On the Non-Appearance of God

In 2014 I published a history of atheism, Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World (Palgrave Macmillan). And I remain fascinated with the fact that God has so often been conspicuous in His absence. So I put together a list of some of the most important moments in which He proved a no show and handed them over to GPT 5, which now claims sufficient familiarity with my style to be able to craft an essay in “a wry, amused, idea-forward Stephens tone.” (I like “idea forward.”) Here is the result: idea entirely mine, examples all mine, most of the actually wordings the AI’s, and style intended to be mine—though probably even more “wry” and “amused” than I might have managed.   And now I can spend the rest of the morning reading the news or going for a walk or whatever we humans are supposed to do in this AI-ified world..

      God is wonderfully real in the early pages of Genesis. Not metaphorically real, not “felt in the heart” real—really real. He walks, He talks, He strolls through the garden in the evening breeze like a homeowner checking the irrigation system. [Note: this was the worst of the AI’s wordings.] He behaves more like a Mesopotamian super-being than an ineffable First Cause. . . .