(June 1, 2021 at 6:37 am)johndoe122931 Wrote: Thank you for your response I really appreciate it and your honesty.
No problem! And I'm sorry if I came across as critical of your wording.
One thing you can see already from the replies: Although an atheist doesn't believe in any gods at all, many atheists associate the word "God" with something very specific. They have a very clear picture of what the God who doesn't exist is like.
I'm reminded of a conversation I heard years ago, between two little kids who were learning English as a second language:
"Is there a gorilla in this room?"
"No there isn't."
"What is it like?"
"..."
So a lot of atheists learned about a specific view of God when they were kids, and that's what they think of. I've been told flat out that I shouldn't talk on this forum about the God of Spinoza, of Jacob Boehme, of William Blake, of Simone Weil, or of Martin Buber. None of these wonderful thinkers would agree with a single item on Brian's list of things that he doesn't approve of. Yet all of them believed passionately in God. For the most part conversations on this forum remain limited to the Sunday School version of the Christian God, and the bad people who advocate it.
It means that the emotional reaction people have to your question is more rooted in personal history than in metaphysics.
