God is Dead

This is an interesting piece by David Brooks in the New York Times suggesting that new neuroscience research won't lead us to atheism but to neural Buddhism. His conclusion is that the debate will force Orthodox believers to defend their religions in the face of the growing "Spiritual but not religious" movement. If he's right then this is a very good thing. It starts to move the debate beyond the existence/non-existence of God to a personally based view of spirituality. It's hard to see how such personal perspectives will be able to combine in the future to support the terrible moral, economic and militaristic burdens that the wars of religion are currently imposing on us. One possible first step to liberation from religion is that step to awareness of personal spirituality.

Brooks goes on to make a suggestion that following moments of transcendence God will best be concieved as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all that is. I don't know what that means, but it certainly doesn't sound like a personal God, a creator of heaven and earth, a God that can interfere in our lives, judge us, persecute and reward us. I'm not sure it deserves the name God at all - maybe we should call it Wonder instead, and replace "God" with "Wonder" when we talk about these kind of experiences, just to eliminate confusion. We certainly shouldn't talk about God when we don't actually mean a God. "I believe in Wonder". "When I think of all the beauty in the world, it strenghtens my belief in Wonder." "Wonder plays an important part in my life." There's probably a better word than Wonder, but God it ain't.