The famous philosopher Martin Heidegger seems to show insight for how atheists and theists ought to dialogue:
"Who is God? That is perhaps beyond the possibilities of our asking. But what is God? That we should ask."
Too often atheists assume a particular image, usually an anthropomorphic one, as the given for the definition of the term, "God."
And, too often, theists assume (except for fundamentalists and creedalists) that everyone listening to them will not associate their use of the "God" word with mythological versions.
That's one reason I prefer Webster-Merriam Collegiate Dictionary's first definition of the word,
God: "the supreme or ultimate reality:"
Then with that start, theists and atheists can more clearly articulate what they do and do not think is true about reality, whether atheism generic is more true, atheism-materialism, particular organized religion's various anthropomorphic versions of "God," various forms of deism, process thought of Whitehead, Asian philosophical views, etc.
Is "ultimate reality" Chance or Determinism or the Good or Intelligence or Impersonal Will or Illusion of Matter or Laws of Physics or Consciousness or Principle or Trinity or Multiple Realities or Infinite Mind or Emergent from Matter or Process or Mystery or Unknown, and so forth?
There is something to be said for Einstein's emphasis that the human species in trying to ferret out the truth about reality is like a small child in a vast almost infinite library who has just started to explore.
In the LIGHT,
Dan Wilcox
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