This is one of Sells better essays, but then he spoils it by referring to the bogus "unique gift of Israel" and its understanding of history.

Meanwhile of course everything that Sells has ever written on this forum fits entirely within the mortal-meat-body paradigm of naturalism, as does all exoteric religion which by its very nature reduces everyone and everything to the mortal-meat-body scale ONLY.

Put in another way - There are more things in heaven and earth Sells, than are dreamt of in your naive reductionist exoteric philosophy/"theology".
This reference provides a critique of the naive (materialist) realism that mis-informs Sells Spiritually impoverished religiosity:
http://www.aboutadidam.org/lesser_alternatives/scientific_materialism/index.html

One of the original absurdities to which the "occidental" structure of mind, and of Western Man, was predisposed was the invention of a "God" who is an explanation for the existence of the world and whose existence needs to be proven.
The "occidental" mind sees the natural world first and then calculates the existence of "God". Therefore, to the Western or "occidental" mind, God or the Radiant Transcendental Being is not obvious. God must be thought about and invented or caculated into existence.
Since the Radiant Transcendental Being is inherently in doubt from such a diminished point of view, God can only be tentatively believed or eternally sought, but never ever Realized.
http://global.adidam.org/books/eleutherios
Accordingly the natural presumably given (always out "there") world and the body-mind of the human individual (both always arise simultaneously) is accredited with an overwhelming realness, such that it tends to be felt to exist in, of, as, and for itself. Thus leading to the obviously absurd proposition that the mortal-meat-body which one calls me in this life-time will be "resurrected" when Jesus comes again, or on "judgement day".

The Indivisible Unity

The self-consciousness of individual beings inheres in the Transcendental Consciousness, or Transcendental Divine Being Itself.
The body-mind of every individual being inheres in the Self-Radiant Love-Bliss of Transcendental Divine Being Itself.
Nature, or the worlds of the relations of self-conscious psycho-physical beings, inheres in a Matrix of Radiant Light or Energy that also inheres in the Self-Radiant Love-Bliss of Transcendental Divine Being Itself.
That in Which or in Whom self-consciousness, the psycho-physical body-mind, and all possible worlds of experience and knowledge inhere is Self-Radiant, Eternal, Indestructible, Perfect, and Absolute Happiness.
We are, in essence or in Truth & Reality, That One.
We are not destructible, even by death.

History is the dream/nightmare of left-brained reason.
As long as man believes in this dream/nightmare and seeks to acquire an historical identity either individually and especially collectively, he remains unconscious of the fact that he is a bridge between the cosmic realms of "heaven" and earth. Within the nightmare man's hopes will always focus on a future utopia that in fact is progressively realized or manifested as a kakatopia, a psychotechnological intensification of hell on earth.
His only "escape" from this ever darkening fatal circle is to wake up from the dream and Realize a cosmic, mythic, and fundamentally timeless identity.

In the case of Israel the future utopia is of course the re-establishment of the historic lands "promised" to the "chosen people" by their tribalistic cultic "God". The establishment of this utopia necessarily means "cleansing" the "promised" lands of "gentiles" or anyone who is not a Jew.
In the case of Christians it is when "Jesus" comes again to "re-establish" his "righteous rule", having first gotten rid of all the heathens.

As James Joyce prophetically declared in Finnegan's Wake which was published in that fateful year of 1939: his-story is a nighmnare from which I am trying to awaken. Finnegan's Wake was a literary attempt so to do. At another level it signified that European civilization had finally come to its inevitable dead-end. Which it did via both world wars. WWII finished off the destruction began with WWI.

Food for thought, Mr Sellick. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with some of your conclusions, though.

For example, where you said:

"Even if a physical cause of gravity needed to await Einstein, it was felt that it was only a matter of time before all causality could be described and God would finally be expelled from the universe."

I am certain that even when the entire causality of gravity is determined, religious folk will still ascribe its workings to the existence of their deity. Let's face it, once you have decided to believe that the universe was brought into being by a divine presence, everything within it must by definition have the same source. Gravity can therefore never be "explained away", its newly-discovered parameters simply included in the list of wonders-wot-he-wrought instead.

This has little to do with a need for proof, or even evidence. As we move further away from our primitive instincts, and learn to trust our intellects, the idea that there is somehow a "God" whom we need to acknowledge in order to make sense of our existence, rapidly evaporates.

In this context, man's journey through "natural theology" can be seen as simply a way-station on the road to that trust in ourselves. Rather than abandon in an instant the biblical stories on which we were brought up, the God of those stories was interwoven with our increasing awareness of our surroundings.

It is a generational thing. There will inevitably always be people who need to believe in a divine presence, simply through a basic human need for "answers", coupled with an emotional inability to accept that we are on our own. But it is likely that the number of these will gradually reduce, without the need for any further explanation of things we currently don't fully understand.

Peter,
You are spot on with the Israel bit. These people can certainly keep their traditions. Not much different with venturing forth into the desert and coming back with a plastic bag full of Philistine foreskins to lobbing a few artillery shells into a school playground in Gaza?
You use the Big Bang theory as an example of cold, sterile natural history. Many would argue that the BB theory fits more into the Old Testament than natural science. Funding for research is controlled by the religious right, you cannot research any alternative theory if you want to be paid for it. God created the world and all the sinners will die in a red-shifted heat death.
I think what you are trying to say was better described by Oswald Spengler in his stages of birth, growth and decline of civilisations. Newton et al at the beginning embrace the concept of God, this belief declines, becomes “God of the Gaps”, morphs into the atheism and Zen-like cults we observe now.

Little Johny was a bit forgetful, so he was advised to note down at bed-time where everything is so he could find it in the morning. So he wrote:

My trousers and shirt are on the chair.
The chair is on the floor.
My socks are in the bottom drawer.
My shoes are on the doormat.
My toothbrush is in the bathroom.
There is toothpaste on the bathroom's shelf.
My school bag is on the second shelf near my bed.
My school-books are on the third shelf near my bed.
My pens, eraser and ruler are in the top-left drawer.
My notebooks are in the top-right drawer.
Sandwiches for lunch are on the kitchen table.
And I am in bed.

Next morning he found his trousers and shirt, socks and shoes, his toothbrush and toothpaste, his bag and books, pens, eraser, ruler and notebooks as well as the sandwiches for lunch... but then he looked in his bed and hard as he tried he couldn't find himself there!

Now this would usually be considered a joke - except when it is the reality: What for heaven's sake, is God doing looking for Himself in the material world, then becoming frustrated that He cannot find what He is looking for?

"Natural theology has been described in its time as the sick man of Europe."

By Ninian Smart in 1961, but not by anyone else I could identify. Why not attribute your quotes, Peter?

But it's good to see you on side against the fundamentalists of the Green religion. They currently have a great deal more power in the West than the followers of your fairy tales, and as such are capable of inflicting a lot more damage.