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Author | Topic: Can You define God? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
jar writes: Well, I've answered all these questions many times in this thread... That's debatable. But what you most certainly haven't done is provide the definition of 'supernatural' that you are applying in order to conclude that only your GOD qualifies.
Straggler writes: Can you give me an example of a god or a God that isn't supernatural or doesn't have supernatural abilities? jar writes: All of the Gods or gods. What definition of supernatural are you applying such that GOD does qualify but Thor, Zeus, Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu and Voldermort don't?
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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jar writes: The other God(s) and god(s) are not flawed interpretations, they are the best interpretations a people made based on their culture and society. A distinction without a difference.
jar writes: I believe that any God or god that we can discuss, define or describe is almost certainly not GOD. Yes. I get that. You are putting forward GOD as the ultimate god of the ultimate gap. The gap that is the concept of god itself.
jar writes: What GOD is, an entity, a group, a committee, a force, an essence... I honestly have no idea. How can you believe in the existence of something without having any idea what it is? And is there any reason at all to give this GOD concept any more merit, consideration or credence than any other "unknowable" entity I can conceive of or is your reason for doing so entirely personal irrational belief?
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
So when you make these fact-like proclamations such as "GOD is NOT a god" are you merely expressing an "unreasonable, illogical and irrational" belief?
When you say that Yahweh (or indeed any other god) is NOT a supernatural being are you merely expressing an "unreasonable, illogical and irrational" belief?
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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The only reason you have given for inventing your own definitions is to express the "nuance" of your beliefs.
Beliefs which you describe as "unreasonable, illogical and irrational". So it should hardly come as any surprise that these definitions result in the incoherent web of tangled thought we have seen from you in this thread.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Straggler writes: How can you believe in the existence of something without having any idea what it is? Phat writes: this is where the IF comes in. IF what? This idea that you can have a concept so undefined that it is utterly immune from any critical analysis whilst still being defined enough to be coherently believed in is self-serving nonsense. The only sane response to such a non-concept is to be ignostic. ignostic (plural ignostics) 1. one who holds to ignosticism.2. one who requires a definition of the term God or Gods as without sensible definition they find theism incoherent and thus non-cognitive. ignostic - Wiktionary If you want to talk about "unknowables" - Fine. We all agree that there unknowns and I suspect we can all agree that there are very probably unknowables. But when you start imposing your theistic inclinations on top we are no longer talking about "unknowns". We are talking about those things we commonly call "gods".
Phat writes: What you don't seem to get is that the difference between GOD, if GOD exists and all of the others is that the others have a cultural identity. All concepts have a "cultural identity". If you believe otherwise you are simply in denial. This thing you are calling GOD is simply the logical consequence of the god of the gaps. As science and knowledge expand to make gods shrink into ever smaller gaps believers such as yourself look for a niche. An unknowable. And what provides a better place to plant your unknowable god than in the ultimate gap. The gap that is the human notion of god itself!!! This notion of GOD is very very much a product of our scientific age.
Phat writes: There is no logical "winner" in any debate between a believer and an unbeliever. Logic cannot trump belief, nor can belief trump logic. It is a classic stalemate. When the believer in question starts inventing self-serving definitions and then stating these as if they were facts despite contradicting both themselves and common definitions of the same terms - I will quite legitimately object.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
We could start by agreeing to use the English language rather than inventing a bunch of self-serving definitions that are contradictory and merely reflections of (self-confessed "unreasonable, illogical and irrational") personal beliefs.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Pretty much. But it also boils down to saying "You don't know what you're talking about when you talk about 'God either"
In essence you can't believe-in, communicate about or indeed have any coherent thoughts regarding a non-concept. It's like asking: Do you believe in X? Where X is something. Or not. Maybe.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
jar writes: You are of course free to believe that I believe that because that is what you told me.
jar writes: I define and used those terms, GOD, God and god for the exact reason of the nuance. So you are inventing terminology to express the "nuance" of beliefs which you describe as "unreasonable, illogical and irrational". It really shouldn't therefore come as any surprise that these definitions result in the incoherent web of tangled thought we have seen from you in this thread. Given the basis of these definitions it is practically inevitable.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
If GOD is X why are you giving it the name G-O-D and talking about it in a thread that relates to defining the term "God".
A genuine X, a genuine absolute unknown, would have no more association with gods than with hobbits. How about instead of GOD you use the term HOBBIT to refer to the object of your belief? Why not? If it really is as undefined as you seem to be suggesting....?
