The theist-atheist encounter

The anthropomorphic view of God, namely that theists see God as if in their own image (ie a Person with or without the Trinitarian "structure") can be seen as the reverse side of the biblical "God created man in His own image". Thus Ludwig Feuerbach's "Man created God in his own image" - if "created" is replaced by "models" - can be seen by a theist as complementing (rather than negating) the fundamental biblical belief. An atheist, of course, will prefer Feurebach'soriginal version.

In particular, there is no Jewish, Christian, Muslim etc God, only different understandings, models, of God. Within Christian tradition one uses to distinguish between "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" and "the God of the philosophers". .Jaspers calls the belief in the latter philosophic faith (cf his Der Philosophische Glaube). These again are not different Gods only different approaches to, or models of, the same God. He who speaks of "a God", and asks for evidence to prove the existence of "a God", understands as little of what (religious) faith is, as the person who speaks of "a gravitation", and asks for evidence to prove the existence of "a gravitation", understands of physics. There is no Newton's gravitation and Einstein's gravitation only one gravitation. One can "see gravitation" only through its effect on material objects, and one can "see God" (or at least the usefulness of the concept) only through His effect on humanity, especially on the person who sincerely seeks Him, an activity that might be subjected to psychological but not philosophical analysis. This to accept requires "insider knowledge" (Michael Polanyi's indwelling)which is a byproduct only of religious faith.

Also various ancient mythologies can be seen as models or perceptions, albeit not theist, of God or transcendence. They are naive, so are naive also pre-scientific perceptions of physical reality with a blurry distinction between the spiritual (transcendent?) and physical (immanent?). Thus such mythologies as models of Reality cannot even be called pre-theist.

Let me conclude with the remark, that an atheist - ie a person who does not share the pre-theist (hence neither the theist) belief - might still find the concept of God (and this or that model of) a useful idea although without any reference to outer Reality. Or he/she might positively judge the role of religion, e.g Christianity, in history (more precisely, believe that its positive contributions prevail over its negative); similarly in the realms of psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. . Admittedly, with most atheists this is not the case.