Instructions for Avoiding God

Posted on by Alex Aili

“It is no surprise that I found God–or was found by God–far away from TV sets and gaming systems and computers and schedules and advertising. It was around a campfire, with a few friends, and a dim sense of how the time should be spent for the next few hours. I found God in a space where song and laughter was allowed, where childlike fun and curiosity and great ideas could be discussed. I found God in a space where someone invited me to look at my own heart, and there was nothing around to keep me from doing it.”

A Pilgrim in Narnia

On a global superpower scale, the 1960s were partially defined by the Space Race. In a strange twist on propaganda–or a poor twist in the tale–Lewis had heard that the Russians had announced that they had been to outer space and God was not up there. While it sucks to be a Sky God in the nuclear age, most of us can think of a few reasons that the Russians never found what they were looking for.

One of them, of course, is the question of whether they were really, truly looking for God. On a technical level, there are some questions we might ask of Khrushchev’s cosmonauts: What tools did you use to detect God? What metrics for success and failure did you establish for the experiment? Can we reproduce the experiment?

They are rhetorical questions because we know that the original claim was merely rhetoric. And the truth…

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