A random thought while driving home: The trouble about worshipping an invisible God is that if He gets fed up with you and just leaves, you don’t have any way of noticing that He’s missing.
I think the Christian God probably up and left during WWI, when all sides were praying for victory while shooting nasty stuff at each other. God listened for a while, then thought “oh go to hell” and went to have another try on Gliese 581, this time with less assholes and more unicorns.
A god that doesn’t manifest itself in any way is identical to no god.
I think the Christian God probably up and left during WWI, when all sides were praying for victory while shooting nasty stuff at each other. God listened for a while, then thought “oh go to hell” and went to have another try on Gliese 581, this time with less assholes and more unicorns.
A missing God is exactly what some people want. They can use Him as an excuse for their failures.
If everything goes well; good.
But if things go bad they can say, “It wasn’t my fault, it was God’s will.”
And with God on the missing list, their peers have no way of checking the truth of the situation. The excuse holds up.
Missing? Dead no later than 1882, says Friedrich Nietzsche in the Fröhliche Wissenschaft.
Sure there’s a way of telling if your God is still there; he’ll answer your prayers. Oh, wait…