I read Thomas Merton* many years ago and came to the conclusion he had not had the Mystical Experience of Reality (MER). He was not a mystic.
If he had the MER he would have avoided use of the word “God”. The name is so adulterated with cultural layers of linguistics, logic, reason, mythomania, politics, faith, hope and belief that the word “God” now confuses all credulity, sense and understanding.
Also, based on his mystic experience he would not have expressed himself in the religious terms of his or any other “church”. I had the feeling he was in the church because there was no better life on offer in those days for a Seeker, a human who is called. But religious terms, even human terms, are not the terms of the Reality experienced first hand by the mystics.
Non religious scientists avoid this confusion by using the mind and experiment to get closer to truth. They are fundamentalists. They prefer to use the word “reality”, with a lower case “r”, avoiding religious/cultural accretions.
Mystics on the other hand use the word Reality, with a capital “R”, the meaning of which is only penetrated by experiencing Reality at first hand.
All these approaches are historically well documented. Current state of play is that religions are dead or dying; science, say some scientists, is at a dead end; only mysticism might have the answers say other scientists.
* Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was an American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. — Wikipedia.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 