After God made the world, supplied it, got it to spinning at the right speed at just the right distance from the sun, he initiated the population, told them all about himself, enjoyed their company. You know the rest.
They rebelled because of great and justifiable complications, the chief one being pure reckless daring and teenage hormonal bravado. So he had to put some distance between them like any parent would do to an out-of-control child: pad their walls, put on some loud music to drown them out, and generally rock and ignore them till their energy had run out.
After a few generations of wildlife on a pristine planet, the natives pretended God was gone and their children even forgot there was a God.
So God had a plan: he decided to come down and visit every single person to show them he was real. He did so at every child’s birth, again when the children reached puberty, on their wedding day, and at other important events, like the moments just before they died. He wanted to be there to hold them in that final passage.
At first, he appeared in a body like the one he had given to the people, so as not to scare them. He introduced himself as God, made gifts appear, warts disappear and other things God-like. But after a few rounds of this, the people started thinking of him as a freak – you know, that old bearded man who never dies. What’s up with him? Didn’t our grandfathers tell us about him? So, they told him not to come interrupt their lives, that he was weirding them out.
Well, God had a second idea: He would come to the people as a spirit with a form, a kind of floating cloud-like humanoid with a voice and a unique translucence. This worked. The people accepted him at first and then they explained him to their children.
“Johnny, this is God the Creator. He loves us and we need to love him and listen to what he says”
At first, he was welcomed, but as time went on his appearing became ordinary and his presence turned rather unimposing. The new people explained him to their children in a matter-of-fact way, like he had always been there, and as far as they knew, he had. Generations went by, with God still hanging around, and humans became more inquisitive about the workings of nature, the origin of thunder, the properties of light, the composition of dirt, etc. These men of learning and their pupils eventually explained everything and kept studying what they did not understand. They began to study the phenomenon of God. They finally figured him out.
Here was their theory: Everyone on earth carries a certain chemically-produced aura about them, and it is mostly invisible. This genetic quality is passed down generationally. But because of the emphasis people put on certain events and passages of life, that aura gets stronger at times and creates an energy field that is visible. People project into that energy field their highest hopes and dreams, their supreme joys and ultimate expressions of destiny, and subconsciously, their ancestral belief systems. So God became known as an energy field, something like the aurora borealis or a rainbow, and after a while he became such a part of the scenery that he was held in no higher esteem than mist, fog, or even air.
That’s how God failed his GRE.
I am Jones Howell and I approve of this message!
What you’re suggesting is that we would take God for granted if we could explain him in a naturalistic way. But if this “energy-aura” was really God and exhibited the characteristics of God then I don’t believe we would ever get bored of Him or take him for granted because he has infinite wisdom. I guess if for some reason we decided we’ve had enough wisdom then we would get tired of him, but I doubt that would happen. We would always seek counsel from the “energy-aura” in all matters of our life and it would never cease to be successful because it would always have something new to teach us.
Here is a scenario: Say I have no way to prove that you are my father, and lets assume that I’ve never met you but only heard about you from people unrelated to you. I go to search out your birth certificate and find no evidence you ever existed. But I really found comfort in thinking I had a father so I kept believing what people told me. But then I realized I could never really know for sure so I chose the stance of agnostic. It may even be the case that I was the result of an indifferent exchange of chemicals in a lab.
But then one day the technology for DNA paternal testing became available. And there was a handkerchief that people claimed use to be yours, so I had it tested. It turns out you were my father and the things that people said about you might be true because I now have reason to believe you existed. But I wouldn’t take this knowledge for granted, but rather rejoice in the fact that I understand and have justification for telling people, “I have a father and I can prove it!” Even though I may never know everything about my father, I can at least know he existed and that is substantially better than not knowing.
A child might enjoy the story of the stork bringing him as a baby into the world, but don’t you think as an adult he may find it more fascinating and beautiful the intricacies of DNA and the marvelous process of manifesting in the womb?