re: Thanks... Starting points for this sort of analysis
The psychological stuff is a killer. My dear mother tried to program me to be a good Methodist but she screwed it up and I became an agnostic. Unlearning her programming was difficult because it was burned in at an early age.
some 10 years ago my GP was an elderly, experienced man originally from a Methodist background .. he was extremely helpful to me for a few years. He did have a rather stern, strict manner (is that a "Methodist thing'?), although at hte same time genuinely friendly and conversational. One thing I noticed from his Methodist background was this belief in the always-present possibility of personal growth and transformation. Meaning, one is not 'damned' for perhaps being in the gutter, but rather always has the chance to get out of it - a process of psychological redemption. One has to 'repent' in the sense of regretting their present condition, and want badly to get out of it. That's the redemption ..
In practical terms, this guy, who was also a counselling psychologist, was promoting remedial cognitive therapy back in the 80s and 90s, instead of psychoanalysis and medication. He had lots of patients who he helped on this basis. They went to him because they knew he wouldn't judge them for their present condition, but was only interested to help them get to a better place - if they were willing to work on it too.
I'm deeply awed by the Laws of Physics and the physical beauty of nature. I also believe that life is sacred and the highest form of life is consciousness. .. (I don't need to drag in some old guy on a golden throne with a glowing triangle floating over his head).
I don't wnat to 'promote my own cause' here but the excerpt as I've selected it, is word-for-word part of the Hebrew approach, especially with thinkers like Maimonedes (12th century Jewish philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, personal physician to a Sultan etc.). Since God is supposed to be not just incorporeal but actually beyond human comprehension, even our understanding of infinity can't be enough to 'get' that reality. The Old Testament is understood in Judaism to have been written 'in the language of Man' - so it is deliberately anthropromorphic, as an allegorical and moral instruction, a manual for living in this world. To turn God into an old man with a halo is fun in cartoons, fiction etc. but on the serious level it is a rusted hulk with nothing inside, and actually regarded as idolatry in Judaism and Islam alike.
It's all supposed to come down (in the Maimonedean view) to an appreciation of the cosmos with an awe of such substance, that the recognition of this unknowable Creator becomes obvious at a gut level ..