Religion Is Not About Accepting Twenty Impossible

If Professional Religious Leaders Can [no Longer] Instruct..., Our Artists And Creative Writers Can Perhaps Step Into This Priestly Role And Bring Fresh Insight To Our Lost And Damaged World.

Religion Is A Practical Discipline And In The 17th Century In The West, We Turned It Onto A Head Trip. But It's Like Dancing, Or Swimming, Or Driving, Which You Can't Learn By Texts. You Have To Get Into The Car And Learn How To Manipulate The Vehicle.

A God Who Kept Tinkering With The Universe Was Absurd; A God Who Interfered With Human Freedom And Creativity Was A Tyrant. If God Is Seen As A Self In A World Of His Own, An Ego That Relates To A Thought, A Cause Separate From Its Effect, He Becomes A Being, Not Being Itself. An Omnipotent, All‐knowing Tyrant Is Not So Different From Earthly Dictators Who Make Everything And Everybody Mere Cogs In The Machine Which They Controlled. An Atheism That Rejects Such A God Is Amply Justified.

Now I Think One Of The Reasons Why Religion Developed In The Way That It Did Over The Centuries Was Precisely To Curb This Murderous Bent That We Have As Human Beings.

There Is A Danger In Monotheism, And It's Called Idolatry. And We Know The Prophets Of Israel Were Very, Very Concerned About Idolatry, The Worship Of A Human Expression Of The Divine.