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
jar writes: The nuance is a conclusion based on reason, logic and rationality. Dude - That is what they all say!! But a term without definition is a term without meaning. Literally meaningless.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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I don't see how concept X, defined as unknowable in this thread, could possibly be cheese.
Cheese, as I understand the term, is a rather well defined concept and my views on the existence of cheese are thus rather clear. However if you wish to further confront your own ontological battle with cheese, to discuss further your previously proclaimed agnosticism towards the existence of cheese, I suggest you start a new thread. A thread called "Does cheese exist?" I look forward to it.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Phat writes: Well..I don't like the term Hobbit, since Hobbit has been somewhat culturally defined. But the term "god" hasn't? Do you not see the double standard at play here? If this thing you are talking about literally has no conceptual meaning why use a word to describe it which very much does have meaning?
quote: Why not call this thing you speak of "X" or even (radical suggestion) "unknown"....?
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Well my radical suggestion here is to use the term "unknowns" to refer to things which are unknown. Then I think a meaningful conversation could be had and that it would go something like the following:
Phat: Do you believe in the existence of unknowns?Straggler: Yes. It would be arrogant, foolish and unrealistic of us to claim to know everything. Phat: Do you believe in the existence of unknowables? Straggler: I think it very possible that there are things which the human mind is unable to comprehend Phat: Do you believe in the existence of unknowables which can be meaningfully described as gods? Straggler: Once you start imbuing unknown things with attributes such as being a supernatural creative conscious intelligence that can only be known after death you are unjustifiably imposing your own anthropomorphic wishful thinking into the mix. There is absolutely no reason to think any unknowns will possess these attributes and every reason to think you are simply inventing things in order to fulfil your own very human needs. So in short - No That would be the basis for a sensible conversation. But this insane idea that we can discuss something when neither one of us has the first clue what it is because it is literally anything we can or probably cannot conceive of - Is just absurd. Edited by Straggler, : Spellin innit.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Phat writes: Not a chance? How do you go from me saying "absolutely no reason" to hearing "Not a chance"....? It is philosophically possible that immaterial unicorns exist and I would put your unknowable GOD in that same category.
Phat writes: On a personal level, I still prefer the terminology, GOD or in my case, Father...but X will do or even "unknown" or unknowable if we are jointly discussing such a concept. What do you mean by "such a concept"...? Are we talking about a recognisably godly concept? Or are we talking about a concept which is completely devoid of attribute and definition? A concept X. If the latter I see no possible way of having a cogent discussion about an X.
Phat writes: Why is this unjustifiable? Because you can't legitimately hide behind a mask of complete ambiguity whilst covertly defining "unknowns" as things which are recognisably godly by any conventional definition and about which we have a great deal of evidence in the form of human psychology.
Phat writes: So lets delve further. If you want to know what I consider to be evidence - As a starting point anything which demonstrably results in conclusions which are superior to those obtained by blind random chance. Is that so unreasonable? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Like so many pet theories yours is just one personalised self-serving definition layered on top of the next. Throw in some conflation with conventional meaning and we have the recipe for the superficially-coherent-sounding nonsense that we see before us. And at the root of this morass of definitional mayhem is this chameleon-like notion you call GOD.
GOD. A thing which on one hand is completely undefined and devoid of any attributes. A term which when it suits you is, in a very literal sense, completely and utterly meaningless. And yet despite this insistence that the term has no definition. most of the time when discussing this thing you implicitly imbue this thing with some very conventional godliness. We have the fact that this term is spelt G-O-D with all the conceptual baggage that entails. We have the fact that you are talking about it in a thread titled Can You Define God?. We have the fact that you persistently class this thing in the same company as gods and God(s). We have your personal belief that this thing is the ‘creator of all that is seen and unseen’. We have your insistence that belief in this GOD thing qualifies one as a theist (despite it not being a god). We have your assertion that any knowledge of this thing can only come after death. And we have your re-definition of the term supernatural such that GOD and GOD alone (i.e. not Thor or Voldermort or demons or anything else one can conceive of) qualifies as supernatural. So on one hand we have a term with no meaning about which any belief or discussion is incoherent and completely lacking in cogency. And on the other we have an entity which suffers from all the same problems as all those other gods you dismiss as obvious human constructions. Except you have defined yours as NOT one of those. Your position is a confused spot somewhere between a rock and a hard place.
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