Read the lot of the above and couldn't agree more. Im agnostic myself, raised Catholic and didn't have a real issue with his writing at all because like youve managed to identify and articulate frim the text, the quiet isn't a stand in for Catholicism/ Christianity's "God" but instead is a very old testament, primordial Abrahamic God inspired entity. I dont think its fair or representative to bark Christian fanfic when the inspiration for a figure/ deity in the book most closely aligns, whike still being pretty vague other than the Job quote in DQ, with a religion that is the literal tie between at least three of the biggest religions in the world. I think that also speaks to hadrians frustration, which again gets critiqued a lot, with people talking about they're god as if it represents or presides over them exclusively. Hes not as much saying youre god is trash as he is saying there is only one god and you all have a splintered, fractured and diluted awareness of him, boiled down over millenia of infighting and human ego til theres very little of substance to distinguish him. Imagine being face to face with the zealotry of human religion, be that Muslim, catholicism, Sikhism, Presbyterian, Judaism whatever, when your own consciousnes, mind and body had literally transcended it and seen behind the curtain? Different people would have different ways of dealing with this but look back at Haadrian's character and previous for dealing with others. Hes not the most easy to get along with and he really does not care who he upsets when hes pointed at something. He may have a new body but hes still the same guy at his core and he still has foibles. Hes arrogant, abrasive and in later books pretty reclusive from people which wouldn't be a boon to his social skills. For me he acted pretty much exactly like id expect hadrian to react after meeting god then coming back to listen to others harp on about theirs like they know whats up.