Thanks for the interesting post. However, I said the Buddhism doesn't accept there is a God as a person, i.e. with a form and personality. By God I mean the supreme controller of everything who is eternal and infinite. By religion I mean religion as it's generally understood now and not the roots of the word. ...
Atheism: you quite correctly state that the "roots of the word"
religion are of limited relevance when considering whether or not gods exist.
Recourse to etymology or dictionaries in any philosophical discussion immediately changes the nature of the discussion to "mere" semantics rather than, for example, ontology or epistemology.
However, you undercut yourself by then offering your own rather selective definition of God, and supporting this with the expression "as it's generally understood now."
There are many well-established religions that involve one or more gods. Based on 2015 figures, just under 1/3 of the world's population is Christian, just under 1/4 are Muslim, just over 1/7 are Hindu, and about 1/6 claim "no religion". There are other major religions such as Judaism, Sikhism, and Rastafari, as well as innumerable belief systems that might loosely be defined as "pagan" or "traditional" religions. Each of these has a different concept of God or gods.
Of course, any one of those religions further subdivides into denominations and sects, and branches. A Roman Catholic, an Orthodox Christian, and Anglican, a Methodist, and a Baptist would all have different views of the nature of God. Islam is divided into two main religious traditions. Some Hindus have a literal belief in their gods, but some other Hindus consider them to represent principles rather than beings.
Similarly, not all people who consider themselves to be atheists have the same reasons, or are even rejecting the same definition of god.
Logically it is easier to dismiss (rather than disprove) the existence of an all powerful, all knowing, omnipresent, interventionist god than it is to dismiss the idea of a lesser god with more limited powers.
A God who is everywhere, and can do absolutely anything, without limit, and who's motives are inherently unknowable can be used to explain absolutely any possible or conceivable set of circumstances or events.
If "God" is a potential explanation of absolutely everything or anything, then there is no possible way of proving or disproving that he exists.
Imagine the experiment with the two possible outcomes: X = God exists, and Y = God does not exist. There are no possible circumstances that fit into category Y.
Therefore, you cannot use the "God hypothesis" to either
explain or
predict anything. You may as well just say, "That is how it is."
Why was there a tsunami? Because of God. Why did this baby survive the tsunami? Because of God. Why did this other baby die in the same tsunami? Also because of God. Why did one baby die and not the other? Because God willed it. Why did he will it? We cannot know the mind of God. Will this third baby survive his injuries from the same tsunami? If God wills it. How will we know if God wills it? By whether the baby survives or dies. And so on
ad infintum et nauseam.
On this line of argument, the question of whether God exists is not answered with a "Yes" or "No" but with "That's a pointless question."
Now consider a lesser god with limited powers. The above line of argument does not work. The lesser god is believed to have limits on what he can achieve and if we know those limits we can devise an experiment in which there is at least one value for Y = the god does not exist.
We then have to approach the existence or otherwise of that lesser god by a rational comparison of hypotheses. Put simply: is thunder and lightning caused by (a) Thor banging the clouds with his hammer when he is angry, or (b) by electrostatic discharges in the atmosphere?
Hypothesis (b) electrostatic discharges, enables us to make reasonably accurate predictions about when lightning will occur, and we can observe and describe the mechanism that causes it. Therefore we can reasonably conclude that "electrostatic discharge" is a better hypothesis than "angry Thor."