I begin by stating that I believe there is an essence, an intelligence, in the universe which we could, for want of a better word, describe as God.

However, what are we to make of the statement in the Bible that man, male and female, was created in the image of God? This sounds more like a breeding program. We could be the result of some sort of directed evolution, possibly by an external but completely physical entity whom we choose to call God. The claim that we are made in the image of the universal intelligent essence, not the scientist who perhaps took an evolving aquatic chimp and turned them into us, is a horrendous mistake. If anything, we have created a god in our image. Which mistake has led to millennia of disasters. We are, like everything in the universe, including our creator, part of the universal essence, but to separate that from everything that is, and call it God, and then proceed to say that we are made in the image of that invention is surely hubris beyond description.