God as an Explanation for Scientific Unknowns

            While discussing the existence of God in class, I came to the realization that people generally use God as a filler for the unknown. Whenever new scientific discoveries are made, the “filler,” or explanation for the unknown, seems to get smaller and smaller. Over the years of human existence, God has seem to go from the most powerful being that controlled everything and everyone, to an image that society looks to for comfort. In ancient Greece, Gods were believed to control everything from storms, to the human behavior. Moving further along in history, people used God as a way to make political judgment. If certain people did not believe, or follow the ways of the Bible, they were considered a witch and sentenced to death. In today’s society, people tend to look at God more as a spiritual leader, using God to pray and look up to. In a general sense, people do not see a storm coming and assume that God is mad at them. In the same way, if a teenager is acting improper and not following the ways of the Bible; he/she would not be sentenced to death. I believe that these changes in society are due to scientific discoveries. The more we discover the less people look at God for explanations. On top of that, it seems as though a lot of people do not have such a strong connection with religion and the belief in God as they used to. I have not completely defined my beliefs, but I definitely know that I trust science more than I trust spiritual ideologies. For example, if I were falling from a cliff, I would trust a parachute more than I would trust “the hand of God”.

            In the future when we start discovering more of the unknown, I wonder what will happen to religion, and the belief in God. Will people just change their perception of God, or will they stop believing in God altogether? As Anselm seems to say, God is the most powerful being. In this case, nobody should lose his or her belief in God, but more what God does.  In today’s world, we associate God and outer space together. We consider God as the creator of the universe now, but if we every discover a different creator of the universe, then that perception of God could then change once again. In the other direction, our country was built off of Christianity. So if this perception of God is undermined by science, what will happen to our religion based society?

            As our culture continues to make scientific discoveries, our society will continue to diminish the power that God has. However, because the universe is so vast, and physics only offers us so much information, we will never actually know everything. We may figure out everything about this universe, but what if then we find another universe? So, this belief in God that humans share may continue to decrease, but it might never go away.