I understand you perfectly, John. But I don't particularly feel like wrangling about it. One doesn't have to be a deist to have a spiritual sense about life, or to find the kind of positive purpose and meaning in life that I think people need. I very much doubt that you define the word "God" the same way I do anyway, so I think we'd be wasting our time beating this particular dead horse around the block, don't you?

Yeah, I think there's a vast amount of other stuff (entirely apart from belief in a deity) that people practice in just the same blind and fanatical and pigheaded way that so many do their organized religions, and to much the same deleterious and self-deluding effect, and if I want to call it a "religion" when they do that, there's nothing you can do about it, is there?

I don't see any point in you being "insulted" by what I say, but I guess that's up to you.