“Today many people in the West would be dismayed if a leading theologian suggested that God was in some profound sense
a product of the imagination. Yet it should be obvious that the imagination is the chief religious faculty. Human beings are the
only animals who have the capacity to envisage something that is not present or something that does not yet exist but which is
merely possible. The imagination has thus been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art
and religion. The idea of God, however it is defined, is perhaps the prime example of an absent reality which, despite its inbuilt
problems, has continued to inspire men and women for thousands of years. As in art, the most effective religious symbols are
those informed by an intelligent knowledge and understanding of the human condition.”