Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Heaven not in the Heavens! Where is God, Then?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
God is Not in the Sky?
If God is not in heaven, meaning literally the sky, where is he then? The answer used to be that he is “transcendent”, meaning that he is outside the world. Simple folk will think that is the same as His being in the sky, but “the world” is the Greek concept of it as the whole universe. He is even outside everything that exists! Modern clergy find that science offers them an explanation in that dimensions beyond time and space are outside this world, so God lives in those. What a boon science has become to the religious.
Yet there are problems. Most clappies think that God is within them, so how can he be in some other unseen dimensions? So, God is transcendent or living in unseen dimesions and at the same time He is immanent, that is, embodied in everything we see, including ourselves—if we are Christians, at least. It is another mystery of God, but God can do anything at all, so it is no mystery to Christians. God is transcendent and immanent at the same time, proving that he is God. It is easy to see why Christians can believe ten impossible things every day at communion. Being ready to believe anything impossible is central to their belief system.
They are not content with impossible things, though. They want to take every sane and sensible everyday habit or event and claim it is the work of their immanent and transcendental God. We love our children—it is the work of God. We are kind to hedgehogs—the work of God. We enjoy the company of our pals—it is all God at work. We can do nothing of our own free will that is not God’s work, yet we are supposed to have been granted free will and chosen evil. Adam was promised this choice and despite making up his mind God makes his descendants keep doing good when they ought to be rioting in evil.
This is, of course, an “old truth”, but it is one that Christian theologians do not want to lose because, if they do, they have to begin to think of fresh reasons why humanity has to be saved. The plain truth is obvious to anyone not conditioned by God’s truth. Our relationships and ways of behaving are perfectly natural and have arrived with us through evolution. They have nothing to do with God. If we did not love our children, then we would not be here at all, or, if we were, we would not be thinking about God because we would be frogs or eels. If we did not enjoy the company of other people then we would be solitary animals. The utterly natural behaviour of our kind is offered as evidence of some immanent god. Like the concept of an independent soul, it is another fraud and lie. Inasmuch as these are natural phenomena, it is Nature that should be worshipped, not God. Nature has been hijacked by the God of the shysters. Their reward is not eternal life, but a comfortable one.
The immanence of God is inferred from Jesus being reported as saying, “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10:30), “I am in my Father” (Jn 14:20), and other comparable statements. The son is quite naturally in the father as his semen so this seems like fertility symbolism expressing, if anything, the eternity of life through evolution of father to son. The father and the son can be said to be one in the sense that the father’s genes are carried by his son. There is no necessity to look beyond Nature for the miracles it contains.
