the old trick of labelling atheists as ‘believers’ too… 
when you were ‘in this same boat’, did you have a ‘god’, MM?
Yep. Fame and money. 
fame and money are indeed wonderful examples of ‘gods’
c’mon 
Exactly. Baal is a false God. And I thank the Real God that I was able to change direction.
You know very well what I meant.
Fab, me boy. Me thinks you don’t know what you meant yourself. 
there is a big difference between fame and money and the concept of god, isn’t there?
you can’t even define this concept, can you?
You are dead right, Fab. I am lost here. You have to put me right. Where were we again?
well, where have you refuted the idea that a man’s god is a picture of himself?
I don’t believe I have. We are aspects of God. Everything is. I don’t buy into the opposite - that nothing is. We have freewill to choose of course. But the latter points us nowhere and leaves us nowhere and says we come from nowhere. Its too nowhere for me. Maybe I’m foolish. So be it. Viva la difference.
I guess you believe that ‘the latter leavess us nowhere’ because you think that the former leaves us somewhere. 
No, I’m not being redundant. Was your life as an atheist a complete waste of time? You’re 67 years old now, aren’t you? All the experiences of your life have hitherto amounted to nothing? 
If God does exist, and if he does exist as you think he does, what does that change in the normal life of yours? You’re still a flesh and blood man as fragile as anyone else. You’re not better than me, you’re not ‘grown up’ just because you now have some sort of transcedental belief. However, in order to think that you have achieved something very important in your life, you must also think that everyone who can’t see what you see is a ‘rebellious teenager’…
will we ever grow up, MM? 
Of course not. Each step of life is a learning experience. As a child I believed naively in God. As a teenager and young adult I was a vocal atheist. If I was still locked into that period of my learning curve I would be just anti-religious as any on this forum. All of that has helped me to be who I am now.
I feel the presence of a force greater than I every day of my life. That extra sensory perception allows me to see into the core of things in a way I never saw when I was blocked off from it and saw only the outer trappings.
I don’t at all think I am better than anybody else. More fortunate than many, yes. I have been graced by God and do not know why.
Now that I have given up my former prodigal ways, I see how rebellious I was, and also why I was. I see the same behavior in others and feel compelled to tell them so - to tell them it is phase of life that we all go through. Too many never graduate beyond it. But that is okay. When we die we all see the same Truth.
well, at least your god is not going to punish me eternally for not ‘believing’ in him…
the flaw in your point, that you refuse to see, is that it was your ‘experience’ with God that changed your mind about atheism and materialism. That does not mean that the ones who haven’t had such an experience are childish, immature, ‘rebellious’. That could mean that you were, according to your new parameters. If a God chooses to reveal Himself to a few men only (how the Judeo-Christian God did) then the other men who hadn’t received this revelation are guilty for not believing in him? How? And since they cannot believe because they haven’t any reason to do so, what’s the difference that the beliefs of others make in their lives? There will always be intelligent men and stupid ones, there will always be metaphysicians and materialists. Sometimes you talk exactly as if you knew for sure that the time is coming when only one of the positions will be held by intellectually grown up people. I don’t accept that. I don’t really accept that disbelief in God prevents anyone from growing up. If you think otherwise, you could only ask your God to reveal Himself to everyone. After all, it is not their fault, really.
But it’s dead obvious that you won’t do that…
By the time you are 14 you are intelligent as you are ever going to get. After that it is only spiritual growth that really counts. And that depends on what you try to discern beneath the surface of things.