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Originally Posted by Ilya  I would say that, and I would even say that there is no fundamental clash between moderate theism and atheism. Obviously, the fundamentalists believe in an entirely different kind of God, but your average intelligent theist's view of God is so abstract that it can very well be described by the Pantheistic model.
If you can't see the similarities, I guess there are two options. Either you simply don't understand what God is to theists, or I haven't described Pantheism well enough. For me, it's pretty clear that it's not the word God that we have in common, but the idea, and that is a very fundamental similarity. |
i can't put myself in a theist's mind so i have to rely on commonly accepted definitions (
1,
2) and those definitions usually associate theism with a personal god with a concrete influence on the world by opposition to the non-personal god of the deists and the abstract, metaphorical god of the pantheists.
Either "your average intelligent theist" isn't really a theist after all or the commonly accepted definition of theism is wrong and should be redefined.