Do theists disbelieve the same God as atheists? Topic open for everyone

[Rick O'Shez]

Categorizing the atheist experience is a bit like herding cats.

I have the same problem with trying to categorise theist experience.

 

[Desert Snake]

Theist aren't necessarily "looking" for deities, but are glad they have found one they can enter act with. Like an invisible friend you used to have when you were a child and grew so comfortable and familiar with.

Could be. Sometimes. But it isn't some given for theists.

 

[Doug Shaver]

Well to me it matters a great deal, there are a bewildering array of very, very different concepts labelled 'god'. Don't you need to establish that you are both discussing the same thing?

Not a problem for me. When someone tells me I should believe in God, it's usually clear from context which one they're talking about. If it isn't, I'll ask them. If they tell me, then that's the one we're discussing. If they don't, then I explain why we can't have a discussion until they do.

 

[Bunyip]

Not a problem for me. When someone tells me I should believe in God, it's usually clear from context which one they're talking about. If it isn't, I'll ask them. If they tell me, then that's the one we're discussing. If they don't, then I explain why we can't have a discussion until they do.

Sure, that is what I am saying - if it is not clear, clarify.

 

[Jumi]

You've hit the nail on the head with this. I often find that the god atheists talk about is nothing like the god I believe in.

Being a Gnostic, do you find that theists also usually speak about god that is different to the one you believe in?

When I say "I believe in God", I mean the God of Abraham. If a Pagan says he or she believes in gods, they mean the pagan gods, etc. It is easy to tell which "God" a person is speaking of just by his or her faith.

It's not always that easy, sometimes gods are just symbols referring to natural process or a psychological one. Recently I talked here with someone who would not explain their definition of God, but instead referred me to his favorite authors. I have no doubt that the views of these authors are not mainstream so he practically ended the discussion there.

It's also not always clear if believing in the God of Abraham is actually belief in the same god-concept and who knows if Abraham would have believed in that one?

 

[Zen Sensei]

Most atheist were theist.


I would say atheist probably know more kinds of theism then your average theist. That's just my opinion and its anecdotal.

This is a classic strategy. The atheist just doesn't understand.

Yes you are correct in claiming that atheist and theist disbelieve in the same gOd or gOds, except the atheist disbelieve in one more gOd, and that is the gOd you believed in. Shalom.

 

[The Enlightened One]

If it is a god of theism, I withhold belief - so, yes by extension?

 

[Windwalker]

Well, if you have that emotional reaction, you have it, and that is not my job to protest.

Not sure how you heard this as an emotional reaction? That is not what I was suggesting at all. The full context of what I said about it having a "radical effect" was stating this, "It leads one to realize the relative nature of our truths and perceptions. That has a radical effect on how one lives their lives." Is that an emotional reaction? The radical effect has to do with the shift in perceptions which leads to shifts in thoughts and ideas, attitudes and actions, and so forth. Are emotions part of that? Sure, no more nor less than they are in any of those things. But it is not about getting goosebumps or something silly like that.

But there is no intrinsic logic to it. My perceptions are relative to what I've experienced, my mother language and culture, my brain's physical limits etc. That holds whether there is an absolute or not.

Yes, the key to this is in what you said, "relative to what I've experienced". When I say to realize the Absolute, I'm not simply speaking of concepts, but I saying it is an actual perceptual shift of awareness itself. In other words a actual experience of that state of mind, state of being. Now, after the fact of that of course we enter into the who relative domain of culture and language which bears on how one interprets that experience, and so anything that is said about it will be bringing that into it. Anything that is said cannot therefore be an actual description of the Absolute, but as you say poetic expressions. There can be some logic to it, as I'm attempting to describe, but it cannot be held as strictly logical pointing to a strictly logic object, since it must include the speaker in the relative spaces. More on that in a minute.

I'd still claim that for most people, an abstract absolute doesn't have an impact at all. At least those christians I've spent time with irl, they were all about Jesus and how good and loving god is etc., all that abstract thinking was clearly suspicious to them, and a purely abstract absolute would have had no appeal at all to them.

That Absolute doesn't exist to them. They have an idea of God, and given their definitions they offer it falls apart as being simply an object in their particular cultural and linguist relative realities. Again, it begins with a realization, which is the result of experience. It doesn't come by drawing logical conclusions using abstract reasoning. It must transcend reasoning into experience, and from there words become descriptions of that realization of the Absolute, in the world and in one's own being.

