Imaginary relationships

In the Metafilter comments on Terry Eagleton commenting on Dawkins' The God Delusion (Eagleton quoted in italics):

"It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself."

You know, this actually explains a lot. People are in love with the idea of God. Literally. So no matter what God says, no matter how evil the commands from the organization or the little voice in your head become, you mostly just DO them, because you love him/her/it.

Hmph, I'd never thought about it this way before. A large chunk of the world (half, maybe?) would appear to be in an abusive relationship with an imaginary being.
posted by Malor at 1:00 AM PST on October 25

That comment is brilliant, in a slightly similar way to this TMCM strip.

Interestingly, Terry Eagleton himself seems to be the sort of Christian who's gone more than half the way to Taoism:

Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. [...] He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves.

...would that be all theologians, or just the subset of them that happen to agree with you, Dr. Eagleton?

(Of course, any truly sensible person wouldn't disagree with me, because I cannot possibly be wrong.)