Elizabeth Montgomery was my first, least guilt-inducing, and most abiding idea of a deity.
Armstrong, a former nun, wants to rescue the idea of the Deity from its cultured despisers and its more literal-minded adherents alike.
The gods of Genesis and an early Mesopotamian poem like the "Atrahasis" are violent, punitive creators, and these texts seem unashamed by the idea of a deity that produces both good and evil.
I have since reread the Qur'an about once every year, and as I grew older I also fell in love with the idea of a deity who communicates with people through words, who sends his worshippers a text and leaves them free to interpret it.
I also began to feel a tiny bit ridiculous trotting to shul every Saturday, in a way that I didn't feel going to church on a Sunday, even though I found the Jewish idea of one deity far more sensible than the Father, Son and Holy Ghost free-for-all.
Because process theists reject the idea of a deity whose moral character is ever questionable, John Stuart Mill's essay, "Theism," is not an anticipation of process theism.
Unlike the clerical authors of the time he pays little or no attention to the arguments from "the innate Idea of the Deity," from "the general Consent of Mankind," or from "the Universal Providence that directs the Affairs of Mankind".
His "Yo, Jonah!," with music and lyrics by Clay Zambo, plays on the idea of God the Father and God the father: the all-knowing deity and the ultimate parent.
At first, the idea of buying "deities torn away from their shrines in remote corners of the world" fills Ike with disgust.
Painful death and the suffering of children contradicted his idea of a loving deity.
