Lets face it, all throughout history, "god" has been defined as a conscious being, usually considered omnipotent and often considered the creator of everything.
Thank you for confirming what I said about many atheists whose only understanding of God is that defined by the Judeo-Christian beliefs, working off that understanding only in their sweeping proclamations about God. Ironically, you then proceed to tell me that what I say for myself in my views essentially is that I am not a "True Believer". It's quite like those Christians who say other Christians are not "True Christians", because they don't understand God the same way they do. In fact, I'd say it's
exactly like that.
You then further extend this to all religions throughout the millennia, such as those who hold to pantheism, that they are not really believing in God. Like another poster just said, "How quaint".
If you have to change the definition to make it fit with something else, you don't really believe in god.
That's right. I'm not a "True Believer". Well, fair turnabout, you're not a "True Atheist" since you have no idea about any other views about God than the Christian mythic-literal one. Only someone who actually understands all views of God in the world religions throughout all history and cultures can rightly then claim "True Disbelief". Anything short of that is just a wannabe. Sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.
It's the equivalent of me saying "I believe in unicorns, only my definition of a unicorn is just a regular horse". Lets face it, I don't believe in unicorns, and you don't really believe in god.
God is hardly a horse with horn on its head. It's also hardly a bearded guy in the sky who throws frogs down on Egyptians. It is beyond being a mere mythological object. But you wouldn't know that since you've never looked past the Christian understanding.
Let's put it this way. An infant, a toddler, a five year old, a 12 year old, a young adult, a mid-life adult, an elderly adult, all look at the same world. But the understanding of world to an adult is vastly different than the understanding of a five year old. God to some, the God you define and understand and subsequently reject is the way a child might see the world, that the clouds are "people" looking down on him. That an adult looking at and experiencing the same world as the child doesn't speak of it in mythological terms, doesn't mean the world isn't the same world. It's the same with the way people speak about God. To some it's a sky-person, to others it's the energy of all life, the Source and Summit of our very existence, our very Nature, our very Being. It is the same thing, just understood in 'larger' ways, to put it that way.
See what I said about looking underneath the symbols to see the same thing that everyone sees, no matter what language they wrap it in. You are judging only on the surface meaning of words, not what they point to. Religion, images of God, are like fingers pointing to the moon. They are not the moon themselves, but "True Believers" and their counter parts "True Atheists" argue about the fingers. "The index finger is the True Finger!" "No you're delusional, the index finger is just a finger!" Neither look beyond the finger itself.
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Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” ~ Meister Eckhart
