The pull of religion, at least as far as Bush himself is concerned, comes not from the traditional God that the new atheists attack; he is almost as impatient as Dawkins with that God, and believes that it is rarely that God who vies for the devotions of Woodstockers. Instead, it is the God that Mark Lilla thought stillborn that Bush finds attractive: the God that the new atheists mock as atheism-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, the God they dismiss as weak tea whose main function is to provide drinking with the respectability that allows fundamentalists to get drunk on stronger stuff — the less definable, more human-friendly but less human-like, more immanent God of liberal, sophisticated religion. Bush is entranced by its siren song and inspired by its possibilities.

Jewish Currents March 2008 - The Case Against God by Mitchell Silver Thursday, December 5, 2013 @ 1:19pm