Yes I pick on all religions.

[Mudhammam]

The argument itself still would stand though. I still would see no difference between claiming a god or the universe being a giant consciousness. I am sorry however for the confusion.

No problem. And indeed, my only point of contention in this thread is that we give the God proposition or anything else that seems intuitively strange a fair hearing. I find it to be a troubling trend amongst so-called "free thinkers" to replace insult for reasoned debate, and far worse, in their overthrow of repressive religion, to almost seem to adopt oppressive tactics of their own by marginalizing and ostracizing anyone who would even question the materialist point of view as somehow moronic or childish (although I don't extend this courtesy and exempt absurd piety for obvious human inventions--"holy books" in particular--from ridicule). The main point that I think is fair to criticize (on the materialist's position) is the sometimes dogmatic assumption that the concepts of our mind, translated from the contents of our senses, (or vice versa?) can ever hope to capture in toto the essence of reality and therefore rule out a priori any possibility of something like a hyperphysical nature having any role in either our personal lives or the existence of mind and/or matter itself. While I am (currently) a realist and a materialist, I don't think it's all that obvious what exactly matter (or mind) is.