Belief in a supernatural being/force/spirit running through all things is a notion that thoroughly deserves ridicule. Doesn't necessarily mean that all holders of such notions deserve ridicule: it depends on how they were conditioned to adopt that blind alley of non-thinking. But intelligent people who persist in pushing those ideas definitely do deserve ridicule, even at times condemnation. And Joe, the narrowness in thinking comes from a persistent, nagging, clinging notion that what you see all around
you simply can't be all there is, that divine add-ons can't be done without. Yes they can and unless you can completely liberate your intellect from that strangling restraint and come into the sunlit uplands you won't ever know just how narrow religious thinking is. The truly divine can come only from your own study, your own questioning, your own freed sense of wonder.

St Paul was abjectly wrong. He forgot to make the crucial distinction between childish and childlike. As Wordsworth said, the child is father of the man (much of his finest poetry wrestled with the theme of the lost innocence, clarity of mind and unending curiosity of children as one moved into adulthood. He wanted it all back for himself but even he couldn't reconjure it). Children question everything and have unbounded enthusiasm for everything (except sprouts). We do our damnedest in our education system to damp that down, unfortunately. And St Paul held the most childish notion of all that humanity has ever dreamed up: he believed in God. Ironic, eh?