The absolute can not be part of "the being of" a relative being. I'm afraid you're moving from logical thinking to mystical poetry here. Not that I don't understand the appeal. Been there, done that. Damn, I need a t-shirt!

Why can't the absolute be the same as the relative? What you are doing is thinking in strictly dualist terms. You have the absolute over here, and the relative over there. They are split in two. But even logically, the absolute cannot be separate from the relative and be considered absolute. What you have is a form of subtle duality, which says on that could be absolute because it's "not this", which is relative. What I am saying is actually not just mystical poetry, but is a perceptual reality of nonduality.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the three turnings of the wheel of Buddhism, but briefly the first turning is the Theravada school of thought which says we should flee the world of form, the world of illusion and seek to escape it and rest in Nirvana, in Emptiness, in the Absolute. But in the 2nd century AD you had Nagarjuna who realized that this itself is a form of duality, which I mentioned above. He realized that Form is none other than Emptiness, and Emptiness is none other that Form. The illusion is to see them as separate from each other, or to see them as two, or to see them as one. This is the point where language breaks down as all language is based on subject/object dualities. So even though there may be a paradoxical use of language, the perceptual reality of it is not paradoxical. It is I feel best described as "unproblematic". Language such as this held in this space of nondual realization is not attempting to create hard dualistic, defining boundaries.

I came across the recently that captures perfectly what I just laid out,

The intellect must consent to pass out of the bounds of a finite logic and accustom itself to the logic of the Infinite. On this condition alone, by this way of seeing and thinking, it ceases to be paradoxical or futile to speak of the ineffable: but if we insist on applying a finite logic to the Infinite, the omnipresent reality will escape us and we shall grasp instead an abstract shadow, a dead form petrified into speech or a hard incisive graph which speaks of the Reality but does not express it. Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known

~Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine, pg.293
​

Some time back I said to a theologian friend of mine, much to his dismay I'll add, "Theology is the last ditch attempt of the mind to understand God before it fails, and does". I think this is captures what I said above too.

Sure. That's why saying "god is love" is limiting god. But so does "the absolute is part of my being", by the very same logic, or not?

It depends on which side of the Absolute you are speaking from, I suppose. I will say this about "God is Love", that is true in the sense of how it is experienced in the relative. In the highest expression of form, there is an infinite expression of Love, which itself arises from Formlessness, which itself has no defining quality. The Formless is not a thing, or has attributes, or a qualities, but from this the highest expressions of the world of form arise. I would say this is the realm of subtle light, pure form, in the relative side, "approaching lightspeed" as it were from my earlier analogy. The Hindus speak of this as Satcitananda, "being, consciousness, bliss". It is the, "sublimely blissful experience of the boundless, pure consciousness is a glimpse of ultimate reality". So "God is Love", is true, experienced at the highest state of the relative. And I will add this, this is not just abstract ideas. These are actual realized states of being. I have, and do experience Satchitananda myself. It's not a logical abstraction which has "no evidence". These are words to describe experience.

Let me add a little disclaimer here. Thinking too much about the infinite got extremely intelligent people like Georg Cantor into an asylum.

Yes it can, which is why you have to stop trying to penetrate it with reason and step beyond that. If you expect Reality to make logical sense, you are starting with a finite point trying to fit infinity into a finite point. Instead you have to expand the finite point into the Infinite and rest within it. You let go of this insistence the infinite must be comprehensible by the mind of logic and reason. It is actually in the end, infinitely simple. It is a flower in the sun. It is the raindrop. But to get there, to see what That is, you must let go.

That said, I challenge your conclusion that, because the infinite is everything, therefore everything is infinite.

I didn't say everything is infinite. A rock is still a rock, but it is not apart from Infinity. Every molecule, every atom, is Infinity. There is no "an infinity". I'll explain it this way. I you were to look at a sliver of infinity in a single object. It is infinite in itself. You cannot divide infinity into pieces, into sections. What you are doing is this is the intersection, the point of where the finite sees the infinite, and attempts to understand it in finite terms. This is the point of paradox, where such terms, such separations, such boundaries fail. So most selectively ignore seeing this, as it can drive the mind mad, as you said.

We filter out seeing this and see only "the rock" as an object "in itself". We separate it from infinity. But this is an illusion. Once we pull back the veil of the mind that filters this, we see Infinity. But then we do not say that only Infinity is real, we also then see the rock is very real, but it is not apart from infinity. It is infinity and infinity is it! It becomes radiant, luminous, full of joy, love, bliss. All objects radiate this "Infinite Infinity", fully in each part of themselves, indivisible, yet fully unique in form. Again, this is a description of experience, of many. It is the nondual. It is experienced as Satchitananda.

