About the absence of God in this movie...

There is no God. Period.

OP, I think you missed it.

However, most critical opinions are all about projection or what baggage you are bringing when viewing a film, especially one like this. I can't imagine the general consensus of one who would actually sit thru a Lars Von Tier film could ever walk away with the film message being "start believing".

This film effectively lays out the effects of depression in its severest incapacitated form and the focus of one psyche of such an anti-social disorder, inability to conform to the world....and later her dominance to successfully function in the upcoming destruction of this same world vs. the panic/cowardice of the same people scolding her depressive state in their world.

It has nothing to do with religion as religion to a depressive person with her intellect, is void and she is surpassed its need.

At the beginning of the film Justine has a vision of the end. She knows already that the end is nigh. Her vision is distressing as she stands alone witnessing events that include her sister struggling to flee with her son and the horse collapsing. When the end comes - the trio are together. The horse we never see but he returns and is eating grass when last we see him. The ending is brief and final but it is not separate. There was a serendipity that visited the trio; something with which John was not blessed.

I'm scared of the middle place between light and nowhere

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The preacher of Dogville had left and never been replaced and so they missed a moral leader and had to do with pseudointellectual Tom. That's also a way of saying-look how terrible everything can become without a truly moral center.

LVT I know from reading his biography is someone who would really, really like to believe, but just can't.

Genies theory, makes perfect sense the no god concept here and in Dogville.

I think they were going for something straight forward no magic is going to stop this type of story. This rogue planet is going to hit earth and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Adding religion would've just been like umm... So when is god going to come down poof the planet away and start his judgment on us for our wicked ways. The movie is about depression not about the actual fall of civilization as the planet approaches.

It's there, he just shifted from a theological God to a universal God many of old philosophers believed in. When looked at from this standpoint the movie almost becomes a study of different doctrines. Lars studied the stoics.