There are many fronts in the argument against the existence of a god or gods and veracity of religious narratives. Some familiar approaches are to critique the philosophical underpinnings of religious ideology or to make a case from the perspective of scientific evidence and the physical laws of reality. Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality (Routledge, 2016), written by Dr. Jon Mills, argues from the perspective of psychology and posits that god is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. In other words, He is the ultimate wish fulfillment, the forgiving all-powerful father you always wanted, the absolution of all your fears, the antidote to death. Mills writes that the conception of god is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation. He promotes secular humanism and a personal search for the numinous as a positive, life-affirming alternative.

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