Deified Reality
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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Yes, that is a correct observation. But it is merely an observation. For example- everyone has dreams. My dreams are completely different than anyone elses, and the way I dream is completely different. I may think that my dreams are another portion of reality, you may disagree. Does all of this disprove the existence of dreams? One person may never in their entire life dream... does this mean that no one dreams? The truth to this entire debate is that every argument can be answered logically and infinitely, and therefore no logical decision can ever be made. It all has to come down to faith. Either faith in atheism, or faith in theism. That is the key to decision. But how does one acquire that faith? The only way to acquire faith in either direction is either to close your mind and convince yourself, or open your mind, and ask. (this is presupposing the assumption that if God exists, he is a personal God.) If God is there, he will answer. If he isn't, he won't. It's the only way.