"the imaginary world in which believers live"...

Well, you got that one right, Peter. In fact you seem to be getting most things right these days. "God is not supernatural", "God is not physical", "God is not in charge of the Universe" -- how long can it be before you take that last step to "God is not"?

Be careful -- once you get into the habit of describing something purely in negative terms it's going to be increasingly hard for others to take you seriously when you want to claim it still has any relevance to anything. Not only is there no rabbit in the hat, but the hat itself is starting to look pretty nebulous.

Thanks Peter, I would love to see more sermons about the God presence being the embodiment of an uplifting spiritual and emotional experience felt in moments of reflection and celebration of life, perhaps connecting all intelligent, self aware life of this universe.

Can this God ever overcome the supernatural intervening, discriminating God, the 3 in one administrator of prayer petitioners and harsh judge against unrepentant transgressors of holy scriptures? For world peace, I hope so.

Hi Peter

sorry to be a pain, but I can't open that link - looks like the part of the website where you upload material.

John J
Pater is hardly saying here that believers are delusional. Believers or not, we all live in worlds whose meaning is constructed and interpreted by us

the scientific faith belief in the twisted observations of evolution and its ludicrous notion that some sort of accident came to form this perfectly designed world makes the bible look very logical. What you read in Scripture in easily observed in nature. Only men with white coats who can't predict the weather tomorrow want to tell us what has happened in the past. Historically you can't go past the book that tells how it started and tells how it will finish. Only hard heartedness prevents people from seeing the obvious. Thankfully many many scientist are honest enough to admit to the truth. Don't expect them to be seen on the news.

Peter,
Thanks for an interesting essay on the history of the science-religion (theology) relation. You will probably remember that I rather prefer Galileo's view of the TWO complementary books (those of Scripture and Nature) that are BOTH there for us (Christians) to read and interpret. There are those - theists or atheists - who have a rather sophisticated understanding of one of them, but a rather naive understanding of the other one. In both directions. And there are many among us who are rather naive in both respects, but only very few have a decent understanding of both, contemporary exegesis and contemporary physics (quantum mechanics and its abstract offsprings) and what it can imply about the nature of (physical, material) reality.

Of course, I agree - if that is what you were saying - that the time when religion could masquerade as science are over. And that also when science is masquerading as a kind of ersatz-religion it does not do it (and us) much good.

>>The authors of scripture … their description of these events universally pointed to a human and personal reality that may be called spiritual in that it was to do with the psyche of men and women and the health or disease thereof <<

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar–jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.“ (Mt 16:17). 

Had Jesus not spoken to a simple fisherman two thousand years ago but to a twenty-first century Christian, familiar with recent findings in neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, He would have probably formulated it thus: "Blessed are you, son of the twenty-first century, because the source of your faith does not lie in the configuration and interaction of the gray cells in your brain and the way they evolved (those are only the biological carriers of your faith) but my Father, who exists outside and independent of your brain."

In other words, ever since more people are actually educated, and know what ACTUALLY causes most phenomenon in the world to occur, they are now simply too smart to buy into the idea that a magical spirit does it all for them, so long as we make offerings and obey whatever its druids and wizards tell us we should do. Consequently, now that these people realize that all these things occur without divine intervention, they realized there was no actual evidence left that this magical spirit even exists at all, and concluded that it therefore, does not exist either.

I'm glad you understand now Sells.