Joe Offer: I think that's a rather shallow view of God, and I do not subscribe to it. But it's that shallow view that Fry and Hitchens and Dawkins and so many others subscribe to. Very few believers hold that view of God. But many of the unbelievers do - and then they attack the absurd god that is their own creation.

But it's the shallow view of God that fundamentalists, creationists etc push forward when trying to promulgate their ideology into education, particularly in the USA but also through things like "ACE" schools in the UK.

I may see no evidence of or "need" for the universe to have an intelligent creator, but can accept and respect the idea of a non-anthropocentric "force" in the universe, or a concept of God that is close to Spinoza's. What I can't accept or respect are the views of Biblical literalists and creationists who try to shoe-horn observed and measured reality into an absurd view of God with deliberate misunderstandings, lies and refusal to even try and understand the weight of evidence for an old universe.

What kind of compassionate, omnipresent, omniscient God needs Jews to paint their door lintels with lambs' blood so that he can identify which children he shouldn't kill? When he himself has hardened Pharoah's heart against freeing Jewish slaves?

Aside from the fact that there is no evidence at all that Exodus ever took place, this kind of Biblical literalism and shallow view of a deity is the one that Dawkins et al rail against *precisely* because that's the kind of thing the fundies are constantly trying to insinuate into the education system.