a history of god

“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thou, a cause separate from its effect, “he” becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who made everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified. Instead we should seek to find a “God” above this personal God. There is nothing new about this. Ever since biblical times, theists had been aware of the paradoxical nature of the God to which they prayed, aware that the personalized God was balanced by the essentially transpersonal divinity. Each prayer was a contradiction, since it attempted to speak to somebody to whom speech was impossible; […] it said “thou” to a God who, as Being itself, was nearer to the “I” than our own ego. Tillich preferred the definition of God as the Ground of being. […] Human beings have to use symbols when they talk about Being-itself: to speak literally or realistically about it is inaccurate and untrue.”