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Another silly question from a "newbie"...
When I was Christian, and was praying and giving thanks for all that I am grateful for, I thanked God for everything. Now I am not so sure I believe in God, so when I am meditating and saying thanks for all the wonderful things in my life, who do I thank?? I am very confused (obviously!!). 
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I'm a former Catholic turned atheist Buddhist. I definitely know where you're coming from. I always talked to "God" and had a good relationship with "him". I was probably the last person someone would expect to declare myself atheist one day. Now instead of thanking a deity through prayer, I try to just be thankful for what I have and thank those that I can for their contributions to the world. For instance, at Thanksgiving dinner I can thank my mom for buying and cooking the food, thank my husband for driving, and be thankful for all the farmers and other workers who helped provide the food.
I've also learned something about that little voice in my head that I used to think was a god. Turns out, it's just me. I have to be careful since sometimes it's wrong, but when it's right I can be proud of myself.
Back to my point, I love variety of people and my friends clearly show how widely my "tastes" differs. It's easier to love them than to condemn them. And more fun!
This sanhga just makes it easier to explain what I feel in my 'religious' discussions. To explain whether it's a religion or not is another hour!
Describe the room you are sitting in. Most people will say 'well there is a couch and a chair, rug on the floor....etc. nope try again. Now they might say well there are four walls and a floor painted_______ (color). Nope! Missed it! All of these things either are contained within the room or define our boundaries of the room but they are not the room. The room is the space (emptiness) in which all these things exist. If we take away these things the room still exists. Remove the walls and the "room" just gets bigger. By adding a definition/word to the Dharma/God we only make it small. All things exist within the Dharma and the Dharma exists in all things.
^gassho^
What makes us imagine that there is a single deity?
What if that is God's plan? For all of us to find our own way?
The whole "God" thing is a difficult one. My own position is based on a Christian notion usually referred to as 'immanence'. A 'god-out-there' appears to me to be, at best, an irrelevance and, at worst, an excuse for bad behaviour. The meaning of the Jesus message (to me! All this must be understood as a personal statement) is contained in the statement that the basileia ('kingdom') is here and now, within us. Just as in Buddhist teaching, liberation is to be found within because that is where everything happens!
I have found many similarities between tantra and the mystical Christian teachings, particularly the use of visualisation as a means to contemplation (see The Spiritual Exercises by Saint Ignatius of Loyola).
The important moment for me was reading Masao Abe's writing on Shunyatta and kenosis. The notion of self-emptying creativity rather than some big old bloke on a cloud was very liberating. And, at the same time, I was reading the Fourth Gospel (attributed to John) and the Thomas Gospel. In 'John', I found Philip's question to Jesus, wanting to see the "Father". Jesus answers that seeing him is seeing the "Father". So I asked myself, "When Philip looked at Jesus, what did he see?" because that must be Jesus' idea of God. If we escape from the hideous modern image of a 'perfect' Jesus, he was a man who sweated, excreted, ate and drank, scratched, farted and had smelly feet, just like the rest of us. He couldn't even get a fig tree to bear fruit when he wanted some! The image of God is not 'all-powerful. all-knowing' but of a god who is weak and takes chances.
I am much attracted by the ancient notion of a demiurge who may have shaped the world but, like a potter making a pot, is not the creator of the clay!
In Buddhist terms, a 'Supreme Being' is an irrelevance and the Buddha Shakyamuni always avoided commenting. God-worship requires faith in the unknown and the unprovable; Buddhism requires experiment and testing. In this way, we do, indeed, avoid both the eternalism of mainstream monotheism and the nihilism of post-Nietzschean atheism.
Does that help at all, Emmak, or is it just another layer of confusion?
suenos096 - you have said a lot of the things that I have always thought. It was hard for me to be a Christian, and to hear Christians say things to me about how if people weren't Christian, then God would condemn them, or to hear things about how if men or women are gay, then they will go to hell. And I would always ask "If it is so wrong, then why did God create those people??". It was so frustrating to me to hear that certain people were being judged by God, when we were told that if we judged others, it was a sin. It was all very confusing to me.
