The existence - or lack of - a God is one of humanity's fundamental questions. Since the first birth, the first sunrise, the first death, humans have sought to explain the world around them. The whole of human existence, in the end, comes down to this: Is there a God?
There are many people who have concepts of God that are neither storybook characters nor meaningless or unhelpful abstractions. Their concepts relate to real things that any reasonable person would accept. For example, those who call themselves pantheists see the whole universe as God. This means that if you believe in the universe you must believe in God. A medieval theologian named Anselm of Canterbury developed what’s called the ontological argument for God. He declared that God is “that which no greater can be thought.” But this ends up being just another name for the concept of infinity. Many spiritually-inclined environmentalists call planet Earth by the name Gaia after the ancient Greek goddess of Earth who gave birth to the Titans. So if you believe in this planet then you believe in Gaia.
The problem with all of these is that they are simply word exchanges. One word means another word. God becomes a mere synonym. Or, if more than that is intended, then some existing thing becomes deified and, as a result, gets laden with baggage associated with the storybook god of primitives and children as well as the abstract god of theologians.
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