--is an affirmation of God and God's
freedom."

"Oh, this ought to be good," replied Mike, "what kind of image is
that? Is He still the old man on high, divine worker of miracles,
dispenser of rewards and punishments, or am I missing something?"

"That image is a bit outdated, wouldn't you say?" I said.

"Well is He limited by time or not? replied Mike."

"No," I said.

"Is He omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient?"

"Yes to all three," I replied.

"Well, I rest my case. It's the same-o, same-o," Mike responded. "We
humans are bound by law and limited by death. We don't like it, so we
imagine a God without limits. We get sick, but God does not. We are
caught in space and time—not God. We face horrendous hardships and
suffering—not God. Both Freud, and Feuerbach before him, had it right;
god is a product of our own desires because, as cripples, we need a
crutch. We need god, but he remains forever out of reach. Religion was
born out of that need. God is our security blanket. In reality God is
based in false hopes and promises, and exists only in our dreams."


"There's more to the story than that," I responded. "The theologian,
Paul Tillich, had a different idea. In fact, he believed the image of
a superhuman God should be replaced by a more internalized `depth
image.' Instead of believing in an external God, he chose to believe
in a God that was the ground of all that is. God, for him, became
`infinite center,' a presence, a feeling, a reality, an opening to
all sacredness and divinity. That's kind of what I'm talking about
when I talk about God, but I came to that image in my own way. And, by
the way, as far as gender is concerned, God doesn't have any."

"That sound's a bit pantheistic to me," Mike responded. "So who or
what is this god?"