The All-Powerful God

Being brought up in a tolerant non-dogmatic environment, I have my problems to understand why all religions are so very much centred around the human character. Be they white, black, red or yellow; ancient or modern, gods and their messengers are invariably of male human sex and act very much like us with wrath, vengeance, rewards etc.
My father's faith, revealed by the protestant parson during his funeral speech, was that god is a superior principle residing in or even outside four dimensional spacetime. Its nature cannot be understood at our present state of evolution, but can be felt by everyone through the logic and beauty of its creations.

To make religion universally acceptable and more befitting our present day, the concept of God must first of all be de-humanised.

Let us part with the wise old man in whose image we were created.
Let us part with the humanoid picture of a god who sent a son in order to be tortured and killed by humans so that he may be apeased.
Let us part with all the other man-gods who, at some time in history have become the incarnation of a supreme being in the belief of many ethnic groups.

Studying the awsome splendour of the Universe and being aware of our own insignificance within its vastness offers greater help to overcome our fear of personal death than any faith constructed so as to fit ancient human self-understanding.

To believe that God is anything or anyone even remotely like us is homocentric reasoning and dates from times when a flat earth was thought to be the centre of the Universe.

The privilege to grasp even a tiny fraction of cosmic immensity and to experience the greatness and beauty of Creation is more rewarding to me than any man-made belief.

I like the view of Fred Hoyle ("Home is where the Wind Blows", 1994, p. 421):

"Religions with an all powerful god make no sense unless you believe that god is pretty evil, or at least wholly indifferent to bad things that happen.
"If you believe in an all-powerful God, you have to ascribe to God a morality inferior to that of humans, which is quite a measure of condemnation.
"But the real point is that God is not all-powerful, God cannot overcome the evils of decay because the issue is not one that is open to choice.*) - If you have the Universe, then you must have decay. If you have no decay, you have no Universe. Take your pick."

*) I think Professor Hoyle is referring to the second law of thermodynamics.

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