God I Can’t Believe… God… I Can’t Believe It’s Not God.

There is a well-known brand called I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter. Obviously, the spread is not butter but it still sells with its clever logo as a substitute. Not Butter, Not Sorry is another slogan on their website. I’m sorry I haven’t tried it. I do like butter however.

I recall getting margarine when I was small. Butter was more expensive. Very occasionally we got butter from the milkman who came to the door at dawn in Dublin. He initially travelled with a horse and cart. Later the milkmen got little vans. They left the milk in bottles, reusing the empties. You took it in before school or work and in case the birds might come to peck through the foil top to get the cream. You knew the milkmen usually and they knew you. Clinking bottles was a morning chime. Then we got butter as a treat. I recall the salty creamy taste when my mother gave it to me the first time and it was heavenly. There was nothing better than this. No substitute then at least (and in truth since) could compare. The others we got at that time were pale imitations without the full golden grandeur from the local dairy and cows from the lovely green grass by country hedges not too far away on the city edges. I used to call it ‘real butter’ and was very glad to get it. Later on we only got that. As with everything, the initial thrill or even shock subsided (a little) though the taste and appetite has never. Not even when we were told it was a killer by clever scientists before some more clever scientists changed their minds again. We had survived with butter since the olden days in Ireland. There are samples that are thousands of years old that were preserved in the bogs. If only those poor old fools that built Newgrange and some of the other buildings that still stand and function had been as smart as us!

Many people are now atheist and even hostile to ideas of God, attributing to the divine the actions of people far down the hierarchy. Many say they are agnostic. But if one looks at what that means, as defined by Thomas Henry Huxley, it is almost an impossible standard to move on from. In simple terms many say ‘I can’t believe.’ I support their right to decide whatever they want. You can also be gnostic where you know rather than believe.

Many have been convinced that all these stories are simply made up. They were told by diligent German, British and other researchers that all these stories were mere myths. They were told by psychotherapists that God was just a projection and so on. Science somehow debunks the divine. It is just not cool in many circles to believe in God. As soon as the Bolsheviks came into power, they pulled down the churches, procured the valuables and established godlessness.

God must prove existence to the sceptic. There might be a little conceit in the concept that something necessarily conceived as immeasurably greater than any human consciousness and conception must bow down before the lonely mind to convince them. We are unconvinced by the very fact of existence in the fine-tuned material world and the inherent capacity to construe such an entity or the tradition of experience of the divine. Once we could find gods everywhere and the one greater or something bigger, like the Tao. A long tradition of unique experience is now obviously considered a fraud. But we can believe that the machines we make are more intelligent than anything else in the universe, especially us.

They had plenty of historical evidence of the value of disposing of such beliefs. When you become scientific, rational, reasonable and atheistic, you can melt the gold of old God and use it for machines, weapons and wealth. The Russians had learnt this from the Reformation. There was a bonus. After you have disabused the peasants and workers of their ignorance, then you could show the benefits that came from your actions. Your new wealth could be described as the Protestant work ethic for example. The previous work you pulled down and those stained glass windows were not really work were they? But the concept of God is only part of the worldview discarded.

The Swedish Substitute

In Sweden, Katarina Barrling published Världens mest protestantiska land: Sverige – det extrema landet lagomin 2024. In English this would be something like The world’s most Protestant country: Sweden - the extreme country of moderation." Lagom is a unique word and concept in Swedish related to just enough of something, like Goldilocks sought. I can’t quite do it when it comes to butter, real that is. Barrling argues that while Sweden left the Catholic faith and became Protestant and then secular, it still retains a certain religiosity. Sweden forgot God. Another book is Landet som glömde Gud: hur Sverige under 1900-talet formades till världens mest sekulärindividualistiska land (2022) by Per Ewert. In English this would be The country that forgot God: How Sweden in the 20^th century became the world's most secular and individualistic nation. The title is conveniently self-explanatory. Then there are more specific examples. 68-kyrkan: Svensk kristen vänsters möten med marxismen 1965–1989 (2017) by the late Johan Sundeen. This again is usefully explanatory when we see the translation - The 68-Church: The Swedish Christian Left’s encounters with Marxism 1965-1989. Barrling argues that religiosity is transmuted into collective political cohesion. But it becomes clear that God is discarded.

The Lost Ingredient

God goes out in this movement. God goes out in many movements initiated by the Enlightenment and various revolutions, including the Scientific one. But it is not just God that went. A whole worldview was lost. C.S. Lewis explained this in his book The Abolition of Man (1943) but more comprehensively in The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964). He also explains how we are losing any base for objective value. While this was not dependent on Christianity or Catholicism, the excision thereof and creation of a secular society undermines the reality of an idea of objective value.

