Excellent post, John P! I find myself in agreement with you on every point.

I'm not a Christian, a believer in the Judaic faith, or a Muslim, and, yes, I understand exactly what you mean about the anthropomorphic idea of "God" (a god with a personality, who bothers with the affairs of humans, listens to prayers, etc) that is typically held by people in these faiths.

I have no idea if such a God exists...but I doubt it.

I'm not anything specific in the sense of "belonging to a religion", I'm just a human being who is quite interested in spirituality. I'm also interested in religion in a general sense. I'm interested in anything that has absorbed the thoughts of billions of human beings over thousands of years. So...I'm interested in religion, history, politics, culture, art, architecture, shipbuilding, etc.

The attitude toward science that troubles me, as I explained before, is that a vast number of unscientific people in the general public who know little or nothing about science will automatically believe anything they hear if it purports to be coming from a "scientific source", or if a man in a white lab coat says it to them.

Those people are behaving in the same thoughtless and ignorant fashion as a group of religious people who believe anything a priest or pastor or mullah tells them. In both cases they have surrendered their own judgement to an external human authority figure who does their thinking for them. That can lead to serious problems if the authority figure is not a reliable person or is pushing some hidden political agenda! ;-)

I have no objection, on the other hand, to experienced science people themselves who actually KNOW what they're talking about and who ARE reliable people, and I'd be delighted to talk to them about anything in their field of expertise. Likewise, I'm delighted to talk to an experienced meditator or yoga instructor about techniques for relaxing the body and quieting the mind during meditation.

I regard spirituality as an inner search and discipline, not an attempt to negotiate terms and conditions with an outer "God" figure.