Of God and man

The debate over atheism has always excited me. Especially here at UB, I have found passionate proponents on either side. But before a lesser mortal like me jump into it, I would like to first quote some passages related to it by a great personality whom I admire as a philosopher rather than a politician, "Chacha" Jawaharlal Nehru. These are from his book "Discovery of India", and deal with his ideas of religion & God. Its not a continuous chunk, rather a series of small chunks of passages which I found relevant, so I have used separators to demarcate the separate sections:

"Religion, as I saw it practiced, and accepted even by thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life's problems which was certainly not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural.
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In the wider sense of the word, religion dealt with the uncharted regions of human experience, uncharted that is, by the scientific positive knowledge of the day. In a sense it might be considered an extension of the known and uncharted region, though the methods of science and religion were utterly unlike each other, and to a large extent they had to deal with different kinds of media. It was obvious that there was a vast unknown region all around us, and science, with its magnificent achievements, knew little enough about it, though it was making tentative approaches in that direction. Probably also the normal methods of science, its dealings with the visible world and the processes of life, were not wholly adapted to the psychical, the artistic, the spiritual, and the other elements of the invisible world.
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Science does not tell us much, or for the matter of that, anything, about the purpose of life.
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What the mysterious is I do not know, I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me. Intellectually, I can appreciate to some extent of the conception of monism, and I have been attracted toward the Advaita (nondualist) philosophy of the Vedanta, though I do not presume to understand it in all its depth and intricacy, and I realize that merely an intellectual appreciation of such matters does not carry one far. At the same time the Vedanta, as well as other such approaches, rather frighten me with their vague formless incursions into infinity.
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How amazing is the spirit of man! In spite of innumerable failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and all he held dear for an ideal, for truth, for faith, for country and honor. That ideal may change, but that capacity for self-sacrifice continues, and because of that, much may be forgiven to man, and it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values he cherished. Plaything of nature's mighty forces, less than the speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought to master them. Whatever gods there be, there is something godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him."

- Excerpts from 'Discovery of India' by Jawaharlal Nehru