Nice, John, your honesty. I really like that.
There is a third route. It is neither atheist nor Christian, and let me start with the Christian view (a monotheistic view) and declare God to be a Cyclops.
People unify so much into one in their idea of God that this God ended up being a false God. It should come as no surprise that the monotheistic idea is actually very modern.
In the old days, there were not just many gods, but the word God itself indicated '2' and not '1'. Obviously, the idea that God is '1' would have been alien to those using the original word God as '2'.
Think Akhenaten and Nefertiti, how they worshipped God as '1', and how nearly all artifacts of them got destroyed after they died because no one followed them into that mad idea.
And yet, then later on people did start to believe in God as '1'.
Two reasons: the intermediary (Jesus, Mohammed, or just the empty spot of expectation) allowed people to no longer talk about God, but talk about the personification of some kind of the divine message.
A little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down, right?
The other reason is that folks started to work with artificial aspects more and more and considered them real. Think, for instance, money, which is not something real, but used as if it were real, and therefore made real at the collective level. Or think math, and we ended up seeing truths that were not with the items themselves but about the items.
We humans started to think in the abstract for more and more things. The abstract reality started to challenge the natural reality. God '2' became God '1'.
In effect, folks blinded at least one of their own eyes when they started following Jesus, Mohammed, or still waiting for an individual to liberate them, simply because they had learned to accept the abstract reality as full part of their reality.
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A way to liberate yourself of God as '1' is to ask the question what God used to create creation. The answer should warm your heart, though it is not good news for God as '1'.
The only option to create creation by God is when God used parts of God godself to create creation.
To declare that God created creation from nothing is too absurd for words. One must really be a deep believer to consider this an option (and then not use your brain afterwards any further).
As you already know, we live in a result. This means that the result is not identical to God. Most of the original God is still out there, but God is not whole. God is not '1'.
So, you can start talking again (or better: listening) and accept a God who is not whole anymore. Don't make God '1' for that will not liberate you.
Even after death, we will return just to the energy source that can be associated with the Milky Way at its largest setting.
We are not connected to any other galaxy in the universe (happenstance notwithstanding of colliding with another galaxy in 4.7 billion years or so).
Your energy will forever be bound within the Milky Way setting, and likely just with the Solar System and planet Earth until this energy transforms within the larger Milky Way setting into something else/similar.
'Two'
