Message 241 of 318 (675629) 10-13-2012 2:50 PM

Reply to: Message 240 by jar 10-13-2012 10:23 AM

Perhaps some think that the question, as it relates to the topic, is better stated as Can You Define X?

Others would argue that it makes no sense to begin the argument by stating that X, if X exists=X. They may argue a case for the non existence of X. Which is fine and dandy, but then would come the question of why they are participating in this thread. Why participate in a thread where X is discussed when you see no need for X?

Message 242 of 318 (675645) 10-14-2012 1:07 AM

Reply to: Message 108 by Straggler 10-05-2012 1:52 PM

Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Message 243 of 318 (675722) 10-15-2012 8:41 AM

Reply to: Message 239 by Phat 10-13-2012 7:42 AM

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.

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.

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.

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.

Message 244 of 318 (675724) 10-15-2012 8:46 AM

Reply to: Message 240 by jar 10-13-2012 10:23 AM

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.

Message 245 of 318 (675726) 10-15-2012 9:47 AM

Reply to: Message 244 by Straggler 10-15-2012 8:46 AM

There is a difference between something being meaningless and in my inability to describe or define it. My limitations are simply that, my limitations. My limitations though say absolutely nothing about the reality of the object being discussed.

I don't know what conceptual baggage you carry but that is irrelevant to my beliefs or position anyway.

And again, I have not insisted any knowledge of GOD can only come after death, rather I have consistently said that I see no way I can gain actual knowledge while I am still alive of anything supernatural.

I have repeatedly asked you and others about how something that was truly supernatural could be identified as truly supernatural.

Also, I have repeatedly said that I have no problem with you thinking my position is nonsense.

Edited by jar, : appalin spallin left off "ly"

Message 246 of 318 (675758) 10-15-2012 2:47 PM

Reply to: Message 245 by jar 10-15-2012 9:47 AM

Can you explain how you know that this unknowable GOD is supernatural?

Can you explain why something (e.g Voldermort, demons, Thor etc.) cannot be both fictional/non-existent and defined as supernatural?

Many have considered sleep (i.e. dreams) or waking trances as methods of interracting with the supernatural. Can you explain why you think death is any more or less likely to provide such knowledge than dreams or waking visions or whatever?

ALL existing terms have conceptual baggage. The reason you call the object of your belief GOD (and yourself a theist) rather than BILBO or GANDALF or whatever is because you are imbuing this thing you speak of with certain very human-construct-godly characteristics.

If you weren't why would this GOD thing be of any relevance at all in a thread titled "Can You define God?"....

To suggest that your terminology is free from cultural baggage is simply an act of gross denial on your part.

Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Message 247 of 318 (675777) 10-15-2012 5:59 PM

Reply to: Message 246 by Straggler 10-15-2012 2:47 PM

I have repeatedly said that anything can be asserted to be supernatural but that I do not see anyway to actually determine if something is supernatural.

Many have claimed they know ways of interacting with the supernatural.

They are welcome to make such claims.

I have never said that death is more or less likely to provide knowledge, what I have said and will repeat for you yet again is that at least as long as I am alive I see no way that I could determine that something actually was supernatural.

Nor have I said that my terminology is free of cultural baggage, I simply have not speculated on what cultural baggage you carry.

Message 248 of 318 (675806) 10-16-2012 8:42 AM

Reply to: Message 247 by jar 10-15-2012 5:59 PM

This of course depends what you mean by 'supernatural'. I have already told you that we can simply examine the entity/concept in question and compare it's attributes to the common definition of supernatural:

quote:

---

1.
of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.

2.of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.

---

This is how demons and Voldermort and Thor and suchlike are commonly defined as supernatural entities regardless of whether they actually exist or not. But you don't like that because it doesn't fit in with the rest of your definition-based pet theory.....

Then in the name of "nuance" could you tell us what definition of 'supernatural' you are applying as well?

It's your position, your personalised definitions and your conflation of terminology. So it's your conceptual baggage that is relevant here. And it is very clear that you are flip-flopping at will between two contradictory uses of the term "GOD".

The first use of "GOD" is the blank canvas. The conceptless-concept. The thing without attributes. The term that lacks any definition at all. The term that is literally meaningless. This we can dismiss as incoherent, absurd and lacking in any cogency.

The second is the (conceptually baggaged) use of the term "GOD" to describe something that possess enough godly attributes to qualify believers in it as theists and to which all those other human-construct-gods and Gods can be considered "approximations" (your word). But upon examination this non-god necessarily suffers from all the same human-construct criticisms as those other entities you dismiss as human constructs.

