You're turning God into a metaphor of human behavior like "a model" as you put it, which is fine when talking about things like personal growth. But what about the physical accounts of God such as creation? There's no metaphor there: God gave life, set forth the universe and what not. I think most people (including me) are interested in debating the truth in those statements.
Personally I'm not very interested in these type of debates, whether God created land, sky, animals, plants, etc. That's the only thing I can't accept in any religion. (note that I don't believe in "God" as the person which is described in holy texts.)
Scientists believe that life most likely started out as nothing more than a self catalyzing piece of RNA (a small molecule) which eventually became what we are today. Clearly that's very different than intelligent design by a creator.
I'm also for this theory, as this one sounds the most probable of all I ever heard and read. But it's still pretty hard to believe that in the beginning, there were just random atoms included in some liquid, and with the right catalyst, began the synthesis of basic cell structures, and after a very long period of mutations and adaptations, here we are, very complex beings, made mainly from Carbon and Hydrogen. And if we realize this fact, that our body is literally a huge dose full of all kinds of chemical substances which interacts to each other in complex ways, we may hit a question how these body processes make us feel emotions, remember informations and work with them=think, and believe. This area is still land of lions, terra incognita. These are the 'physically uncatchable' things, which cannot be measured, and which I personally dare to call them human soul, as they are the things which make our personality, make every single being special. What makes me believe that soul exist? Well, simple though, that what our senses are able to recognize, that exists, independently on it's 'real' facts. And that statement might be valid for both physical and abstract things. For example, when we talk: I'm making sound waves within my throat, so it has physical basics. But what we hear, the content=words are abstract, but we know it exists just because we recognize them with our senses. And I think the same aply for body and soul. Body with it's receptors collects signals and informations and sends them to the brain, where they are utilized, sorted and saved. This whole proccess is physical, it's chemistry.
It pretty resemble computers, doesn't it? But unlike machines, we can work with the received informations, evolve thoughs, feel, and all the other 'human things'. This is the undescriptible abstract essence which is not part of out anatomy, but which tightly cooperates with our brain and which makes everyone of us special, in my words, the soul.
And I thing this also gives my opinion about things like heaven and hell, afterlife, etc. In my opinion, there are no such things. The soul, the consciousness will disappear along with the body. But we cannot know. Anyway, I would rather prefer my theory with my existence just vanishing, than being forever a tiny cloud of conserved thoughts, memories, etc., -this vision actually frightens me >.< *shudders*.
Now lets say that I'm a magic biochemist and I can apart your body with means of constantly providing the nutrients the cells need to grow. Now I take each cell and place it in a Petri dish so that each of the trillion cells is isolated from one another yet living. Are you still alive or dead? Because technically each component of your body is living they're just separated. Is it the connection and cooperation that makes you living as a human? We know that cells communicate by electrical/chemical impulses so is it that? Or is it the collection of blood and bone and other non-living tissue that was a part of you?
That actually remember me a cat in the box, you don't know whether it's dead or alive, so you have to consider it's both of it.
Technically your body is alive, but since the parts cannot communicate and whole complex structure is broken, the information transmittions cannot run, nor their proccessing, sorting, etc., so your conciousness will be dead.