Jack the Sailor wrote ;Ian, I am pretty sure that Joe just made the point that if you read the bible as stories that illuminate us then the reason God said that was to help us appreciate beauty.

Yes, but that's my point. If he is omnipotent then he would want us to appreciate ugly too. If he did the lot, who are we to distinguish between the view from the top of a hill in The Lake District and the image of a baby in a transit camp in Mogadishu breathing his last breath?

So, I reckon we must be hard wired because there are many people who will thank him for the good bits and push the bad bits to the back of their mind. I too am hard wired, by faithful allegiance to a football team who have started the season as appallingly as ever....

As an aside, the faithful seem to realise the God argument must be getting a bit thin. I was at a christening in a church a few weeks ago. A church that sang modern hymns with electric guitar and drums. The words were all repetitive "He is Great!" and variations on that theme with a liberal dose of "So praise him unconditionally" and other such twaddle.

Two points there;

1. Charles Wesley must be spinning in his grave.

2. Having to repeat such things so much in a song sounds like desperate measures to keep people brainwashed from where I was sitting.

3. There isn't a 3.

4. But if there was, it would be that the smiles were all a bit forced too.

It appeared to me to be negotiating the path from omnipotent to impotent.