Dawkins "God of the gaps", to which you've alluded in this piece, is an important concept here, I think. While some still cling to the hope that God will eventually be found hiding behind a quark, the rational among us see the limit of the equation - we may never eliminate all the possible hiding places for God, but the hiding places must inevitably continue to shrink, and the only rational conclusion is that if he has not yet been brought to light, then he is not in the ever diminishing places the light hasn't reached yet either.

I also agree to some extent with Joffan's comment on "goodness". While the vast majority of thinking beings may agree on the broad strokes of right and wrong, goodness is just as much a creation of the conscious mind as is God. The universe doesn't care whether we love each other or slaughter each other.

In all though, I agree with the consensus expressed here, that as a draft parable it is excellent.

Finally, I want to take issue with Mark Fournier's closing comment on modernity. To me the term 'modernity' applies to more than just the sum of our knowledge; it also sums up the folly of unbridled consumptive individualism. If I were to talk about rejecting modernity, it would not be in the sense of rejecting science, or indeed the validity of individual preference, but in the sense of rebuilding respect for community and nature. Western society could do with a bit more humility, frugality and selflessness.

Science was given its charter in the West as Natural Philosophy, as means of understanding creation and hence the creator. But for that, religion would have crushed the entire scientific and enlightenment project at the outset, but from Acquinas on, it was believed that understanding the world led you to a better understanding of God. When Laplace was asked by Napoleon, when he explained mathematically the wobble of the planets, what there was left for God to do, Laplace answered "I have no need for that hypothesis." Napoleon was bold enough to laugh. But only when Darwin filled the last major gap for which God was required as an explanation was it clear where the scientific project was headed. Darwin was revolutionary in the sense that with him, science finally shook off the primacy of theology as the "Queen of Sciences" and walked on its own. From that point on, science and religion could at best be indifferent to each other, but a genuine antagonism was born. Christianity will never again be the ally of science, and this is a change that we must be aware of.

What has not changed is the nature of religion. We in the West have grown accustomed to a domesticated form of religion, forced to conform itself to the discipline of reason and evidence because we live in secularized democratic societies. But religion has never been, nor will it ever be, content in this role. Even the most tame religion, the Anglican Church, is revolting against its limited position. Westerners are confounded by Islam because we have forgotten what religion is really like. We have forgotten that even Bhuddism, that supposedly most rarified and mystical of religions, is more than willing, and able, to become the most bloody tyrant if given the chance. It is a telling fact that when the Dalai Llama was exiled, many of the people of Tibet considered Mao an improvement. Now, how bad does a regime have to be to be considered worse than Mao?

Modernity--which is largely a product of our scientific and technological expertise--may be described as the set of solutions which has enabled our current human population to exist and is required to sustain it. Without a hint of poetic license I would say that if you are tired of modernity, you are tired of life, and I would further add the question, whose life are you tired of? Are those opposed to modernity offering to die to bring back the primitive superstitions of the dark ages--and if they aren't, who are they offering in sacrifice to their dark god?

We peered into the dark and discovered that the cosmos was not a place of thundering spirits or leering devils. Over countless millenniums the forces of nature had given order to chaos. The result was an orderly system, with mathematically predictable principles, that meshed with harmonious elegance and regularity like the gears of a vast machine. Even life itself, so long thought to be supernatural, was revealed to be another machine, albeit a particularly complex and subtle kind. A machine that continues to evolve and adapt to survive in a sometimes hostile environment.

Interesting article in NewScientist this last week. "Born Believers: How Your Brain Creates God." It discusses several God theories gathering traction among scientists -- personally, I don't believe they're incompatible. And certainly doesn't envoke the supernatural. And maybe they're not incompatible with your Psalm, just another way of putting it.
I won't bother summarizing the article, but it's probably good reading for most atheists.

Waialeale Mike

I agree that the use of the word "machine" has some undesirable connotations. Unfortunately, I don't think English has a word that better captures the meaning I wanted to convey. (This may go to underline my point: we invent gods because we attribute intentionality to the natural world; lacking any other frame of reference, we conceive of natural phenomena in the same way we conceive of our fellow human beings, as agents possessing desires and wants.) Terms like "emergent structure" or "predictable system" are more technically accurate, but too awkward for the kind of everyday storytelling I was aiming for.

Still, I think even conceiving of the cosmos as a machine is an improvement. The one useful thing about the allegory is that we understand machines themselves don't have desires - there's nobody "in there", but just a series of unintelligent parts which work in unison. Even if it leaves a gap for unfalsifiable intelligent first causes to slip through, it's still superior to the supernatural view which conceives of every aspect of the universe as governed by inscrutable, anthropomorphic agents. The world as a machine, imperfect as it is, nevertheless is a step up over the demon-haunted world.

To me, this phrase seems to spring out of nowhere: "... we should turn our attention to bringing goodness into this world..." and I would prefer something more on the lines of "we should turn our attention to further improving our understanding of the world, including each other, ...".