A facebook comment that got a little out of hand, responding to someone who does sterling work combatting religious idiocy but sometimes, for me, tips over into a kind of belicose anti-god stance that, for some reason I haven't quite managed to nail down yet, I find difficult to stomach.
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I've come across plenty of other people, like myself, who just can't get that hung up about the use of the term "god" and are quite happy living in a world where asking "does god exist" is just a nonsensical question. Is there a beardy skyman I should listen to on all important matters? No. Is there a role in human society for using such concepts to order our understanding of the universe? Maybe. Historically, definitely - including using these forms to actually organise resource management and social structures very effectively.

For me, it's the same mistake planners made in Bali when they screwed their rice production systems up. As Lansing puts it, the history of Western science has been the continuation of "a centuries-old battle against superstition. From this perspective, magic is the antithesis of rational thought."

Don't pay too much attention to word 'magic' there; maybe use "set of socially mediated principles for ordering reality". We have those, we just mostly can't see them because, well - we think it's reality. To an extent we've meshed our weltanschauung with our accretion of scientific knowledge, but that doesn't change our basic nature.

I'm not saying it's purely functional either. My sense of my place in the entire universe, whether I get that from staring at Hubble pictures or my own navel - if I want to call that a spiritual thing, I think I should be allowed without being accused of wanting BeardySkyMan to tell me what to do.

I'm never quite sure what I'm arguing against. It's not like I personally make much use of the "god" concept (or possibly any). But I can see how others might and I don't really see why anyone has a problem with that - so long as they don't go around saying "my god has told me you two men must stop kissing each other otherwise I'll have to stick a spike through your head". If that's the issue, work on stopping people being such intolerant twats. There are plenty of incredibly tolerant and brilliant religious/ spiritual people in the world. I'm unclear why anyone would e.g. want to undermine the stuff going on here.