What is God?

[anvi]

Don't believe in a personal God, like the God portrayed in the monotheistic religions,  an overarching supernatural and divine personage.  I'm more sympathetic to Asian naturalistic conceptions of the sacred, such as brahman of the Hindu Upanisads or the dao of Daoism.  But, if God is to be described as the creator of all life on earth, then the closest thing we have to God in the modern scientific worldview is DNA polymerase.

[anvi]

I do have to say here that, even though I am not a fan of monotheistic religions anymore, and I agree that religions have been used to justify incredible violence and injustice in history and now, I've also been witness to what good such faiths can do.  A few years ago, I attended an international conference on peace studies, and there were hundreds of deeply religious activists there who put their lives on the line every day to try to stop fighting in so many perilous regions in the world, Israeli Jews and Palastinian Muslims, Hindus and Indian Muslims and Indian Christians, Indonesian Muslims and Christians too.  They found themselves on battlefields, beaten, imprisoned, often in mortal danger, and what gave them their strength was their faith in what they believe to be God.  Their strength is a strength I gravely doubt I could ever have.  So, I myself cannot bring myself to believe in such things as monotheists do, and I recognize clearly that religion has been put to the service of evil.  But I have also seen how real faith, not fake faith or superficial faith, can be put to the serivice of almost superhuman good, and I can't help but feel enormous respect for people who have such faith and put it to such service.