I don't define "God" as the bearded man in the sky, and many religious people I know don't either. If anything, my concept of a God is of a more scientific, concept-of-infinity, origin-of-energy-in-the-system kind of thing. God's not remotely human-like, and I don't think he's watching, doing, changing, or caring about us in the sense that we use those words. Kind of a "oneness of the whole" is the farthest I'll go, I guess. Maybe that's more in the realm of Zen, I don't know, I've never felt compelled to study any of it.

When couched in human terms like that, then I can definitely go along with a concept of 'god'...but I think there is a much better name for it. There's nothing wrong with having a 'collective group think'. We are social creatures first after all. But that is not a god in the way humans have created it.

ETA: Ummm, I think I may have distorted your meaning a bit, Clod.

I guess that that pun will be my cross to bear.

I figured you were responding to glatt, not me. But I don't disagree with what you're saying, I'm in favor of most any convention that ultimately leads to people helping other people and building a healthy community, even if the stories justifying those conventions are a little silly when you start to examine them.

Martyr

Posted before but seems appropriate here :p

eheh...that was good.

@ Pico: was it the bad vicar one, or the Dawkins one, because I edited and changed the video?

When there is some kind of disaster or tragedy and someone says, "god saved me", there's this implied, "and he killed all those other losers."

Or "you are so beautiful to me" implies "I don't care if everyone else thinks you're a butt ugly slag." :p:

You changed the Dawkins one? Ah man.

Exactly.

I'll re-post it here then :p

See, if I *think* about it, then I have to go in the atheist direction.

But I suppose the religious response to you could be that yes we are blessed, and it's our responsibility to help the less fortunate. We can't help them all, but we can help a little. And we do.