" I am particularly referring to the text you are quoting in your post of 20 Jul 12 - 06:34 PM. "

Sorry, I did not realize that. Hadn't given it much thought I only included that quote to show that Freeman has a tendency to speak tongue in cheek.   

"Physicists call their un-noble creator singularity. Both observant Jews and responsible physicists are required to behave with immense precision and like it or not, and they mostly don't, they must accept that God is not only stranger than they know, she is stranger than they can know." Implies that physicists think that the Big Bang is God. Of course they do not. But many describe it as a moment of creation. I saw Brian Greene and Neil DeGrasse Tyson do so yesterday on Dr. Greene's Nova series about "the fabric of the cosmos". By definition it is impossible to know the conditions contained within a singularity or in this case, The Singularity. Freeman appears to be saying that modern "observant Jews" consider their G-d to be equally unknowable. I find that God to be more comforting that the God described in Exodus telling Joshua to commit multiple acts of pillage and genocide.

As for the act of performing a funeral. I don't see discussions of what are essentially mathematically random acts of physics, like the play of photons and chemical decomposition nearly as comforting as the art associated with religion, art like this hymn.

In The Garden

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

Refrain

I'd stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

Refrain