Humans have a need to explain things. We like to know why and how and what. For instance, many ancient cultures wondered what lightning and is what is thunder? They didn’t know and so filled in the missing understanding by a supernatural explanation.

Hellenic culture attributed such phenomena to Zeus the sky god, Hindus to Indra. Of course eventually the true nature of thunder and lightning is discovered, and there is no longer a need for a supernatural explanation. Zeus ceases to be needed or even to have ever truly existed. A god disappeared.

In fact long before Franklin flew his kite the idea of a ‘god of explanation’ had long vanished as people realised that lightning was most likely to be understood as a natural phenomenon. It isn’t necessary to understand a phenomenon completely to guess at what the truth might be and what it likely isn’t going to involve. So while even today there is much about lightning that is poorly understood, no-one is suggesting that remnant of uncertainty invalidates the entire natural explanation and that shrines to Zeus should be reinstated. Hastily.

There are many things today about the natural world that are difficult to understand either because they are too complex for those without the years of background in the appropriate sciences or because they are still poorly understood or even a complete mystery. Any one persons understanding is likely to be significantly less than the actual scientific knowledge accumulated. That’s not unusual since no one person can know and be expert at everything and not everyone has the desire or inclination to study to sufficient depth. And when faced with something complex that they can’t or perhaps (for reasons explored later) don’t want to understand it is my argument that some people can revert to the same primitive instincts as before - they fill in their missing understanding by supernatural agencies.

Of course in todays technical society we can be much more sophisticated in our supernatural agencies invoking the abstractions of a new age or alien encounters. These beliefs can be wrapped and phrased using science sounding words and ideas. But they all answer the same basic need to explain that which we personally don’t understand.

I would suggest that the Christian church made a serious mistake, perhaps was even cleverly deceived, when it attempted to offer God as a god of natural explanation. Angels guiding planets around heavenly spheres is certainly an explanation of sorts, but ultimately one as primitive as the Hellenic Zeus. It was destined to fail. Somehow faith became entwined in this version of God. Belief mandated God as mother nature constantly manipulating, its tinkering watchmaker designer. The Church offered itself in explanation for nature and it was catastrophic folly. As each natural explanation came forward the Church was made to retreat. Each new explanation, each phenomenon understood made God’s apparent domain less and less. And as it did so faith and belief went with it. The error was to connect Christianity with a false god, a god to explain nature, a god no more substantial than any of a past pantheon. Once that false understanding was shown up for what it was the real revelation and message went, in many peoples eyes, with it. Baby in the manger with the scientific bathwater. And understandable that would be too. Its hard to believe someone is telling you the truth when they have already be proven so wrong in other areas.

The revelation of God in the Bible is not this false explanatory type god but (in my opinion anyway) a God of relationship, of morality, ethics and of what it means to be human. Jesus primarily described Himself as one offering a way to God not as the one throwing lightning bolts around. Although that might have made for an interesting scene in the Gospels.

Sadly it appears the same mistake continues to this day. Some still make their faith dependant on using God to explain complex natural phenomena. It’s a faith always under assault, always struggling to justify itself as God gradually and inevitably disappears as science advances. Perhaps its understandable that some simply choose not to and don’t want to reconsider since it involves a dramatic re-evaluation of ones deep held beliefs. I suspect most psychologists would regard that as potentially painful.

I’m not suggesting science disproves God, nor that God can’t be creator and instigator though no doubt some will read it as such. Science leaves plenty of scope in that regard. The final authority on how the Universe works is the Universe and how it works. It overrides any persons interpretations of Biblical text. If the two are in conflict then it is the interpretation that must be wrong, not the text, not the Universe.

Since it is Darwin’s 200th birthday anniversary (12 February 1809) and the 150th anniversary of his theory of natural selection, evolution offers itself as a prime example of this continuing mistake. My argument with creationists would not be about whether evolution is proven or not, but about downngrading God to be an alternative science explanation. Such an offering is as doomed as Zeus.