Thanks. That makes your inability to understand my position understandable to me. And maybe, possible for me to explain my position to you. I was in a similar position to you.
Based on what you say, I actually very much doubt you have been in any position close to my own, but I could be wrong. I also don't think I have an inability to understand your position. The only thing I have said is that for anyone to reject the idea of God, they have to have an idea in their minds of what that looks like. You quote the Tao Te Ching in a minute. I'll agree with that and explain why in a minute. But I'll say here, that to say you are an atheist (or agnostic), you are naming the Tao. The Tao Te Ching does not say God does not exist. It is not teaching atheism.
I had an image of god based on what theists had told me about their image and based on their scripture. And often in discussion, when I had said "god is X" or "god did Y" the answer was: "But that is not the god I believe in.". I had, unwittingly, stawmaned their position.
So I tried to steelman the theists position by trying to find those properties all their images of god had in common. And guess what, I came up with an empty set. My logical response was that I stopped having an image of god. I had to force myself because every image I would have, would be a straw man for at least some theists.
Getting rid of an image of God is in fact the path of the world's mystics in many of the world's religion. Meister Eckhart the Christian mystic, for instance said, "I pray God make me free of God that I may know God in his unconditioned being". While that is paradoxical in nature, it makes perfect sense from a nondual perspective. Apophatic approaches to the Absolute, or the Divine, or the Tao, or apply any other name to it, "God", is to negate any and all mental ideas you have of God, in order to allow what simply is to enter into your awareness unaffected by mental images. This is a practice used within meditation.
That is not what atheism or agnosticism is doing at all. It has a very specific idea of what "God" is, in saying it does not exist. They are not saying you should not name the Tao, because that makes "it" a mental object as opposed to Reality. That's hardly the case. Do you consider atheism an intended path to Enlightenment or spiritual Awakening?
You are half way on that road.
Or I could be several roadways further along that journey, having completed that road many years ago now. You shouldn't assume to know where I am at.
You have admitted that you have a mental image. You just have to learn that that image is wrong (in that it is not consensus among theists). Every image you could have is wrong. Just get rid of them. "The Dao that can be named is not the Dao." - Lao Tse
I find it pleasing you quote from the Tao Te Ching. I find myself very much adopting to Taoist philosphy as a spiritual path through my daily Tajiiquan practice. Let me try to share some more to see if maybe the idea you have of how I believe might be helped.
First, whatever mental image of God I may choose to have at any given time, is not a matter of right versus wrong. I simply do not think in those strict, radical dualistic terms. If one recognizes that one has a mental image, and understands the nature of metal images and the purpose, not as descriptors of reality, but as metaphors to point to a Reality wholly beyond those images, then they have a viable, functional, and important purpose. So long as you recognize them as simply mental constructs.
I mentioned the path of negation above. You find this in the teachings of Christianity, as well a Buddhism from Nargarjuna, where he sets to deconstruct all ideas we have about the Absolute in order to get rid of us looking to our ideas for answers. You have the same thing in Hinduism with "Neti Neti", that God is "not this, not that". But you also have, using Christian parlance, a cataphatic approach. That is to say God with qualities, or to say something positive about it.
When I choose to speak about or think mentally about the divine, those images are highly fluid and dynamic, not fixed and set in theological stones. I understand they are not definitions, nor descriptors of God. But they do provide some value and benefit. It's when they are gotten rid of, that's in mystical experience so as to not allow them to interfere. In short, if you are looking to a mental image of God with an expectation that experience should match that, you're never going any further than that mental image. You're not seeing God. You're seeing your own mind.
None of that whatsoever fits in with atheism or agnosticism. Do you relate to any of that? Have you walked on that road yet, the road beyond all beliefs about what is true and real? Do you practice mediation, or some other spiritual path into the deep inner spaces beyond time and thought? Then "The Tao that can be named is not the Tao", is meaningless to that. The Tao Te Ching is not saying "There is no Tao". It affirms its reality, without naming it (even though paradoxically it does - which proves my point about you have to be able to same something.)
