I am finding that, for many, when God becomes the center of one’s life, it is easy not to care about what others think or feel. Only God’s stance matters.

The result can enforce the appearance of altruism or cruelty, depending on socioeconomic position, culture, and temperament. What it precludes is any sense of self-worth or empathy that threatens to violate the opinions of God.

This is why I think that although the death of God will not guarantee wide-ranging empathy, it is a necessary prerequisite.

I think the best version of God is one of a being who doesn’t really matter except as a metaphor for the flexible and changing understanding of a community, or as a being permanently behind a veil that may give someone comfort but about which we don’t know anything about. The moment the concept of God becomes one of a being outside of our existence who has something to say about it that some of us have some knowledge of, I begin to get concerned, because this is a nonexistent being whose opinion supposedly trumps ours.

It’s why my Humanism makes me an anti-theist. If we are going to freely embrace humanity, any nonexistent being who governs the terms of that embrace and existentially lies outside of or supposedly “transcends” the empathy we have in our hearts for each other has got to go.