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Yes. Yes. Yes. Malaria is every bit as much a part of God as anything else! That's exactly it. The "ceaseless creativity" of Kauffman's "God" is just that: ceaselessly creative. It never stops evolving and subsequently new things, unpredictable things, emerge. Sometimes the things are viruses, and sometimes the things are cuddly, stuffed animals, but "God" doesn't give a shit because "God" isn't some being with a will--as is the God you won't let go of--"God", in Kauffman's estimation (and mine), is ever-present, ever-emerging, ever-ultimately-unknowable nature; the totality of the source and substance of the universe!
My mind just reels! at the thought that someone fighting the materialist battle hasn't ever had an experience where they felt dissolved into the beauty and vastness and simple/complexity of the universe in a way that caused them to know that they were greater than themselves. I just don't believe it! Most people feel that in some way at some point in time. It reels! more! that someone having had that experience would be so violently afraid of a symbol that could point to that experience.
Like it or not, that experience, when experienced as a religious person OR as a non-religious person, is the same essential experience. My laugh is essentially the same as your laugh, when I take a shit I am essentially having the same experience as when you take a shit. When I hear a baby laugh, I experience essentially the same thing that you do when you hear a baby laugh. When we feel at peace with our natural surroundings we're having the same essential experience.
Religious people see this through a lens of mythology. That mythology is not "God". Atheists see this through a lens of anti-mythology. That anti-mythology is not not-"God".
If the symbol is pointing to something different and new--it carries new, or shall we say 'evolved' meaning. To continue to use an old-fashioned Abrahamic interpretation of the word 'God' is not even arguing with Kauffman (or any of these letter writers), it is simply missing the point.