 

[genypher]

Theists aren't necessarily 'looking' for deities, either. I think you have entertained an erroneous assumption/association, there.

I didn't say they were, necessarily (though, I have met a fair number who are). My point was that I don't believe in deities because I have no cause to believe in them. Many theists (not all, but many in my experience--predominantly Abrahamic believers) assume that atheists and other kinds of non-believers reject gods because "they are mad at god" or "because they are arrogant and don't want to submit to god." These are actual arguments I have read on this matter. I just wanted to be clear that I am not atheistic because of some slight at the hand of a religious organization.

 

[genypher]

I have the same problem with trying to categorise theist experience.

HAHA! Very true!

 

[Underhill]

The question posed in the OP : "Why don't you believe in god?" is a rather interesting one. I think it assumes that an atheist would answer along the lines of "Because God does bad things" and it presupposes a fundamentalist view of the Abrahamic gods is the thing that atheists are rejecting. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, I don't believe in gods because I have never had a cause to believe in them in the first place. I have never had a hole in my life that needed to be filled with the supernatural. I have entertained the notion, but it never has held up to scrutiny. The universe just is. I don't need a preternatural being that just is to have created the universe. It has never been something I believed in.

Personally, it started as a question about the insanity of my parents belief and eventually led to the realization that it's all hogwash.

 

[JosephThomas]

I do not believe in the same God Atheists believe they do not believe in*

But I believe in the true God.

 

[J Ciresoli]

Most atheist were theist.


I would say atheist probably know more kinds of theism then your average theist. That's just my opinion and its anecdotal.

This is a classic strategy. The atheist just doesn't understand.

Atheists understand religion better than most theists that adhere to religion. According to a Religious knowledge test put out by Pew Opinion Research, Americans on average scored 16 of 32 questions about religion correctly, with atheists/agnostics, as well as Jews and Mormons, answering the most correct answers above all other groups. Christians only answered about half of the questions correctly, while atheists/agnostics answered approx. 21 questions correctly. I took the quiz and scored 30/32 questions that were answered correctly. I was a Christian for 20 years and do not miss it. I did two years in seminary and still keep up with Christians in order to ask questions they cannot even answer about their own religion. I could give a half of a chapter of the bible and they will claim it is out of context just so that they don't have to explain why their deity is a moral being even though, as written in the passages provided, he does some super nasty ****. Watching them go through the mental acrobatics is still a source of amusement for me. I do not find belief in a deity to be based in rational thought, but merely as a coping mechanism for emotionally troubled times. I regard religious books as allegorical writings meant to describe the struggles we face in life, not as historical fact. Ester, for example, holds within it accounts that are historically inaccurate, as well as a few accurate ones. This book was omitted from the canon for generations due to the conflicts it has with history, not to mention the reality that it tries to describe 700 years worth of events. I do not like what religion is doing, how it is used to control people, and how, it seems, that every deity is, in some way, obsessed with sex. Live and let live, and work to elevate people to a better quality of life. If Jesus died to make a multi-billion dollar industry, why talk about sin?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I do not believe in the same God Atheists believe they do not believe in*

But I believe in the true God.

This is precisely the point I made in post #420 above, in which I said:
"Interesting, because my experience is that theists generally use this as a shield. Whatever the atheist might say, they can respond with "that's not the god I believe in." However, since they will never go on to describe in any detail what the nature of the god they believe in really is, they can always and perpetually fall back on this. It's the debate equivalent of the safety play."

You are doing the same thing, telling the atheists "the god you are talking about is not the God I believe in," and at the same time you say nothing about this "true God" so that we can understand what we are answering. And of course, I believe the reason for that is to avoid getting trapped -- nobody can successfully argue with a carefully kept secret.

Now, if you were to tell us everything that you believe about the nature and wishes of this "true God" ....

 

[The Enlightened One]

I do not believe in the same God Atheists believe they do not believe in*

But I believe in the true God.

That IS a god that most of us do not believe in, by definition at least.

 

[ChristineES]

Being a Gnostic, do you find that theists also usually speak about god that is different to the one you believe in?


