Josephus,

I’d rather you didn't make up strawman arguments. I’ll say again. Atheists have no image in their minds of any of the gods as they don’t exist. That which is invisible and non-existent have remarkably similar properties, don’t you think.

But, what are known to exist are cultural indoctrination and the evolutionary produced propensity to make patterns out of randomness.

Atheists would accept the existence of an ethereal magic man in the sky, elsewhere, everywhere or nowhere if there was extraordinary evidence to support such an extraordinary claim.

David

Dear Pericles,

<<I genuinely fail to see how an atheist, who clearly states a lack of belief in God, can at the same time be religious, and bind with God.>>

Simple: belief in God is just one religious technique among many. It is a mental form of encouragement to help people at times when the path to God gets rough. That type of encouragement suits some people, but not others who may use other techniques and other forms of encouragement.
An atheist could, for example, be inspired to come closer to God by watching nature or listening to music, or as Einstein (an agnostic) put it: "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

<<On that basis, good people are able to bind with an entity of which they are entirely unaware. Which I find particularly expedient. As well as being highly dubious logic.>>

God is not an entity. Had He been, and separate from you as such, then I would agree with your concern. However, all that is needed to bind with God is to get rid of the illusion that distorts our awareness of our true nature, which good people can become aware of even if they have no name for that awareness.

<<I'd still like to call goodness, goodness, instead of religion, if that's ok with you.>>

Even better so, this way you will be less likely to confuse basic goodness with the totality of goodness.

What we in ordinary life call "goodness" or "basic goodness", is essential for religion, it is the foundation on which religious practice rests, but is not the totality of religion.

Dear Trevor,

<<It's never clear whose being is the more insulted – the true or untrue Scotsman – the truly or the untruly 'religious'.>>

If Catholic priests that molest children feel insulted by me stating that they are irreligious, then so be it, they deserve it.

If an atheist who is a good and kind person feels insulted by me calling them 'religious', then s/he has a simple way out: not to believe me!

<<I percieve us reflecting on the mirror of consciousness and imagining God.>>

And so we must until the mirror is clean.

<<Being able to describe an ontological hierarchy doesn't prove it, except perhaps to your own satisfaction – despite avidya;. Good for you. I just find it unsatisfactory, unsatisfying and circular in that it assumes the existence of Brahman and then assembles an explanation.>>

Indeed, one must be mad as a hatter to attempt proving that what doesn't exist exists, so sorry for disappointing you - if I was able to perform miracles for you, then I surely would. As you say, all I can humbly offer is an explanation, accompanied by a translation into modern framework and terms of what the sages of old described as a result of their direct experience.

Yuyutsu,

For your enlightenment.

“Though that poor choice of name does not describe the phenomenon ('paedophilia' means the love of children - what love is there?), the phenomenon itself is part of existence.”

No, it means the sexual attraction to children.
“Einstein (an agnostic)”

No, Einstein was not an agnostic and he wrote about it in a famous letter which I believe was just auctioned, gathering a hefty sum.

David

Dear David,

<<No, it means the sexual attraction to children.>>

The fact that whoever coined the word 'paedophilia' in the early 20th century chose to borrow from Latin a word for 'love', along with the fact that their choice was widely accepted by society, just shows how perverse we have become, mistaking sexual attraction for love and church-attendance for religion.

<<No, Einstein was not an agnostic>>

Perhaps, I have no way to tell, but he was agnostic according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein

Yuyutsu,

Your religious cultural confirmation bias is supporting your heightened pattern seeking proclivity and that is causing you to accept propositions that are imaginary.

Paedophilia is and has always been a disorder. Adult love is not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia

The page you offered on Einstein proves my point. In the popular sense of the word agnostic, that is sitting equally on the fence of belief in a god or not. Einstein wasn’t an agnostic. I quote:

“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. (Albert Einstein, The World as I See It)”
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm

Even if he was a believer in the god hypothesis, using Einstein as a support for woo is a fallacious way of arguing. That you need to do this only demonstrates the extremely weak case you are presenting.

All people should class themselves as agnostic about everything including the existence of a god in the philosophical sense as no one has absolute knowledge. It is only the religious who consider they are not agnostic because they have ‘special’ knowledge of its existence. Of course they do not have such knowledge in reality, as imagination is not absolute knowledge and they are also agnostic.

But, in the land of reality, some humans have a tendency to accept the highest probability discounting the known-about fanciful imaginations humans are capable of. Most of us consider leprechauns, fairies, Zeus, Ra and the Lock Ness monster do not exist. Einstein was one such person. Atheists just add Yahweh and the thousands of other putative gods to that list.

David