That aspect of the Christian/Jewish/Muslim religions bothers me too, Shimrod. It seems that the writers of the books which comprise the Old Testament had a particularly man-centered view of things (not only in the sense of placing man above Nature, but also in placing men above women). That has had many unfortunate after-effects on both Nature and women over the last few millenia.

It's an attitude, however, which is changing. The old ideas of man's supremacy over nature and the supremacy of males over females are now being challenged and rejected by many people within those 3 religions.

It's an odd notion to think that "God created Man in his own image". Several odd assumptions there! Why does God have to look like anything? Or does "image" mean inner self rather than outer body? Or why might not everything be said to be created in God's image if anything is? And why is God assumed to be male when God might be a principle that is completely beyond gender...or might comprise both genders? It seems very unlikely that an exclusively male deity would create a world divided into male and female beings in approximately equal numbers! If "He" didn't already have a female aspect within "Himself", then how could "He" bring it forth in others? ;-) Odd that that didn't occur to the patriarchs of the Children of Israel, isn't it?

When I read such a passage, what immediately seems obvious to me is that it sprang from a rather primitive tribal culture where older men ran everything and had authority over everything...therefore they assumed that anything godly would closely resemble themselves, only with some improvements. ;-D So they worked up an idea of God which looked a lot like them, only "He" was bigger and better than they were. I shake my head in wonder that billions of people thousands of years later would let the self-promoting fantasies of a bunch of old Hebrew patriarchs rule their minds, but it has no bearing whatsoever on whatever idea I might have about "God", spirituality, life after death or other interesting subjects along that line. I do not regard the Judeo-Christian religious heritage as being the origin of spiritual ideas about God...it's just one old set of opinions about it, that's all. I'm sure there were many other ideas about God around long before the Jewish tribes had anything to say about the matter. They are Johnny-come-latelys in that field, not the inventors of it. It is the nature of human beings to theorize about a higher purpose, life after death, and all forms of spiritual inquiry, and it did not begin with the writers of the old Jewish holy books.