Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Goodbye to the Supernatural God (a delayed 5th november celebration)

In 30 years' time, science will have disposed once and for all of the
transcendent, interventionist God of the Bible
* David Goldberg
* 
guardian.co.uk
, Monday October 27 2008 09.30 GMT
Alan Bennett noted, in Writing Home, that the Church of England is so
constituted that its members can really believe anything, but of
course almost none of them do.
Nowadays, it is not only the C of E that is in this quandary. The
liberal branches of every mainstream religion are confronted by a
chasm between the attributes their ancient scriptures ascribe to God,
and empirical evidence to the contrary. The omnipotent, omniscient,
supernatural Being who rules humanity and all creation with perfect
justice is, literally, beyond belief in the age of science. Whatever
the as-yet-unresolved complexities in fully understanding the workings
of nature, most people, apart from religious fundamentalists, accept
that evolutionary theory is a more persuasive explanation of our
beginnings than creationism or intelligent design, which are medieval
"proofs" for the existence of God that no modern theologian tries hard
to defend.
That leaves an ever-decreasing space for the deity to function in. The
astonishing advances in DNA tracking, stem-cell research and embryonic
cloning will circumscribe still further God's traditional attributes.
It is not God's inscrutable ways but genetic inheritance that
determines who shall live and who shall die, who will be healthy and
who deformed.
The major emphasis of 20th-century Judeo-Christian theology was to
turn away from the orthodox concept of a transcendent, interventionist
God in favour of an immanent, non-supernatural deity who is primarily
the guardian and arbiter of our ethical conduct. The major Christian
thinkers, from Rudolf Bultmann through Paul Tillich and Dietrich
Bonhoeffer to the so-called "process theologians", steadily
demystified and allegorised God's miraculous deeds, leading the
conservative Reinhold Niebuhr to criticise them for holding that "all
religious statements are mythological or symbolic". Mordecai Kaplan,
one of Judaism's few original theologians since the Enlightenment,
defined God as "the power that makes for goodness". It was a
definition that scandalised traditional thinkers, because it located
God in the realm of ethical human aspirations, stripping away all
transcendent attributes and a purposive role in history. But Kaplan
understood that theology always has to relate to ethics, whereas
ethics stand independently of theology.
However, having reduced God to a catch-all label that liberal forms of
religion summon up at group ceremonies, remembrance rituals and
fundraising meetings for the developing world, at which we affirm our
shared adherence to ideals of goodness, universalism and hope for a
better future, once the act of public cohesiveness is over, this
"humanised" God has no further reality or meaning in individual lives.
If churches and synagogues are still functioning in 30 years' time, it
won't be the theology on offer that draws in worshippers. By then,
science will have disposed once and for all of the transcendent,
interventionist God of the Bible.
--
Baci,
Mony

 * David Goldberg
oh, guarda chi si vede
Logi, ti seccherebbe commentare l'articolo? parla di fondamentalismi,
quindi è IT.