How Many Times Do We Have To Kill God?

I had a hard-drinking old uncle who loved to taunt God. "If I'm lying to you, kid, may God strike me dead!" God never did, so Uncle Andrew would always laugh, "I rest my case!"

Uncle Andrew died at 97 from lung cancer. I suppose you could say God finally got him, because God created tobacco. To keep the record straight, my uncle wasn't the world's first -- and certainly not the smartest -- atheist. As far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans, Plato was called an atheist, while Lucretius and Epicurus doubted any such being. By the time of the Enlightenment in Europe and the Founding Fathers in America, deism had refined atheism by smugly admitting the old boy may have created the world, but then just stopped caring.

Much to the amazement and irritation of both atheists and deists, God made a comeback of sorts during the 19th and 20th centuries. Lately, though, he's taken another hit. In much of Europe the cathedrals are filled with tourists, not worshippers. And despite greater attendances in America, the number of doubters here has doubled in just the last 20 years (from 8% to almost 16% according to the American Religious Independent Survey).

Lots of theories about why. Here's one to consider the next time you look up in the middle of, say, a great recession in which you've lost money, job and hope. The Internet! No, not because of the pornography, ponzi schemes, on-line gambling, and glut of YouTube distractions. Because it's now the fastest way in the world to conclude you're your own God.

Uncle Andrew's doubts came from his gut. Today's doubts can easily be found in and reinforced by everything the Internet lets you do that to our ancestors could only be done by a God. Sitting at our screens we can now see anywhere on earth...find out about and talk to anyone on earth....buy and sell anytime on earth....create music and art and literature at the click of a key....call in for our Genome profile or DNA history.... call in for our own medical charts, diagnoses and prognoses ....plus scan the latest neuro-biological research explaining precisely which brain lobes and gene pools actually determine why you live, love, mate, hate and pray the way you do.

There's this funny law in life: The law of unintended consequences. The Internet was certainly never intended to be a God-killer, and yet the enormous digital omnipotence it grants us does feel a whole lot like what and who we used to pray to. Religions have always spoken of God as a kind of omnipotent father-figure. Atheists and deists have instead spoken of human intelligence as the only real God mankind should worship. Here in 2009 we can see this split in the road cleared than ever.

Down one fork, the Internet-energized populations of the world can see a distant new day in which the instantaneously googled intelligence of all history lights our path to a potential heaven-on-earth. Down the other fork, the prayer-energized populations can see a no-yet-realized day when paradise lost is finally found.

But then, why does there have to be a fork in the road...? Isn't there still a chance all these populations can still find the very same route....?