There is no evidence of an actual, concrete God or gods, just personal intuitions, speculations, feelings, a strong desire for ultimate meaning and purpose; plus, the God-meme is deeply embedded in human culture and tradition, in fact it may even be in our DNA to a certain degree, although I wouldn't bet money on it. Just a thought. But because there is no evidence for it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. God may exist, in a way which no human mind can comprehend. Spinoza wrote that the nature of God surpasses human understanding. It requires genuine humility to consider this proposition, and I enjoy considering it. Considering it doesn't mean I believe it. God may or may not exist, and I will probably never arrive at any certitude about it, in either direction, pro or con.
But, there is evidence of a self, of the ego, of autonomous agency. Generally speaking, we know who we are, what our name is, when and where we were born, and all of our memories pertain to things we have experienced in the first-person, and this first-person narrative is almost always linear and coherent; and, amazingly enough, our knowledge of ourselves and the facts of our history almost always coincide with what others know about us, and with what is recorded as hard data.
The self, the ego, the "I", are not substantive, or material in any way: they are items of subjective experience: qualitative, abstract, but nonetheless, they are real, in the same respect that language, forms of music, the concept of currency, are real, despite the fact that they are human inventions and do not exist as tangible things in reality.To posit the idea that there is no self, there is no "I", is perfectly fine, as long as you clarify what you mean by that, and as long as you really understand what it means. It does not mean that there is no positive sense of personal and distinct identity in a human being, and it does not mean that people do not consciously and with deliberate intent go about the living of their lives.
Telling someone there is no god may or may not be true. Telling someone there is no "self" and there is no "I", may be true, but only if those terms refer to material entities posited as existing independently of the physical body. If they refer merely to qualitative, subjective aspects of human experience, then telling someone the "self" and the "I" do not exist would be patently false. Ergo, if you tell someone that they have no self, and that the "I" they use in speech refers to nothing but a phantom, an illusion, then you should fully expect that person to take offense, unless you are willing to clarify exactly what you mean when you say such a thing.
If a person takes issue with something you tell them, bear in mind that it may not be because their fragile egos have been hurt, or because they are narrow-minded, stupid, afraid, uneducated, intolerant, or any of those things; they may be taking issue with you for the simple reason that you have said something which does not make sense to them, either because they do not understand it, or it is out of context, or it is phrased improperly, or because it is simply false.
Opposition to your philosophical, moral, ethical, political, even personal issues, may be just as intellectual as they are emotional. One of the hardest things to do in this kind of public discourse is to distinguish between a reasoned argument and an emotional argument, and to recognize that an argument can be (and usually is, for most of us) both emotional and reasoned. If there were an exhaustive, objective study made on the topic of bulletin board discussions, I would bet a week's pay that most people try their hardest to keep their emotional feelings at heel while participating in them. Of course there are trolls and crazy people all over, but I have faith in my species and I do believe that most of us are doing our best.
