EVEN IF SPIRIT IS REAL, ARE PEOPLE WHO TALK ABOUT IT TALKING NOT ABOUT IT BUT MIXING UP IMAGINATION WITH IT?

God is not temporal or in time. God is not in space, he is not spatial. He is not physical.  He is not visible. So he cannot be detected by any scientific instrument. The word for an entity like this is spirit.

How do we know then if we are talking about an idea, something that does not exist? Is saying God exists then castrating the meaning of the word exist?

Something that is not real is not in space or time. It is not visible. It is not detectable.

So we have no way to be sure that we are not mistaking our imagination for God.  Are we mistaking our words about God and the word God itself for a real thing?

It is messing around with the word exist.

Can I say there is a circle that is square and it does it because it is not spatial, physical or visible or detectable? Yes if you can say God is a person for a person has to have feelings and the power to think and discover. Perhaps God is not a person. Perhaps anything is possible if spirit is possible.  Perhaps a spirit can be anything.

If you say a spirit is not something seemingly incoherent like that then remember it could still be something you do not expect or want.  A maker of the universe for example which functions like a person but who is not one could be an option.  God belief cannot come on its own. Every option implies there are other options so you need to be offered them all.  The honest person will give you a menu of beliefs that match it in credibility. Otherwise they are leading you to what they want to lead you to when there are other roads.

The consequences of believing in spirit and the implications show something is badly wrong with the very idea of a reality that is non-physical and immaterial.

If I said I had a feeling of terrible suffering but nobody can detect it what then? I could say that something makes me seem to be okay but I am not. I could say I alone know and can understand it. I cannot communicate it to anybody else. What if I said the feeling was some kind of spirit force?  If you affirm my right to believe in spirit then I owe you the same courtesy.  So if you are claiming to have the experience of a feeling that is undetectable then I have to take your word for it.  And what if you are claiming something tells you that the feeling is there and because it is spirit you cannot feel it in the way you can feel physical pain.  You could say you can't feel the feeling but you know at some deep level it is there.  You could say that because of this suffering you are worse off than all the creatures collectively who have ever suffered and are entitled to the best this world can offer.

Even if spirit is real we don't know if this means God is real.  It could be different from what we imagine it to be.  All we can say is that spirit exists but say no more.  Most speakers about spirit do have an idea about what they mean by it.  This is as arrogant as having an idea of what a tree looks like and insisting all trees are the same.  So we need to ask the speaker to be clear as the subject has a bad history.  Too many preachers about spirits are unreliable.

Even if spirit is real, it does not mean that the spirit or idea of it I have in mind that I consider true is not my imagination.  A ghost can appear to me at midnight for real and I can imagine it appearing again 2 hours later.

Too long "profound" ideas about spirit cloaked in notions of piety and wisdom have not been called up on the sheer dishonest arrogance that is their real food.

For religion to use the idea of a spiritual God to say that evil is our fault for he is all good is cynical and disgraceful.  The idea of spirit leads to evil such as validating people who claim they have spiritual suffering they are not aware of.  People don't really care about the idea of spirit but whatever kind of spirit they want to believe in.  They use it to bolster their assertions about God.  They cheat people by talking about spirit when they mean God as if they should not be told there are other ideas.  Nobody who can justify belief in spirit should be preaching about what it is for they only work out that it is there and that is all.  To abuse the truth to justify belief in a God who is supposedly right to let such awful suffering happen shows a lack of respect for that very suffering.  And were spirit valid it does not follow that anybody cares. All who talk of it could be imagining and talking about what they want to think about spirit and not spirit. Another implication is that if spirit can make nature do things that nature cannot do such as allow for a man to rise from the dead then the absurdity and dangerousness of the idea of spirit and the way it is used warns us to refute such claims.

If imagination can give you meaning for your life then you don't really need God or to be imagining a God.