I'm not saying that I definitely do not believe there is a "God" out there, I just need to change my way of thinking about who or what "God" really is.
An early Christian writer, Marcion, wanted Christians to throw out the Old Testament, apart from the Psalms, as well as large chunks of the New. I wish we had!
I don't know about you, but I am able follow the Jesus path much more serenely when I get rid of that vindictive old bugger in his Tabernacle! I don't mind miracles. I can just about take an angel or two. But Yhwh!?! So I follow what might be called, by some, an nontheist Christian path. It's much more fun.
Can you explain to me what you mean by a "nontheist christian path"?? Thanks!
On the subject of gay people or anything else that is deemed evil by Christians. I always used to ask ask Christians why Jesus was always healing people. God was the one who created all these sicknesses. Then Jesus fixes them. It's like someone punching you in the mouth and then taking you to the doctor.
Of course if God created the devil then he also created evil. Makes one wonder. Christians always get mad at me when I tell them this. I try not ot anymore.
I'm still not sure if I can articulate precisely or understandably what I mean, Yoga.
Basically, I take a "black box" approach to the notion of a primal "God". It's the start of the Tao Te Ching:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
And if He/She/It is unknowable, unnameable, ineffable, She/It/He goes beyond categories and qualities. This is not some person-type god but, rather, the 'Abyss' out of which everything arises, the "Ground" against which all that is detaches itself, like waves on the surface of the sea.
Over the years, I have glanced at many marginal and mainstream cosmologies. Some, like the Hindu, do not stick to a single cosmic myth. Others, like the Egyptian, demonstrate evolving and changing emphases within a single cosmology. Two modern books which made a great impression on me were Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg's The Book of J (Faber, London. 1990), a new translation and interpretation of the "J thread" in Genesis, and Richard Elliott Friedman's The Diaappearance of God (TSP, London. 1997). I realised that the dominant "story arc" of the two Testaments was a gradual removal of the interventionist Yhwh, culminating in the Ascension of Jesus.
My own Christianity, when I was a bit more mainstream, was very influenced by the existentialists. I read scripture (on one level) as a challenge to me here and now rather than some sort of history. This notion of an absent God struck me forcibly as the experience of many of us in the West.
Years ago, when I first met myths of other cultures, I used to wonder how sensible people could really believe that All-Father Zeus fathered children disguised as a shower of gold or as a swan. In another century or two, people may well be asking the same question about Christians. I began to see that human beings are "mythogenic": they will automatically generate mythic gloss onto legendary stories.
Year by year, as I studied and experimented with practice, I became aware, both in the writers and in my practice, that there was an underlying unity which goes beyond dialectics, beyond duality. The Sufi poet, Rumi, says, somewhere, "there is a garden beyond good and evil, and I shall meet you there". Once I had begun to notice it, I saw it everywhere - and still do.
This has been a really long-winded explanation and I'm not sure I've even managed to scratch the surface. I have said nothing about my belief that the universe contains many different types of energy which we have yet to detect and measure; that gods, devas, spirits, all that stuff need to be taken rather more seriously as possibilities; but that we have crippled our spirituality with all this emphasis on a Near-Eastern tribal deity with delusions of grandeur.
I can well understand your confusion. To shake off the Western myth of a Supreme Interferer is not easy (and other people don't like us doing it).
There is lots here for the 'recovering' Churchian (as against Christian). Buddhism has been the balm of many a person wounded by the churches.
Egyptians to worship many
Greeks to worship many
Wiccans to worship an Earth goddess
Hindus to worship many or just some gods
Norsemen to worship many gods...
It's what we've been told.
Michael
i use to believe in god as well.. and found it wierd to
go through the transition.. of unsure to give him up.
until i asked myself... why i believed in him
when i answered myself i found it was because i had
a fear.. and my god helped me feel safe.
and that wasnt reason enough for me. lol
so i then realized that i had safety,comfort etc.
and it all came from me..
Confusion is the beginning of Wisdom - Socrates
Confusion means that we have all the elements to solve a problem. They are simply in the wrong order - Fritz Perls (paraphrase)