It would be very helpful if in future whenever you use the term "GOD" (whether in this thread or any other) you make clear which of these two meanings you are invoking. It would also help if you stopped flip-flopping between the two meanings.

Message 249 of 318 (675814) 10-16-2012 10:34 AM

Reply to: Message 248 by Straggler 10-16-2012 8:42 AM

You give the definitions:

quote:

---

1.
of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.

2.of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.

---

and I have said that folk can assert such things but I also believe those definitions tell us nothing about the supernatural object; only about the human perception.

Those definitions simply describe what I have been calling God(s) or god(s). Those definitions don't describe the supernatural object, only the limited understanding of humans.

Message 250 of 318 (675836) 10-16-2012 12:58 PM

Reply to: Message 249 by jar 10-16-2012 10:34 AM

Yeah. You should try it sometime.....

You aren't going to supply us with the definition of supernatural you are applying are you?

Jar - What do you mean by supernatural?

If that is the issue the obvious question to ask is how you know that GOD is supernatural. How do you know GOD is supernatural?

As a point of comparison - The way we know that Voldermort, Thor, demons etc. etc. are supernatural is because we have defined them as being 'unexplainable by natural law'. We have in effect defined them as being "magical".

Are you simply defining GOD as "magical" too?

What supernatural object? And how do you know this object is supernatural?

Message 251 of 318 (675838) 10-16-2012 1:19 PM

Reply to: Message 250 by Straggler 10-16-2012 12:58 PM

I don't know GOD is supernatural and I don't know any way I could actually test something to determine if it was supernatural.

We can test some things and determine they are NOT supernatural. For example, Voldemort is a character in a fiction story.

Message 252 of 318 (675842) 10-16-2012 1:31 PM

Reply to: Message 251 by jar 10-16-2012 1:19 PM

So GOD might not be supernatural then?

How do you know GOD is supernatural?

As a point of comparison - The way we know that Voldermort, Thor, demons etc. etc. are supernatural is because we have defined them as being 'unexplainable by natural law'. We have in effect defined them as being "magical".

It very much looks like you are you simply defining GOD as "magical" too. Is this the case?

By conventional definition Voldermort is both fictional and supernatural. What definition of 'supernatural' are you applying such that the term only applies to things that are real?

Message 253 of 318 (675844) 10-16-2012 1:48 PM

Reply to: Message 252 by Straggler 10-16-2012 1:31 PM

As I said most recently in Message 249:

Humans like to label things and all those definitions tell us is that humans labeled something as "supernatural"; it tells us nothing about what supernatural really is.

As long as I am just a human, I don't see anyway to define, test or determine if something really is supernatural.

Message 254 of 318 (675847) 10-16-2012 2:10 PM

Reply to: Message 252 by Straggler 10-16-2012 1:31 PM

OK, first we have to approach each discussion/argument/philosophical exchange with a framework.

Logically, the starting post in any topic is the initial framework of a discussion.

Thus...Post#1:

quote:

---

As humans,we like to understand things. We feel the need to put them into some type of category, to name them. This has been a good thing for our species in many circumstances but in the case of God the ability to define or even name him is an impossibility. Yet that does not mean that it is not worth the attempt to gain some understanding of what God is, only that we must understand before we begin that defining something limits that something, and describing something often gets confused with defining something. You try to define your love of someone by describing why you love them. You attempt to define the sky by describing its properties,etc. So based on this,can you define God? Some if most would say that God is good, merciful, just, loving, and all powerful. All of these are words to describe him. It doesn't make them untrue, it simply avoided the bigger challenge, and that is defining him.

---

So a couple of questions.

If concept X is devoid of attribute and definition, (in which case the topic would be Can You Define X) we then have a discussion which can go several ways. If discussing it with a proponent of X, one who wishes X to have a definition, we can prove to them that X has no definition, but even by discussing X, we have given it an attribute...namely a proposal for X to exist or a proposal for x not to exist. Jar claims that since X is an unknown, and a belief, then the biblical concept of I Am that I am means that X could itself be a proposal for its own existence. Thus, IF X exists is a valid premise, no?

Additionally, you may see no point to discussing concept X, yet jar or I may in fact see a point to discussing it. Further, since all three of us are in this discussion, as well as others, the idea that it is moot to discuss GOD seems irrelevant.