It's not always that easy, sometimes gods are just symbols referring to natural process or a psychological one. Recently I talked here with someone who would not explain their definition of God, but instead referred me to his favorite authors. I have no doubt that the views of these authors are not mainstream so he practically ended the discussion there.

It's also not always clear if believing in the God of Abraham is actually belief in the same god-concept and who knows if Abraham would have believed in that one?

As Abraham lived thousands of years ago, it would be hard to find out what his belief entailed. He was before Judaism, even (no duh, right? ) Genesis describes the God as "God Most High" in Abraham's story: "Elohim" which can be plural or singular. I haven't really studied it all that much, so I can't elaborate much more than that.

 

[JoStories]

I do not believe in the same God Atheists believe they do not believe in*

But I believe in the true God.

I'm curious what God that would be. There are many 'true' gods. I believe in God and trust me, to me, that is the true God. Are you referring to the abrahamic God?

 

[vijeno]

Not sure how you heard this as an emotional reaction? That is not what I was suggesting at all. The full context of what I said about it having a "radical effect" was stating this, "It leads one to realize the relative nature of our truths and perceptions. That has a radical effect on how one lives their lives." Is that an emotional reaction

Ah, now I see where you're coming from. Buddhism and/or nondualism, sure. Been there as well, had my fling with it, and then rejected it. Man, I actually thought I was enlightened for about a second or so! It was all cool, but ultimately... well, it just doesn't hold water, I'm afraid.

Let me state it this way: There is emotion, and there is intellect. Insight is a combination of both. Coming to the conclusion that there is an absolute is either a purely intellectual activity, or it is also associated with intense emotions - often in the context of a religious conversion.

Now, I suspect that you would like to posit a third mode of perception, probably called "realization", which goes beyond intellect and emotion. Feel free to provide your reasoning for thinking that something like that exists.

I still maintain that the mere existence of an absolute doesn't change anything. Specifically, it does not mean that we are all one, that there is no spoon etc. All it means is that there is an uncaused cause, a cessation of the law of causality, and that this in turn caused everything else.

When I say to realize the Absolute, I'm not simply speaking of concepts, but I saying it is an actual perceptual shift of awareness itself. In other words a actual experience of that state of mind, state of being.

As long as it has not been shown that, apart from being a rather nice state of mind (which I might have experienced firsthand), there is an actual referent to that experience - in other words, that it is not merely an illusion - I think it is better to say that it just does not exist. Why? Simply because of skepticism, because of epistemic parsimony.

Why can't the absolute be the same as the relative?

Because they are by definition the opposite of each other. Relative means "dependent on at least one cause", absolute means "not dependent on any cause". I mean, I was not the one who claimed that the absolute even exists, remember? Now you're telling me that it is "the same as the relative". But then, why have a special term for it at all?

What you are doing is thinking in strictly dualist terms. You have the absolute over here, and the relative over there. They are split in two. But even logically, the absolute cannot be separate from the relative and be considered absolute.

Yes, I am thinking in strictly dualistic terms. There is no other way of thinking, at least not if we define thinking as the process of coming to conclusions by means of rationality, and if we want to achieve actual insight into objective reality. If you are convinced that there is one, please feel free to demonstrate that.

Yes I know, buddhism and advaita vedanta etc. all posit the existence of an "absolute perspective". But when pressed for what that might be, they all delight in vague descriptions and funny paradoxes. It may take thousands of incarnations to reach enlightenment - or zazen is already enlightenment itself. Take your pick! Duh. It's all about hilarious claims based on personal intuition, dressed up in black robes and exciting language.

So it is better to assume that there is no such thing. Again, demonstrate it!

Yes it can, which is why you have to stop trying to penetrate it with reason and step beyond that.

No, I most certainly don't. And yes, I have tried, but what I found was that this is without any consequence, except maybe that it makes you feel a bit better and a bit trippy and perhaps somewhat more enlightened than others. Which is certainly nice, but sadly that doesn't mean that it is also true.

 

[Windwalker]

Ah, now I see where you're coming from. Buddhism and/or nondualism, sure. Been there as well, had my fling with it, and then rejected it. Man, I actually thought I was enlightened for about a second or so! It was all cool, but ultimately... well, it just doesn't hold water, I'm afraid.

You're afraid for whom? I'll say at the outset your language of having a "fling with it", and that you "thought [you were] enlightened for about a second or so," indicates something telling to me. Exactly how does one have a "fling" with something like this that leads them to think for they've now "got it"? This sound very much a conceptual thing, like you were "looking for answers" to big questions. This approach of course is doomed to failure, so the results you go are exactly on track with this. Indeed, it cannot hold water approached this way, understandably so.

