The Guardian. Article.

People are often divided against each other based on what they believe to be intolerably, viscerally, shameful.

Simply, for many that means their God must be defended at all costs, even if the price is the integrity of God’s very own “creation”. For others, “God” is powerful enough to look after himself, thanks, and might even have a role in aiding the search for whatever is magical or heroic in humanity. For them, the dignity of God is not served by inflicting unspeakable torments upon God’s beings, but in attending to its beauty using all the prisms available to mere mortals. Some of these human lenses pick up and examine the dross along with the pure gold but all of them play a part in history’s ongoing discovery-fest.

With learning comes moral regeneration. “God” has taken a huge risk now that his sovereignty has been serially delegated: laws laid down by man bear the fragilities of all powersharing when man decides between what is acceptable to his deity.

It is the nature of man in the 21st century to continue to stumble through much of his own foulness, in various forms. But culture-alienated man is already making fresh distinctions, bravely, between deeds that are deathly and those which mirror the glory of whatever he deems godlike. Priests, clerics and ivory towers are the new alien lands.