Ron if you think Richard is a racist you could not be more wrong.    Clearly you have an axe to grind against the OP evidenced by citing a post from more than 2 years ago on another thread. You have been digging for something to use in your attack on him and you take it out of context and misapply it to this thread. This type of behaviour invalidates your entire argument. I won't say any more on that point.

Back to the topic ... are you saying that all these people who have created beautiful choral music and attributed it to God would not have created it if they had never been exposed to the concept of God through religion? Surely, the melodies, harmonies might have been laid against a libretto that honoured the glory of nature or a saga of real human heroes and still have been as beautiful.

I don't think that is how the creativity of man works. I would say that it is the wonderful creativity in humans which made the concept of God and built upon that with religions. Respectfully to others, this is my feeling. (and I use the term 'feeling' quite literally).

Wonder and problem solving are the driving forces behind creativity. Creativity is not the remit of only the religious.

Now I am really going to leave this thread, because it is taking too much of my time.