Let me state it this way: There is emotion, and there is intellect. Insight is a combination of both. Coming to the conclusion that there is an absolute is either a purely intellectual activity, or it is also associated with intense emotions - often in the context of a religious conversion.

Now, I suspect that you would like to posit a third mode of perception, probably called "realization", which goes beyond intellect and emotion. Feel free to provide your reasoning for thinking that something like that exists.

I think your reduction here is flawed. The human experience is much more than simply intellect and emotion. It's vastly more nuanced than that. As far as insight goes, well, insight comes by setting aside emotions and intellect! Not making a combination of them. I can in fact make a very detailed case to support why this is so, but that could become a whole topic in itself. Briefly though, your intellect is clouded by the frameworks you use through which to interpret data. You are using a particular set of eyes that is itself not be looked at and evaluated. You have to see that framework itself, which means you have to step out of using them! So the intellect, which uses these, has to "be still" and not engage in intellectualizing. Secondly, emotion is a response to thoughts and ideas in no small measure! Those who say emotions 'just happen' without any input probably are suffering from some chemical imbalance. "I'm just happy and I don't know why!!! Weeeee!", is not healthy emotion. Likewise, being depressed can be a result of chemical imbalance as well, etc.

But that all aside, emotions are not the same thing as the subjective itself. Being "me" the subjective self, is the interiority of who I am. It includes psychological makeup, ego development, emotional bodies, shadow material, subconscious mind, states of consciousness, and on and on. True insight is in fact self-awareness which has to involve actual engagement with these things in ones conscious awareness. It's is not sufficient by any means to simply 'introspect', to think about these with the mind, but you must engage in self-knowledge by being in touch with them directly. This is not emotional in nature. Though I will add, emotions may be part of this process as a response to what is opened or released. But their nature or condition is not emotion itself.

I can dig much more deeply than this, but this is to point out that insight goes way beyond just thinking and feeling. As far as my reasoning for this, I've just laid out some basic high level reasons, but evidence is offered by those who have done this and will tell you about it, such as me. I don't "dabble" in this stuff, or have a "fling" with it. I swim in it.

I still maintain that the mere existence of an absolute doesn't change anything.

That is absolutely correct. If one never engages in what is beyond our ordinary perceptions and ideas of reality, it's just some magical abstraction to them without meaning. If however you do engage in it, well, it utterly changes everything.

Specifically, it does not mean that we are all one, that there is no spoon etc. All it means is that there is an uncaused cause, a cessation of the law of causality, and that this in turn caused everything else.

That's right, all there is to you is the spoon. The Matrix is the real world.

As long as it has not been shown that, apart from being a rather nice state of mind (which I might have experienced firsthand), there is an actual referent to that experience - in other words, that it is not merely an illusion - I think it is better to say that it just does not exist. Why? Simply because of skepticism, because of epistemic parsimony.

First of all to call it a "nice state of mind" would make me believe you have not had any experience of it. "I might have"? It sound like an intellectual exercise where you at best may have touched the edge of an altered state of reality, like getting a little high, maybe, coupled along with some thought experiment or such. I don't know for sure, but you describe doesn't fit anything like what I'm describing. That's fine if that's your experience, but it's not referring to what I am.

The experience of the Absolute shows that all else is illusion. This is the common report. We realize that how we living inside our heads in the world, is what defined the world and our experience of it. We realize that the thoughts themselves we engaged with were what we mistook as reality. We were engaging in our ideas of the world, our ideas of truth, as truth itself. What this all means is you are not seeing "something else", you are seeing what was right before you the whole damned time, but could not see because you were seeing through this fog of illusion! The referent is right before you every day, every moment. It's a matter of seeing, not finding something other than what is.

And you're damn right that's a "nice state of mind". It's a clear state of mind, and that's indeed nice to have.

Because they are by definition the opposite of each other. Relative means "dependent on at least one cause", absolute means "not dependent on any cause". I mean, I was not the one who claimed that the absolute even exists, remember? Now you're telling me that it is "the same as the relative". But then, why have a special term for it at all?

Relative does not mean this, nor does the absolute. In the context I am speaking of the relative simply means truth and reality are seen and perceived and experience relative to ones limited perception. The absolute is an "aperspectival" view. And these can in fact be held simultaneously, but it is a perceived paradoxical view held one one insists on one perspective alone, or on no perspective. Holding these together is not a synthesis making them a single truth. It is simply an unproblematic look from all possible multiple perspectives. You continue to insist upon it being one or the other, and a such you are in fact yourself trying to make that an absolute. That's not how I think about it.