But the people who can’t believe (and the ones who can believe but are teetering) are getting substitutes. I Can’t Believe It’s Not God is on many intellectual shelves. All the flavour of God can be had without any of the nasty side-effects. No need for the light of God when you have God-lite. The bad bits have been taken out. For those perplexed with the problem of reconciling their belief with science, you don’t need to worry. I Can’t Believe It’s Not God is scientific. Yes, it uses the language of science in a poetic manner. It appears like the old stuff in many ways. It spreads very well, is smooth and tasty. Your friends will love you if you use it. The cost is not much. You merely have to jettison any attachments you have to the old stuff. Just do not walk down that aisle. Instead look on the new shiny shelves by the tills for pantheism, neo-paganism, panpsychism, some vague cosmological idea from science and so on. AI is a new brand. Earth-love another. 

God without the boredom of conveyance of the messages is here. New and improved, extra-strength. The real thing. But watch that humans are not in the ingredients and the new God might not even want them unlike in the old grim stories.

It is God but not as you knew Him. He is certainly not a man nor masculine and the beard is gone. Much better, God is not a person, nor human.  God is something else you can believe in. God may be really the sum of physical forces in nature. That means the physicalists are not put off. God is no longer supernatural. It’s like quantum. Quantum is ok. God when you’re desperate, Not-God when you have to observe, immeasurable in crisis, collapsing under examination. God is not really spiritual they say, maybe a type of consciousness, though that may not include human consciousness for some. We do not need any of the old guff with churches and worship in the same way. We don’t need those old buildings. You can stay at home, work from home. They can be used to pay damages and used for discos and youth clubs. If there is to be a new church, it can be comprised of the constituency of the scientific elite who congregate around the new acceptable concepts. Scientific priests.

But if we examine God in 9^th century Ireland as evidenced in the work of Eriugena, we see a NeoPlatonic almost Taoistic concept of God. So there was no caricature there. It is more complex and persuasive than many concepts of God and nothing like what we are told people used believe. The love of nature in the Irish monastic tradition was consistent and I think some of the druid tradition has been voluntarily integrated. The personal God concentrated on Christ. Many people find God unbelievable because of the personal element. If we conceive of higher beings and hierarchy, look at other traditions and ideas of avatars and so on and if AI advocates can attribute personality and consciousness to their constructs (even if it is a simulacrum) this objection seems more and more unsustainable.

Daniel Dennett and his ilk saw the concept or construction of God as inherently predicated on limitation, stopping you doing things. That is the real reason for denial of the real.  Remarkably, many occultists do believe in higher beneficent forces, but reject them for the same reason.

Most of all we do not need dull old dogma, those dour rules that stop us doing things. These we can get from political thinkers, companies and cultural commentators. AI can tell us now. It’s a cash-cow and a holy-cow. The latter group basically argues that all the old rules are useless and they can tell us what suits us today. This will involve new classifications, compartments and rules of conduct.

I can’t believe it’s not religion and I Can’t Believe it’s Not God. Certainly not One who knows more than us or might have a mysterious plan. That was all a mistake. The great advantage of having deconstructed the old worldview is that there is plenty of vague space for a new one whose mere sketch will seem worthwhile. Don’t you worry about the difference if you can tell. Soon surveillance, satellites and implants will be like God, watching you every second. Not to worry!

The simulacrum can make the new morality, church and notion of God. AI is a candidate. Re-construction is made much more appealing when you have forgotten you had cosmic worldviews once and can’t remember why you had that old rot about rules, morals, community, society and free will. That superstition of spirituality is made especially invidious. Thanks be to God we’ve chucked it all out! We can have something about body, mind and psyche and certainly those useful idiots of the unconscious and subconscious, as long as you have experts and medicine to treat the inherent flaws that used to be sins. The idea of sin is gone as is the idea of forgiveness and redemption. Instead in the new paradise on earth (it no longer exists in the afterlife) you have new sins cultivated by critical commentators and cultural constructors and no forgiveness. Truth is new and probabilistic.

With I Can’t Believe It’s Not God, our simulacrum can be made. The stuff cut out by revolution can be re-inserted but labelled scientific.  We can finalise the matrix. We can de-doubt you. We have a Procrustean preparation of humanity for the secular, scientific bed. We should at least pay attention to the difference in ingredients. It may not be what you believe in that is critical but what you believe you are not believing in. If you never get even a sniff of the real thing the pale substitute will smell great if it seems to perform certain roles.

We don’t want to serve God but will tolerate gods or God that serve us. Now. In time and space. Be more intelligent with machines. Forget eternity. Try to be immortal. Conquer the heavens with space-travel instead.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not God is something you can believe in finally. And it tastes great!