𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗛𝗔𝗦 𝗚𝗢𝗗 𝗕𝗘𝗘𝗡 𝗗𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗢 𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗔𝗧𝗘 𝗛𝗨𝗠𝗔𝗡 𝗦𝗨𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚?

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

One of the first sub-orbiters of Earth in 1961, Russian Cosmonaut, Comrade Yuri Gagarin, declared that he saw "no God or angels" in his 1 hour, 48 minute flight just above the planet's atmosphere.

Even at 13, Gagarin's statement didn't seem scientifically conclusive as it's not like he'd explored every nook and cranny of the Universe.

Years before I'd asked my mom the question millions of kids have asked: "Who made God?"

She told me, not too convincingly: "He made himself."

When I told that to Steven Gonder, a First Grade classmate, he said: "That sounds stupid," so I kept that tidbit of understanding to myself after that.

In my Bible study, we learned about the so-called creative days, the six days the Creator is said to have used to prepare Planet Earth for human habitation.  

It was explained that such a "creative day" was not limited to 24 hours, but could be an entire year or even thousands of years.

That bit of religious spin made Creation not seem so rushed.

Anyway, thousands of years before Yuri Gagarin was born, Moses was said to have asked to "see God's Face" and reportedly was told by God himself that "no man can see me and live."

So, Gagarin was lucky he didn't see God or he wouldn't have made it back to Russian soil alive. 

Years after Gagarin's unsuccessful flight in search of God, it was explained to me that God was almighty, omnicient and omnipresent.

The almighty part was the easiest of the three to understand because I already figured He was pretty strong, but omnicient or "all-knowing?"

"So, God already knew Adam and Eve were going to sin and eat from that tree before they actually did?" I asked.

It was at that point that my Mom told me one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, that God was indeed "all-knowing," but, that, in some situations he "chooses" not to exercize his "foreknowledge.'

That explanation doesn't sound any more plausible six decades later.

The omnipresent thing was actually more fun than the other two.   Being everywhere in the universe at one time seemed like a playful concept.

In my juvenile mind, God could be checking on things on Earth accompanied by his angelic posse, then order the whole crew back to Heaven.

When the angels got back to headquarters, obviously flying faster than the speed of light as you can't get anywhere in this big universe going just 186,000 miles per second, God would laughingly say "What took you so long?" to his non-omnipresent underlings.  That little juvenile scene made me laugh every time I repeated it to myself, but grownups didn't find it so funny.

The role of angels was also intriguing, especially when I learned some ranked higher than others, like cherubs and seraphs.

But, angels, I was told, were the "messengers."

While that sounded cool, I wondered why God would need a messenger service if he was omnipresent, that is, already there at the scene that angels were going to report on.

"Or, maybe, angels simply delivered messages to humans as there was no need to report back to God as he was ominicient and already knew what was going on everywhere," I thought to myself.

The miracles recorded in the Bible do give some hope that God or his Son could actually do some good in the world.

The two primary miracles of the Bible were Jesus turning water into wine, then, on another occasion "multiplying" 5 loaves of bread and two fish into enough grub to feed a "multitude."

Impressive and that did help a little, but not enough to make a dent in the miseries of human history.

Jesus was resurrected, went back to Heaven, we're told and has been "watching" over us for the last two thousand years.

The Father, the Son, accompanied by the impersonal Holy Spirit, have seen transpire on Planet Earth since: bubonic plague, the Holocaust,Spanish flu, the swelling tummies of starving children, WWI, WWII, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes too numerous to mention.

A "miracle" to stop ANY one of the above would have been a great act of love and fatherhood on behalf of God's earthly sons and daughters.

And, then we have the regular tsunami waves that occur in actually predictable, observable patterns.  One such tsunami killed 227,898 while the omnicient, omnipresent and almighty God of the Universe looked on.

I remember.  I think it was 1965 when a theologian, Thomas Altizer, declared that "God is dead" and shocked, horrified, angered so many.

Actually, I'd much rather believe that God is dead than think he's almighty, omnicient and omnipresent and let all this shit happen to his Earthly sons and daughters while he sat on his ass doing nothing.