Whether or not there exists a referent correct to the term God is a question I will not here pursue. However, people who categorically deny the realness of this referent may be confusing certain descriptions or stories with the referent in question.

Consider that even if ‘God’ did not ‘create’ the universe, there is, very probably, a multiplicity of elements extant within timespace — elements which we participate in directly — which necessarily comprise ‘distributed intelligences’. It is extremely difficult to deny that distributed intelligences exist, since we ourselves comprise and participate in (many discernable orders) of them. Similarly, we see examples of them in nature; indeed, the astonishing depth of complexity comprised by the physical expressions of distributed intelligence amongst organisms is unfathomable.

So, effectively, we would need to either more carefully define ‘God’, while simultaneously identifying with which descriptions we disagree, or we would need to be sure that other things that could realistically qualify could be reasonably excluded. The distributed intelligence, say, of our planet as a unity. Or of a constellation of such worlds. Or, just possibly, the fundamental nature of spacetime itself… again, not an argument for God — but an invitation to think more carefully about what a categorical denial (which has to be a kind of religion of its own) actually means in practice… which is a denial that anything ‘much like a god or God’ exists. This seems extremely unlikely.

The short version is: organismal reality comprises and participates in superpositions of relational presence and effect that would be functionally indistinguishable from the referent…