Yes, I am thinking in strictly dualistic terms. There is no other way of thinking, at least not if we define thinking as the process of coming to conclusions by means of rationality, and if we want to achieve actual insight into objective reality. If you are convinced that there is one, please feel free to demonstrate that.

Thinking is not limited to "coming to conclusions by means of rationality"! You're describing analytic thought. That's not what defines "thinking". Thinking is really simply just engaging in metal activities with mental objects. One does this all day long without seeking conclusions of things.

If you want to have actual insight into "objective reality", then you have to get rid of the subjective itself. Otherwise, the subject will always be part of what is perceived. There is no such thing as "objective reality". That's a myth. There is only perceived reality that includes your own mind and the set of eyes it's looking through. Ah, the myth of the given world lives on!

Yes I know, buddhism and advaita vedanta etc. all posit the existence of an "absolute perspective". But when pressed for what that might be, they all delight in vague descriptions and funny paradoxes. It may take thousands of incarnations to reach enlightenment - or zazen is already enlightenment itself. Take your pick! Duh. It's all about hilarious claims based on personal intuition, dressed up in black robes and exciting language.

Yes, sure, that it's words only make sense from an actual experience is not a mater of "vague descriptions". They aren't vague to me! It's really a matter of it being over one's head, no offense meant. There are plenty of things over my head too, but I don't mistake that as them being frauds.

So it is better to assume that there is no such thing. Again, demonstrate it!

Demonstrate it yourself. Do the experiment. But don't have a fling with it, dabble in it. You actually have to learn it. If what you tried didn't produce instantaneous results, well, gosh..... But if you tried some discipline for an adequate time and it didn't connect with you, that could just mean it's not right practice for you, or you just simply aren't in a place to do any of it regardless of the practice. You don't have to do any of this, of course. But to make pronouncements about it without any actual experience, is well.. unqualified. It's just speculation from a disadvantaged point of view.

That may sound like an intellectual cop out, but in fact it is not. It's like arguing with Galileo about the moons of Jupiter without ever looking through a telescope. How can you debate the existence of something you've never seen with those who have? There is no question in their minds about what they experienced through the telescope. Only those who have peered into the night sky can debate about what is seen with those who have looked themselves. If you wish an objective view about what is said, then look at what those who have looked say they see. Compare their experiences with others who have experienced it and then you can objectively map out what is being said. You can argue then that they say something that is different that what you say. Not, "I haven't seen anything, therefore it isn't real".

No, I most certainly don't. And yes, I have tried, but what I found was that this is without any consequence, except maybe that it makes you feel a bit better and a bit trippy and perhaps somewhat more enlightened than others. Which is certainly nice, but sadly that doesn't mean that it is also true.

Let's start by describing your experience then. Describe your experiment. What was done. How long did you train to do it? What state did you enter into? How long for? How many times? How deep did you go? And so forth. Let's compare notes as fellow researchers.

 

[Christopher Sly]

From Wikipedia -

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.

In religious belief, a deity (Listeni/ˈdiː.ɨti/ or Listeni/ˈdeɪ.ɨti/) is a supernatural being, who may be thought of as holy, godly, or sacred. Some religions have one supreme deity, while others have multiple deities of various ranks.

Personally, I define God as my Creator, as the creative force. I don't believe in deities so I am an atheist. I see the creative force as all pervasive, so I am a pantheist. Pope Francis believes in a deity so he is a theist. But we both accept our Creator as our God. We both look to the evidence of creation to understand our Creator better. We both respect the scientific method as a tool to help us understand our Creator. Many theists, on the other hand, have a deity or deities that are from a storybook, and they reject their Creator and the evidence of creation because it contradicts the story in their storybook. Pope Francis and I accept that we are guessing, and have a sincere desire to guess right. Many theist refuse to accept that they are guessing, and have no sincere desire to actually be guessing right. They therefore easily reject all evidence that contradicts their Truth, and the scientific method that challenges their Truth. It would seem the difference between atheist and theist is not so much about what story we believe, but whether we understand that we are guessing, and are sincere about our desire to be guessing right. Both atheist and theist can be certain of their truth. Both atheists and theist can be humble about the mortal limits of knowing the truth.