Dan,
You say
If we're going to be asking whether or not it exists, we might as well start by deciding exactly what it is we're wondering about.
But you qualify by saying
Not asking for what it did. Not asking for its opinion of me, or anyone else. Asking for what it is.
In everyday life, it's perfectly fine to designate a person by what they did, or what they think, etc. For example, "we're looking for the person who killed Bob Jones."
Why can't God be known simply by deed? The other things (qualities) are secondary; if you falsify them, it doesn't change WHO you're talking about, it only changes how you think about that being. However, in this case, if you falsify the deed, then it actually changes who you're looking for.
For example, take William Shakespeare. When we try to discover who Shakespeare was, we come up with some essential criteria, for example "William Shakespeare is the guy who wrote Hamlet." In our search, we may come up with some secondary information about him, for example "William Shakespeare was British." It's possible to find out later that, in fact, William Shakespeare was NOT British. But it's impossible to find out that William Shakespeare did not write Hamlet. This is true
even if the guy who wrote Hamlet was not named William Shakespeare.
In the philosophy of language, this is called "rigid designation." It's common to designate individuals by exactly what you exclude--description of what someone did. In fact, it's common to designate someone by description of what they did, without knowing anything about the "personal attributes" of that person.
If your goal is "to be asking whether or not [God] exists," then you shouldn't add your qualifiers to your question. There's no reason that someone can't "know" (i.e. identify) God by what God did or does.
This message has been edited by Ben, Tuesday, 2005/04/19 10:11 AM
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