An absolutely brilliant article for demonstrating the absurdity of all religion.

Sells
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to believe
With apologies to Sir Walter Scott

The Black Adder summed all of this in his classic exclamation: utter crap!

Mono-theism is actually very simple.

It is always an extension of the collective ego of a tribalistic cult, whether that tribalistic cult numbers only 100 or 2 billion.

It is also a mistake of language, or rather a form of pernicious IDOLATRY wherein the Indivisible Divine Conscious Light gets reduced to the scale and purpose(s) of the collective tribal ego.

This idolatrous "god" is thus made the slave of the tribal ego, and by extension is used to justify all of the inevitable slaughters done in the name of the power seeking cult in its INEVITABLE attempts to conquer everyone else. This is particularly true of Islam(ISM) and ChristianISM, but also to a lesser degree, of JudaISM.

Meanwhile Sells presumes to talk about God altogether, or rather Truth and Reality and yet he never ever writes about the two irreducible Primal aspects of Reality altogether. Namely Consciousness and Energy or Light---let alone Conscious Light.

He is in effect both a purveyor of self-serving impenetrable cultic idolatries and a naive realist who is thoroughly convicted of the myth of "matter" as described here: http://www.dabase.org/broken.htm

Plus for a more expanded window into Truth, Reality and The Beautiful, and the nature of the times in which we live, please check out this reference---which is about Real Intelligence.

http://theenlightenedworld.org/home/2009/03/02/the-ancient-walk-about-way-of-adi-da-samraj

Here we go again with the old bait-and-switch:

"However, a closer inspection of the God of the Bible reveals something much deeper and more interesting than a human projection... He is more accurately described with the use of an analogy of relationship, of presence. Whereas classical theism relies on an ontology of substance, Christian theology relies on an ontology of relation. God is as he is in relation... This means that he does not exist as other beings exist, but he is defined by his being in relation."

In other words, "I would never say anything so silly as that God exists, but he's still REEEELY important!"

Do you really think that the vast majority of Catholics and Protestants -- now mostly to be found in the undereducated developing world -- believe anything so vague or subtle? And do you really think that Muslim and Jewish theologians can't be just as vague and evasive when it suits them to be? (Look up 'pilpul', for instance). This kind of not-MY-Goddism is as old as the hills, but as far as I know it hasn't stopped one person from being burned at the stake, raped or slaughtered by the proponents of the more prevalent belief that religion is actually ABOUT something.

Does God really exist, Peter? Yes or no? And if not, why on earth do you bother?

Good article Peter. I think you have made a thoughtful analysis of the Christian concept of God.
I am amazed at the first four posts. I can understand why humans can be so distructive to each other when I read the shallow, dismissive and insulting things that are written. I have noticed this before with your articles - why do these same people keep reading Sells when they disagree with him? Is it just to be nasty? I wonder ...

Peter M,
I for one am not trying to insult Peter S. (although I may do so). Peter invites us to read his articles and we respond. Is this not a good thing? Peter likes us responding in the way we do because refuting our comments either to himself or in public gives him confidence in his own world view. I worry about Peter's level of doubt sometimes, for he does have some. We are working on it.