Criticisms?

@skado No criticism of naturalism and I assume that Rue's prose is delicately balanced.

@waitingforgodo

between?

@skado sinecures and sensibilities?

"There is nothing in the substance of everybody's story to rule out belief in the reality of a personal deity. At the same time, such a belief is not an essential part of everybody's story. There will be theistic versions of the story, and there will be nontheistic versions as well. Those who take the theistic option will have at their disposal a range of images that may be used to arouse motivational systems. But I have confidence that everybody's story, unadorned by theological imagery, has the potential to arouse us to serve its imperatives."

He waxes teleological like a true believer nonetheless so the longer lighter side of the balance has all the gods and the shorter length the science.

@waitingforgodo
I’m only at page 49 so far. Have you read the book?

Why do you believe that?

@skado look around ... What do you see?

@Redneckliberal
I see lots of scientists saying religion is about evolution, and not a single one saying it is about money, power and control.

Should we also turn to them to tell us whether the earth is flat? Why should we assume they (of all people) should know why they are doing what they do?

@skado Why should we turn to anyone espousing god or religion or spirituality or whatever without evidence nor even reasoned argument?

@racocn8
That’s my question to you. Why does it matter what the religionists would say if you asked them if religion is about God?

@skado They are the ones making the claim. I judge them to be an unreliable source.

@racocn8
Me too. So why do we want to ask them?

@skado I'm not especially keen on asking them given they've never produced anything meaningful before. They may have shreds of wisdom worth contemplating, but those are needles in the haystack, and they're no help finding them. They have grandiose marketing, and once in a while, that could catch one's eye. After a few decades of experience, one can see there's nothing to see.

It i interesting to note that no word for god exists in Mandarin, despite the attempts of the early Jesuits, who, in translating classical works , inserted the word god. The nearest equivalent is considered to be Ziran, which means that way of nature....

God is Reality Personified, Not a Person
Rudolf Bultmann
God is not a person; God is a mythic personification of reality. If we miss this we miss everything.

Birth, life, death, the cycles and rhythms of Nature, the elemental forces of the Universe—these are undeniably real. Like it or not, we humans have always been in an inescapable relationship with a Reality that we could neither fully predict nor control. And given the nature of our brains, there's one thing that people in every culture and throughout history have instinctually done: we've used metaphors and analogies to understand and relate to that which is unavoidably, undeniably real and/or mysterious. We can't not do this. Consciously or unconsciously, we will always interpret via metaphors.

ALL images and concepts of God are more or less meaningful interpretations and personifications. And it didn't take a genius to figure out that if you trust, or have faith, in what is ultimately inescapable, your life works better than if you judge or resist what is real. This is not theological rocket science.

[thankgodforevolution.com]

Faith is what people use when they have no answer. I'm doing just fine without faith, religion, and gods.

We don't know if chimps have a religion or gods.

Did you know that Mushrooms are more closely related to us than to plants? And they are just fine without God!

@violetfree Yes, I recently read an article about it.