A deity? Must "God" be a deity? Not as far as I'm concerned, but if that understanding of the word is what makes you happy, go with it, I guess... ;-)

I think of God as the entire intelligent process that can also be called "existence". Tell me that there is no proof for existence! Everything we experience and are aware of is proof of existence. Everything is proof of "God" as I understand the concept. That doesn't mean I think I have to pray to this "God", do rituals to appease it, or belong to some organized religion, but if it made me feel better to do any of those things, then I would. And why not?

To be religious does not require belief in a deity, it merely requires a sense that there is an eternal and powerful meaning behind all life and all existence. That life is not an accident. That it is a striving toward perfection in every sense. The completely unreligious person must subscribe to the notion that his life and everyone else's is a meaningless accident...that the only meaning he or anyone else sees is one that was arbitrarily made up...and that kind of belief leads to various forms of emotional dead-ends, such as: cynicism, fatalism, materialism, greed, ruthless ambition, and ultimately, despair. (sounds like a thumbnail sketch of the industrial society in the early 21st century)

That's why it does not strike me as healthy or even sane to have such a philosophy that would dare assert that everything is just an accident or the end result of unthinking processes...unless sanity is to be relegated to mere brute survival and the enjoyment of temporary pleasures. That's okay for a stupid brute with a short and meaningless life that begins and ends in futility. It's not okay for a fully realized human being.

The desire for perfection, the belief in perfectibility, and all the beauty that flows from it in every form of human creativity is precisely what has fueled the noble history of both great spiritual philosophy AND great science. They go hand in hand. They are not opponents.

Their true opponents, however are these:

1. soulless materialism (that would use science only to kill and to dominate other men) and

2. hidebound, unthinking fundamentalist religion (that would act similarly).

You will find those two monstrous forces allying themselves naturally as one behind most extremely vicious political forces in this world, such as the Bush administration and its Islamic fundamentalist opponents.