The question of god has troubled philosophy for many generations. Yet, resolution of the controversy, that of His existence or nonexistence, is a mirage to say the least.

Over the course of time the idea itself has morphed, merged and split into various denominations. These various manifestations of an ancient tradition are sometimes in precarious agreement or at times violently antithetical. Is there a common thread that runs through all of them so that we can club them all together under one term and then discuss its merits and flaws?

A couple of words come to mind. ''Supernatural'', ''morality'', ''afterlife'' , ''happiness'' and ''justice''. To me at least these words form the common ground of all religions. The injunctions on what is good and bad, the promise of an afterlife, the meaning of happiness, the guarantee of justice as relates to morality and being inexplicable through natural laws. These to me form the glue that binds all religions, embodied in the one word ''god''.

Surely the question of god's existence, given His influence or potential for influence on all human activity, is of paramount importance. Even a cursory examination reveals that the jury is still out on this one.

Some say god exists. Some say it is possible that gods existed, created the universe and thendied. Others say god doesn't exist. Still others assume an epistemic neutrality - we don't/can't know. The above mentioned positions on the god issue are a few among so many but all I want to convey is their variety and number. It seems that any decent analysis of god-beliefs would be deficient if we don't take into account the various distinguishing features of each belief.

That is not the case. We can put all god-beliefs under one banner. The feature that I consider, that which unites all current god-beliefs is odd and perhaps, new. However it makes sense to me and I hope it will to you too. The property that pervades through all god-beliefs is temporal in nature. All of them reference god in the past or the present. ''God exists'' or ''god created the universe''. This is not a surprise after all god was proposed as an explanation for the existence of the universe, life, etc. Whether god fulfills this task well or not is still a hot topic of debate. I don't want to go into that.

What I want to do is remind you that time is, as far as I know, divided into three compartments viz. the past, the present AND the future. As I said before it is perfectly sensible to discuss god in the past and present tense. But why is the future tense not brought up in discussions? Why doesn't someone say ''god will exist."? Is there a contradiction or perhaps a paradox or has nobody given this serious thought?

''God will exist'' makes sense to me. Why?

If you look at how humans behave (at least the good parts) we see the seeds of a future god. The Constitutions of any decent government, the legal principles and laws of a good justice system, the rules in a simple office, the regulations in a forum like this one, all are codifications of the very best in thoughts and deeds humans can offer. Humans, having realized their own flaws, come together and first debate their virtues and vices
They codify the best they have and then give to these codifications the role of judge, guide and role model. Doesn't this sound familiar? To me it looks like god is taking form in these codifications. It may be slow and clumsy but it is undeniably there.

In addition technology is making rapid progress. A time could come when the codifications I mentioned above are uploaded into a powerful AI who would then be, well, GOD. It may sound farfetched but Orville Wright once said ''No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.''

So, what do you think?

God WILL exist?