So like a whole bunch of other kids, I was brought up going to church. I was raised Methodist and to be honest it wasn't all that bad. The church and church community I was raised in were pretty open and the only reference to hell I remember is the youth pastor saying he didn't believe in it. But I digress before I've even come to my point.
So like all kids being told that the fairy tale out of Nazareth is somehow more true than the ones I've heard about fairies and firbolgs (yes I knew that term as a kid) I found myself rife with questions, and having not yet realized that it's impolite to ask questions about religion of those who believe in it, I went looking for answers. The one that came back to me recently was the answer to the question, Where does God live? See I loved me some Space when I was a kid. I thought galaxies and black holes were the coolest damn thing ever. So it didn't make sense to me that the big dude could live in the sky. The answer I got was essentially God and Heaven live somewhere else. So is Istanbul, but I can still get coordinates for that.
In recent months of stumbling back across this question I think I have figured out the answer.
God lives beyond the edge of reason. (yes that means hes at the end of the credits for a terrible Renee Zellweger film)
See back in the day. We had basic observations to fuel our knowledge.
We could only experience that which was tangible. So sure there's some mountain that we can't ever seem to get to the top of, must be the home to the gods. But then we made it to the top and saw what was out there above us. So we looked up and saw stars and the sun above us and figured they lived in the sky which spun around the Earth. God lived just beyond that part of the sky in the penthouse.
Then here comes a breakthrough. The Sky is just a cloud of air surrounding us. Beyond that is Space. The Universe, All the cosmic awesomeness that at the same time humbles us and makes us so damn special. But shit. If God isn't out there where is he...Some where else. He doesn't live in the emptiness of space obviously, that would be way below his standards. He must be in another (for lack of a better term) dimension.
But now we have trouble. We are starting to see that there might be other dimensions out there. We might be in a multiverse of universes. Now if we get what's beyond the universe, where does that leave God.
The point is we put god where he needs to be to serve his purpose. God isn't a being. He is the spectre of things we have yet to understand. Those who place him closer have some gap in their understanding. Most televangelists wouldn't say that God takes their face and put's it in people living room because they understand tv cameras. They would say that God created us in his image because they don't understand natural selection enough to trust knowledge over faith. So as the general populace realizes that Olympus is just a mountain, God moves to the sky, As they see the sky is just a layer between us and space he moves to another "dimension" As we discover other universes he will run back further still. God will only cease to exist when we finally realize that our reason and knowledge can find us all these things without him. Then he moves out of our minds completely.
