Here's a comment I posted on an interesting blog called The Catholic Atheist:

A little off topic but your post inspired me:

I've never been of faith but I've always thought of God as an imaginary number (the ones that engineers and mathematicians study). An imaginary number is basically the square root of a negative number which, after all my years of math, I still don't understand. But, some people do. Some people live in imaginary numbers, creating complex systems based on them, theorizing proofs and conjectures that assume their existence.

As an economist I only study what is real, or rather what is tangible (kinda). We don't study imaginary numbers but we do study "the invisible hand" which is just saying that there exists an unseen mechanism that allows markets to be self-regulating. So what sounds more crazy, telling someone you believe in a supreme being or that you believe in this detached hand that goes around telling us what price we should buy something at. I would say the latter sounds a great deal crazier.

Mathematicians get to represent their imaginary numbers with a small i, us economists get to represent our detached hand with arrows on a demand and supply diagram (kinda lame) and Catholics get to represent Christ with something to eat and drink. Not a shabby deal on the Catholic side.

Basically what I'm saying is that though iconoclasm is banned from most religions, it is human nature to represent what we cannot see; whether it's in math, economics, or religion.