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It is just people trying to wedge god into smaller and smaller gaps. God lives on the surface area that consists of human ignorance and superstition. As the general level of human knowledge and education expands, the presentation of god has to become less childish and seemingly more sophisticated and nuanced. The old legends sufficed in the beginning because an adequate conception of a transcendent, all powerful being was similar to an exalted human, perhaps a powerful king ... there was no conceptual framework to go further. The universe as something other than a vault anchored on the horizon with stars affixed to it, hadn't even been thought of yet. The notion that there was something primitive or immature or inconsistent about god's temper tantrums or being offended by a tower, just didn't occur to anyone.
It's hard to imagine the conceptual and intellectual limitations of someone who lived 3,000 years ago. The concept of an infinitely vast universe was still getting people drummed out of Royal Societies, much less churches and communities, just a few hundred years ago. The default assumption in ancient times was that the earth was a huge part of all that existed, and that its purpose was to play out the drama of salvation and reconciliation between god and man. There is even a passage in the NT about a "great cloud of witnesses" watching this drama and of angels being fascinated by the human drama, etc. It was a tremendous perceptual shift and reframing to even move the center of the universe to the sun, much less to realize there IS no center to something that's infinite.
By the way, to address not just your initial post but the question it's titled with ... I don't think god has "become abstract", but agree that he has "become irrelevant". It is not because he's not concrete enough, or has become less concrete. The Abrahamic god has always been invisible, transcendent, ineffable, and therefore quite abstract. The problem is that the original baseless assertions about god's existence hold up less and less well as they are unsupported entirely and more and more people are willing to admit that this is so as the old taboos against doing so deteriorate. And the fewer things that can't be naturalistically explained, the less plausible the supernatural is. To the point that we are not starting to understand that the supernatural is a completely illogical and irrelevant concept, itself.
I disagree that God has become irrelevant. Organized religion might become less popular, but not the belief in God/the supernatural. The definition of God might be changing, but the belief in God is still there and I don't think that will go away. I also don't think it's a bad/negative thing that the definition of God is changing.
I have certainly got the impression that more posters here are talking about a more non -religion -specific god. That's good, as I don't have a real quarrel with irreligious theists.
How is it a "progression"? It is the natural way that a person thinks about God. Even when I was 9 or 10 I thought of God as an "uncaused first cause." But I wouldn't have used those words. Everyone at some point must think about God in this way, I would think.
Regarding the title of this thread: God is irrelevant to those who want God to be so. Reality is not affected by what you think.
While I agree that reality is what it is, no matter what we might think or believe, the implication there (for those of us who go on the basis of evidence rather than faith) is that all we have to do is find out what the reality is.
The implication of that is, that, if the reality we find makes God look even more abstract and even irrelevant, then that is what it is, no matter what we might want to think or believe about God.
To put this in some perspective, religion gets you busy (sometimes doing good stuff [but not that often]) so that you do not have time to ponder the concepts documented in the bible which for most rational people does cause cognitive dissonance. Much of it flies in the face of current secular morality meaning that as humans with secular laws, they are far more empathetic than what is given in the bible.
The idea of the golden rule supposedly voiced by jesus, love thy neighbour as thyself is about all that is palatable in the modern era.
The one issue I had with religion was that the churches tend to get you "involved" and "busy" and these activities distract from the real important stuff like family. There are plenty of testimonies or extimonies of folk like me that spent waaay to much caught up in the so called "godly" activities.
In my case, this was wednesday services, thursday band paractice, friday youth services, two services on Sundays and unlike the pew warmers, we musicians had to put in at least 2 extra hours per service, the sheeple expected to be entertained so you had to be set up and prepared. To a lesser extent ushers did much the same.
This time adds up and detracts from raising your family, notably, the off time you have from the grindstone where you are actually functioning as a close family unit, I focussed on the "music ministry" and leading this, I inevitably spent much of my spare time preparing new songs, working out the chords etc. (became easier now with Google)
And all this time is wasted effort. Perhaps if I had done stuff like playing games with the kids, I would have bonded better with them.
That is my only regret other than the money I wasted donating to leeches (readreachers) too frigging useless to get a real job.
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reachers) too frigging useless to get a real job.
