Occasionally, however, I do a thought experiment. I wonder how many of the policies coming out of Washington, London and Canberra in the last ten years would have lapsed if put through the filter of the teachings of Jesus on love and forgiveness. If George W. Bush is a good example of a thoroughgoing Christian, then Heaven help us.

I draw several lessons from all this about the future of God and of ourselves.

The first is, inevitably, about education. Science may be imperfect and may have produced harm, but it is by a cosmic mile more reliable and potentially less hazardous than most human institutions. It is also the key to our survival. The relativism that demeans our times should not be allowed to go unchallenged. We are not in a knowledge supermarket, where the choice is up to the customer; we need critical thinking to help us dispose of the dross. Our schools and universities should be the front lines of this, not dupes of snake-oil merchants.

Second, we need to know other cultures better than we do. The war in Iraq has been a shocking disaster because the invaders had not a clue about how to behave in a foreign land. Terry Eagleton is half right when he asks that we should at least try to know something about the human values we are rejecting.

Thirdly, we need to grow up. Religion may have had its place in the forest and during medieval plagues. Today it is either a faint remnant in the hands of apologetic bishops or a rallying cry for rampaging crowds shouting vile loathings. A private conviction, politely held, is one thing. A national policy putting millions at risk is another.

As for God-he can look after his own future.

Postscript 1

Danny Wallace, 30, a comedian, took out a newspaper advert inviting everyone to join a new cult. It had no message. Despite this, people signed up. Danny started a website saying only ‘Join me’, still with no statement of purpose. People kept joining. They started calling Danny ‘Leader’.

Somewhat freaked, Danny, being a good bloke, decided to turn the cult’s raison d’être into random good works, like sending peanuts to pensioners. After five years this accidental organisation has 16,000 members Europe-wide. People are such keen joiners… and followers.

True story!

Postscript 2

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed-I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any of them. Mine is not a religion of the prison house. It has room for the least among God’s creations. But it is proof against the insolent pride of race, religion or colour.

– Mahatma Gandhi

The Hunches of Nostradamus

2008 All US presidential candidates say they know God personally-’He’s my senior adviser.’

2009 President of Iran promises to wipe out all infidels- non Muslims-’God willing!’ Darwin anniversary celebrations cancelled in US.

2010 Richard Dawkins publishes Why God Stinks; insists it is not meant to be provocative.

2010 Discovery Institute in Seattle says it can prove all humans were ‘intelligently designed’- with the exception of Richard Dawkins.

2011 Archbishop of Canterbury admits being an atheist. Says this is no impediment to doing his job.

2012 Terrorists blow up all kindergartens and school buses in Israel and southern England ‘in the name of Allah’.

2013 Lesbian becomes Archbishop of York.

2014 Degrees in intelligent design offered at Australian universities-because ‘they are so very well funded’, says Vice-Chancellors Committee.

2015 Israel bombs Iran with nuclear devices.

2016 Membership of Pentecostalists and other churches recruiting mainly young people reaches several billion worldwide. They denounce evolutionary biology.

2017 George Pell becomes Pope. Condemns condoms.

2018 Middle East wiped out.

2019 Pope George offers prayers for world peace.

2020 God announces (via ABC Radio National) he is giving up in disgust, leaving this universe and going off to start another one.

I am hurrying through the city streets to pick up a car. It’s a typically turbulent spring day in 2027, the weather far less calm and predictable than in the twentieth century. No vehicles are standing kerbside, not even in the suburbs: few people own cars now, as fuel has become too expensive and we cannot afford the space to park them. I come to a CarPool. It offers two choices. One is a nifty two-seater, even smaller than the abbreviated carlets which appeared twenty years ago, driving around town as if their rear ends have been chopped off. The other choice is a six-seater with ample carrying space for family or goods. I take out a smart card-actually an electronic prong (a Hypertel) attached to my mobile phone-which registers both my account and my sobriety. The card opens the car and automatically charges my bank, and off I go.

The traffic is slight. Most commuters now take mass transit. I am driving because I want to go somewhere not served by buses or trains, to make a few detours and end up in Canberra, where I’ll simply leave my carlet in another CarPool and walk away. This system has several advantages. The vehicles have 92 per cent usage (instead of the 97 per cent idleness of old); they are well maintained and run on state-of-the-art alcohol batteries weighing a trifle. Parking fees are nonexistent, and my only other direct cost is the road charge, now automatic and universal and graded electronically from expensive motorways to cheaper suburban streets.

Few miss the cars they used to own. It just became too difficult to run them and to put up with the ever-increasing restrictions. Now, in 2027, if we do want to drive occasionally, we have all the luxury of a hire car with the accessories of our choice (GPS, pods, child seats). CarPools are as abundant as post offices once were.

Fantasy? Of course! Would Australians (or Americans, or the newly affluent Chinese) put up with no car ownership? Not unless some shock makes us reassess our mad, 50-year-old affair with the private car. My parents did not own one (not so unusual in the mid-twentieth century), and in 2005 between 20 per cent and 24 per cent of households in Sydney and Melbourne did without. Only about three generations have taken car dependence for granted, so it would not be strange to see some change as circumstances alter-as they must.

The car is an odd piece of engineering. Unlike the bicycle, which converts energy into momentum with 95 per cent efficiency, with the car, as Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute likes to point out, ‘only 13 per cent of its fuel energy even reaches the wheels’. Most energy disappears in the form of heat or noise, or is dissipated by accessories like airconditioning and windscreen wipers. After warming the tyres, says Lovins, ‘just 6 per cent of the fuel energy actually accelerates the car’. Nearly two tonnes of machinery to shift less than 0.08 tonnes of you.