Commuting with God

It happened like a story out of the book of Exodus where the locusts descend or the Red Sea parts. Recently, we were inundated with stories about the coming atheist bus campaign.

"Calgary Transit buses could soon be sporting advertisements questioning the existence of God," the Calgary Herald reported somewhat breathlessly last week, following the lead of media outlets in Toronto, Halifax and, of course, the U.K., where similar outbreaks have occurred.

The fuss is over a group called the Freethought Association of Canada, which wants to take out transit ads that say: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Such ads already appear in London, Madrid, and Washington D.C., and are to pop up soon in Toronto, the organizers of the Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign are promising. (Halifax has turned them down.)

CBC Radio's Tapestry interviewed the British comedy writer who started this campaign rolling in London. Ariane Sherine is delighted by the publicity and said it was written with a serious intent

She is also flattered that her usual jester words have caused real things to happen, including church groups to come up with their own counter-campaigns. Though her more rueful parents seem a little troubled by all that is going on.

Which God?

Now, first of all let me say that any country that has organizations that can sponsor something like The Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign is a testament to the West, by which I mean not just west of Ontario but our civilization in general.

Needless to say, such a campaign wouldn't exist in Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Nor probably anywhere near the Vatican (though Pope Benedict sure could use something to liven up his papacy).

But getting such a campaign on the road here is probably the easy part. We are always forgetting the strengths of our civilization, forever under attack for its robust freedoms. Let's hear it for transit-riding atheists!

The hard part, of course, is figuring out who is this God the advertisements wants us to stop worrying about.

Is He the God of the Old Testament? The Hebrew God who stands outside of time and history and (for a while) intervened directly in human affairs? An ever-fickle God, filled with cantankerous rage, who bequeathed the idea of justice to his "stiff-necked people" and, by osmosis, to the rest of us?

This is the God who married religion to the Greek ideal of reason to create the basis of Western civilization? Or so the scholars used to say confidently, generations ago, before they began to be attacked and then humbled themselves in their own West Civ classes.

Einstein's God?

Or is this the God of the New Testament, who sent His son as his agent and intermediary. A God so full of wondrous mercy He instructed His people to break tribal covenants and see themselves as part of a larger human community?

(Should Calgary bus drivers turn their cheeks when a commuter fails to drop in a token? Or will they say "render unto Caesar" and call in the cops? There in a nutshell is the problem of living the Christian life in today's raucous society.)

Perhaps, though, it is the God of Islam that this campaign is aimed at, the One who demands "submission" yet is also merciful, according to untold number of everyday Muslim moderates. (Unfortunately, radical Islamists waive this stipulation: almost all their victims are fellow Muslims, something we all ought to keep in mind.)

On the other hand, it may well be that the target of this campaign isn't of one of the Abrahamic gods; He who has a fondness for books and the Word.

Maybe we are talking here about an aboriginal Great Spirit, a God who transcends gender and infuses the world with an enveloping presence.

Or it could be Einstein's God. The great genius was always asked whether he was "religious." He wasn't in the usual sense. But his belief was bound up in the religious beauty of the laws of nature.

Like so many marveling scientists, Einstein was no doubt awestruck that such order can even exist. 

Not your God

"God does not play dice" with the universe, Einstein once famously said to counter some of the perplexing claims of the quantum physicists. God's universe above all must make rational sense.

Einstein's God, while not personally interested in him, created a universe that can be understood by mathematics. Imagine: beauty is contained not just in a beam of light or a grain of sand but in the folds of a shapely equation. What kind of God is this who can toss us away like dead flies and still give us algebra and calculus?

This is the God of the 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza who believed that the face of God, in fact His whole body, was the entire physical universe.

Sometimes, this belief (or others like it) is called pantheism and it created problems for Spinoza, a poor lens grinder, in Amsterdam during his lifetime.

Nevertheless, it is said he died (likely from breathing glass dust) an even-tempered and happy man. He was content to exist in a universe where God did not care personally for him.

God and enjoyment

Now, back to the text of the bus advertisement. It is assumed that if you abandon a belief in God you could begin to enjoy yourself.

That assumes your God fills you with guilt and dread and might punish you in the life hereafter. Even for tiny sins. There are many today who seem to want quick relief from this God.

The bus ad makes sense if you believe in a tormenting God, a being of constant retribution. After all, who is to say that even a personal God might love you? 

(One of the unnerving elements of the sci-fi series, Supernatural is that both the legions of heaven and hell appear as warring Mafia clans. The devil and his demons are pathological sadists, certainly. But the God of heaven is not loving either; He's baffling and mysterious. Hell of a choice for the believer who is caught in between.)

So many types and shapes of God exist that "enjoy" may not be the operative word when trying to describe a religious experience. God is not a consumer passion to be picked off a shelf or ordered up on the internet.

But He or She or It clearly provides meaning for many on life's journey. This is a heartfelt need — some say we're "wired" for it and atheists like British scientist Richard Dawkins can't necessarily provide a mass antidote, as much as they'd love to, through science or reason.

Take God away and millions simply won't enjoy the ride.