A pantheistic argument.

[Edwardo Piet]

If I cannot use the terms "universe" and "god" interchangeably after you have labored to make them so then we have a problem with identity.

If they are defined as identical then how isn't their identity identical?

If to say "I do not believe in god" is taken to mean "I do not believe in the universe" directly then they are interchangeable..and again, you have labored to make this so, so why resist the parity you yourself created?

How am I resisting?

I'm not confused, you have created a confused equivalence between the terms which I do not agree with (but refuse to own it).

I appreciate that initially it may be a bit confusing but I have repeatedly stated throughout this thread that I'm taking "god" and defining it as "the universe", not the other way around. Yet you seem to have continued to take me to be defining "the universe" as the already pre-defined typical definition of "god". I'm not.

The soundness of the argument is required to make your ancillary (or main..depending) point.

I'm not expecting my argument to be sound, I'm expecting it to be valid. An argument doesn't have to be sound for it to be valid.

So, no, the soundness of my argument isn't required to make my main point. I can make my main point and leave the soundness out of it if I'm only arguing for validity.

If i said "waffliest possible plate" that would exclude all things that weren't plates...I wanted to avoid calling god a plate in my premise and stating that god was a plate in the conclusion.....the reasons should be obvious. I didn't want to define god as a plate and then conclude god was a plate.

That's all irrelevant to validity and my argument was only intended to be valid so your analogy fails.

What you label as god is unimportant (a point which we share in completely divergent ways) that you label it god -is all that matters-.

In that case, if god is the universe, you're a theist. But the thing is that if you label the universe as "god" the label is different, not the belief. Labelling something as "god" has nothing to do with atheism/theism, it is only the belief that matters. If I define god as the universe and then believe in that definition of god then I'm believing in the universe like you, an atheist, so there's a logical contradiction so in that case atheism/theism doesn't apply.

The distinction between the two, even in our case, is still meaningful

If god means, and only means "the universe" where is the difference in meaning?