In the spirit of "trying to look at both sides of the argument" I watched the TED talk by Rev. Tom Honey
In the context of the Asian tsunami, he is wrestling with the old chestnut "If there is a God, why does he let such terrible things happen?"
For the first three quarters of the talk, he approaches this question from a religious perspective. I don't find the thought process a particularly useful one. To me the the question "How could God let then tsunami happen?" doesn't arise if we assume there is no God.
The final section of his talk is "What if God is in things?" Here he turns away from the typical notion of a Judeo-Christian God. He asks whether instead of personifying God as an autonomous "agent," we cant' see God as "essential benevolence in the universe". He then suggests we could see God as "compassion" or the "magnificence of the natural world"
"Is God just another name for the universe?" he asks. This is similar to the Einsteinian view of his own religion as an "unbounded admiration for the structure of the world."
In answer to his question, Honey concludes: "In the end the only thing I could say for sure was 'I don't know' and that might be the most profoundly religious statement of all"
To me this is a particularly non-useful God. Can't we better go from a sense of wonder at the universe to a curiosity to discover it's secrets? Religion tells us not to question, science makes questioning an imperative. Surely science is more satisfactory response to the mysteries of the world.
Further, how can we go from such a notion of God and religion to a system for morality? It is hard to go from the fundamental physical constants of the universe to The Ten Commandments. Surely we can derive a more solid moral basis than simply taking stuff written in ancient books.
