I have to admit that I don’t have a full definition of God and it would be presumptuous of me to think I could possibly provide one. A definition would limit God. Wouldn’t it? Who am I to try to limit God?

I can tell you that at the very least God is whatever force created this universe. Along with that creation came a set of rules that we call the laws of physics. I think that there are also some rules there that I would call the laws of happiness. The foremost of those laws would be “Respect God.”

I think the way to respect God is by respecting what God has created. That would mean respecting nature and being a good steward with nature’s resources and respecting my fellow man.

That falls right in line with Christ’s teachings which were an affirmation of Jewish law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and might and love your neighbor as yourself. I think every major religion in the world has a similar commandment.

What got me thinking in this direction was the opening verses of John’s Gospel. To paraphrase it a bit to show where I’m going we can say that in the beginning was the way things ought to be and the way things ought to be stems from the way things were created and nothing would have been created without having a proper way of being.

But regardless of all that, I’m still looking at something had to happen to cause the universe to be. Whatever that something was or is or shall be it’s still something and I’m assigning it the title of God. It’s the only way I can keep sane.

“God” to me implies an entity with a consciousness and intellect that could communicate with mine that has the ability to operate outside the physical causality that can be repeatably tested by experiment. To some extent what we come to here is the old Arthur C. Clarke line about “sufficiently advanced technology”: What separates “God” from aliens further ahead on the curve?

Which might speak a bit to the personal definitions: To such a creature, are we anything more than pets? If so, maybe I’m just a cat person and you’re a dog person…

Atheists aren’t certain that there aren’t any deities, it’s just that they believe that there aren’t any — as opposed to the agnostics, who don’t actively believe there are or believe there aren’t.

I don’t see how “there is no God” is any more arrogant or obnoxious than “there is no Santa Claus.”

It’s easy to look at the history of religion and see all the bloody violence and want to reject it, but I’ve come to the place where it seems to me just a human thing, not a religious thing, and many of us atheists only associate the evil with religion because humans have that drive to explain things through spiritual mechanisms.

However, I can sure see looking at what many people offer up as their vision of God and saying “even if such a being existed, I’d refuse to worship it in principle”.

Which leads to another possible explanation: I’ve seen the fallout from evangelical Christians who went through their judgmental phases, there can be a lot of hate expressed in that judgment, and it can tear families apart. Yep, being vague for the obvious reasons. Maybe what you’re seeing in atheists is that same personality transferred to a different belief structure.

Obviously, I think I’m right and I think your belief is a coping mechanism which helps you explain the universe in mechanisms which your brain accepts, but I accept that all of our brains need coping mechanisms to wrap our heads around things that we’ll never understand. If God is the label you ascribe to it and “things we won’t know in my lifetime” is my label, I can accept that and don’t insist that you stick to my labels.

I just hope for luck rather than providence when things get sticky.