I’m not an atheist, but the image of an old white man in the sky is not something “angry atheists” dreamed up to mock and tear down. It is a common representation of God in books and “Christian" art for children, and in plenty of films. I grew up Catholic--I didn’t read Emerson until much later :-). In our books, God was a white man sitting on a cloud, wearing white robes, tended to by white angels. Some people I grew up with absolutely cling to that idea.