This is very much my own perpective; things will be quite different for other people, and, worse, I don’t have a clue what comes after stage 5, if anything.
Stage 1 : Father Christmas
- Lots of pressies
- Child orientated
- Totally dependent on parents
Stage 2 : realise your parents (and others) were fooling you
Stage 3 : God the pixie
- Pressies change from things to life everlasting
- Adult orientated
- Presumes God changes the world
- Contradicts reality
- Presumes (almost) everyone else worships a fake pixie and you’ve found the real one
Stage 4 : realise you’ve been fooling yourself
Stage 5 : God is human experience
- No more bribes … er … pressies
- No fantasies, no pixies, no conflict with reality
- Adult orientated
- Matches the human condition
- Understand belief changes not the world, but the way you see the world
- No arrogant presumptions about other religions