You claimed God is an "it." I am saying God is all things to all people. To the theist God can be he, or she, or it if they are a Deist, to the atheist God can be the imagination of the a theist...God is all things to all people. There is no limit to what God is... In whatever form you like, God will appear to you if you seek God wholeheartedly with full faith. To some God appears as he, to some she, to some it, and to the atheist God appears as something false. Again, God has no limits so God can appear to you in whatever form you like... God can be personal or impersonal, gender neutral or gender specific, your option... No, God is not human. Humans are limited in nature, God has no such limits.
No, I don't equate the simple acceptance of non God as a mental illness. I am talking about the practice of atheism, just like the practice of Christianity, Buddhism, etc. How many atheist have an acceptance of non God, and have no emotional charge at all to the concept of God, or to those who believe in God? I am suggesting that is someone truly holds and accepts non God, and practices this thought in their mind continually, they are practicing atheism. If they are practicing their own religion of non God with no resentment, hatred, judgment, or anything like that towards people of other religions, then that would be mental health. That is not what I see at all though... I see anger, resentment, judgment, self righteousness, etc. from the atheists who practice atheism. If we took someone who was born on a desert island, had no exposure to God or non God, what would be their reaction to hearing about God? It would be intellectual curiosity, not bitterness, judgment, anger, etc. They would have no ax to grind against religion or those who follow a religion... Think of the first Native Americans when they met the Christians. They had no desire to convert the Christians to their beliefs. They practiced a live and let live philosophy. The problem came when the Christians tried to force their religion on the natives, and/or judge them as inferior because of the faith the natives held. This judgment of another's personal faith is a mental illness of sorts.
Quite true, you can't say impossible until you have ruled out all possibilities of flying pigs being possible. Since flying pigs are logically possible, then flying pigs are not logically impossible. If you can show how flying pigs (as I define flying pigs...not the Judeo Christian view of flying pigs) is not logically possible, please do so... I see your argument reduced itself to word games
Reason is what separates us from the beast. For those that choose to believe with no or insignificant evidence, and esp those that choose to devote so much of their time to that which they cannot know RELIABLY. YES, i do look at them strangely
Those are probably the ones you don't hear about. By definition, these are the ones who won't argue with you about god or admonish you for believing in it. I personally know quite a few of those (and especially in my travels to former communist countries, where there they literally didn't think god existed since their births). The militant ones of any ideology are the ones you hear about all the time. Just like we try not to pass judgements on all blacks based on the Nation of Islam, or on all christians based on evangelical rants, might you show the same respect for atheists in general and not categorically refer to their belief system as a mental illness?
I don't rule out flying pigs, why should I? If you want to believe in flying pigs, I have no objection. I won't even demand proof...
What people believe is no problem. If they are a republican, and they don't try to impact my beliefs and my life, what problems is there? When they try to pass legislation that impacts my life, then there is a problem... Beliefs are not a problem, actions are... Is that too advance to understand?