I really think this is an unfair criticism of the agnostic/atheist/deist viewpoint.

The idea that such a ultimate Mind exists is not an unreasonable one. It's certainly no more unreasonable than some of the speculations cosmologists and particle physicists have put forward, sometimes without the slightest shred of evidence, or even without a plan to go about discovering that evidence.

What really steams the freethinker is not the idea of a god, but that so many believers claim to know exactly what god is, his plan for us, how he works, and what he wants. Religion, especially organized religion, doesn't just propose the idea of an intelligence behind the universe, but that they describe this intelligence and his program in such excruciating detail, and exclude all other interpretations. These are the people that ban books, burn witches, blow up churches and abortion clinics, and fly airliners into office buildings.

For the religionist, not only is his god the only possible one, but that it also gives the religionist the right to dictate to the rest of us what our habits, customs and laws should be, how to raise our children, live our lives, organize our communities, what must be true and not true. In short, we have to buy the whole shooting match; we have no vote, no choice and no say in the matter, because their god says so. And in the worst cases, it further gives the religionist the right to use coercion and even violence to ensure we believe the same way he does.

This is intolerable. That kind of thinking is probably the single most significant obstacle to human happiness and justice that has ever existed. The people that think that way are truly evil.

And that's my dogma.