Define God Thread

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So far, in all of human history, discussions about the the nature of the supernatural has been nothing but piling vague words on each other. At this point I think it's safe to say that it's a dead end.

What was wrong with the definition I gave?

Humans are animals. I observe non-human animals doing very logical things actually.

If you want to give gods any intellectual standing I'd just call them pseudoscientific models, maybe pre-intellectual, something a child would invent and accept. They're no different than understanding presents come from Santa.

 

[Jobar]

A definition shouldn't be vague; it should shoot for, well, definiteness. If you allow too much vagueness, you wind up with a word that is just meaningless, incoherent. (Which, I submit, is already true of 'god(s)'.)

As I said here-

I don't think we have a completely logical argument for atheism. This is because the terms- well, term, actually- is too incoherent; we don't have an adequate and non-self-contradictory definition of 'god', and without such a definition no logical argument, pro or con, is possible. Logic is an attempt to apply mathematical strictures to language, and is useful only insofar as we can define the relevant terms precisely.

I think that, like aleprechaunism and aSantaism and aboogiemanism, atheism needs no logical proof, because it offers no *thing* to be proven. It only declares an absence; to disprove it would require only the demonstration of what is declared absent- god(s).

A logical argument for theism would first require a definition of an existent god- preferably by demonstration. Otherwise, since the central term is undefined, any logical argument for its existence is meaningless.

But the emotional function in the believer is concrete. Then the definition is not vague. For example:

"Praying to God calms me down and night and fills me with joy. I imagine God being a powerful paternalistic force in full control of the world, who loves me and cares about me."

That's concrete. Because God doesn't matter. Only the theist matters.

Bolding mine. That's the heart of it, not so?

For all my adult life, it's often disturbed me how many adults have imaginary friends. I mean, I had a teddy bear that I thought was my friend, who listened to my secrets; but I grew out of that around age 7 or 8...

You say "Only the theist matters"- for many years I've pointed out that no two believers actually believe in the same god. But that means we can only take a non-cognitivist stance, because no two believers will define 'god' in exactly the same way.

Whether God really exists in the physical world.... I mean... let's move on. It's a ridiculous idea. Sure, there's theists on this forum who strongly believe that God is real. But there's anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers to. What's the point engaging with them? Their idea of reality is so bizarre and warped... Why even go there? I also don't think it's interesting. As far as I'm concerned God's existence was settled by the ancient Greeks. Darwin and Laplace did away with the last scientific requirements for a God.

I understand that there's a lot of people who firmly believe in a physical God. But that's no reason to start treating it with respect. That's how you lose your way intellectually.

I don't disagree, although I do try to avoid jeering and sneering at believers if they are able to talk to me about their god-ideas politely.

 

[Jobar]

From the 2006 thread "Is there ANY room for faith?"-

It's not that the reports of believers only disagree on things that might be reasonably attributed to taste. It's more like if a colorblind person were to be told by one color-perceiver that there are rainbows with red on the outer edge, violet on the inner; by another c-p that no, the rainbows are violet on the outer, red on the inner; by yet another that rainbows are only pink; by still another... IOW, no two reports about rainbows are in complete (or even close) agreement. In fact, some c-p's say that there are no rainbows at all! When one points and says "There's a rainbow" others say "no, not there, it's over there instead" and others point in other directions, or even say "Huh? I see no rainbow. Rainbows don't exist."

All the reports about anything to do with color are similarly incoherent. What's our poor colorblind investigator to do? He or she can't conclude anything about color at all! And then he or she observes that the differing color-believers are grouped in ways which seem purely related to their social and geographical origins, and that some reach a point where they begin to deny that colors have any reality at all but are just social fictions, and that colors as reported don't actually exist.

 

[no-one-particular]

What was wrong with the definition I gave?

Humans are animals. I observe non-human animals doing very logical things actually.

If you want to give gods any intellectual standing I'd just call them pseudoscientific models, maybe pre-intellectual, something a child would invent and accept. They're no different than understanding presents come from Santa.

Humans are definitely not animals. Humans evolved from fish but humans are not fish. Humans evolved from animals but humans are definitely not animals. Humans are an emergent phenomenon. Humans have emerged from the Animal Kingdom.

 

[bilby]

Humans are animals. I observe non-human animals doing very logical things actually.

If you want to give gods any intellectual standing I'd just call them pseudoscientific models, maybe pre-intellectual, something a child would invent and accept. They're no different than understanding presents come from Santa.

Humans are definitely not animals. Humans evolved from fish but humans are not fish. Humans evolved from animals but humans are definitely not animals. Humans are an emergent phenomenon. Humans have emerged from the Animal Kingdom.

Coming from someone who claims that a lack of ego is godly, I find this claim bizarre and somewhat hypocritical, as well as laughably stupid and wrong.

Humans are most certainly animals, by any sane definition of the word 'animal'.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Whether God really exists in the physical world.... I mean... let's move on. It's a ridiculous idea. Sure, there's theists on this forum who strongly believe that God is real. But there's anti-vaxxers and 9/11 truthers to. What's the point engaging with them? Their idea of reality is so bizarre and warped... Why even go there? I also don't think it's interesting. As far as I'm concerned God's existence was settled by the ancient Greeks. Darwin and Laplace did away with the last scientific requirements for a God.

I understand that there's a lot of people who firmly believe in a physical God. But that's no reason to start treating it with respect. That's how you lose your way intellectually.

I don't disagree, although I do try to avoid jeering and sneering at believers if they are able to talk to me about their god-ideas politely.

It's not sneering and jeering. I actually think that religion and sacred texts have a lot of depth to them. I think we have a lot to learn from them. 2012 I saw a Alain de Botton talk called Atheism 2.0 which was basically a defence of religion. Religion for atheists. Since then I've re-read sacred texts. There's a lot of wisdom to be found in them IMHO.

I think sacred texts contain both smart usages of the god concept, as well as shallow usages.

Alain de Botton argues that we've secularised badly. When we realised that God didn't exist, we just did away with all religion. The intellectuals handed it over on a platter to the idiots. Which is why we today almost exclusively have stupid religion. I agree with him.

I think god is a powerful psychological tool humans invented. That's part of my definition for god. The way ancient sacred texts are written the gods have metaphorical and concrete interpretations all at once. They're cleverly written. There's a reason they have survived.

Nah. I'm not sneering and jeering. I've got the utmost respect for the idea of god. What I don't have respect for is people taking a smart concept, interpreting it in the most superficial of ways and then claim that theirs is the only valid one.

 

[fast]

Edited out

 

[Jobar]

From 2005, addressing half a dozen believers who were trying to reach a mutually acceptable definition of 'God'-

Language is imprecise.

But when we speak of real things, observable things, that imprecision is open to refinement. When our terms and definitions are sufficiently anchored in reality, we can be *far* more precise than our unaided senses can detect. Until we get down into realms where Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle reigns, we can focus our language precisely- and even below that level, we can make precise probabilistic statements. Because we have reality to hone away the imprecisions of our terms.

But when we try to talk about things with no anchor in reality- well, we get just what we're seeing here, and in Kang's thread. One says "God is this!" Another says "God is that!" A third says "No, God is some other thing!"

As both atheist and pantheist, I say: Not this. Not that. Not the other thing either.

You theists have no anchor to hold you, so you flail about meaninglessly. You are not just imprecise, for imprecision can be refined; you are incoherent, and you cannot possibly agree on any mutually acceptable definitions or attributes or properties of God (save that he is undefineable!)

You attempt to report the mental states you identify with 'God', but those states vary wildly from individual to individual; just as we see here.

If you all could agree on just a single positive thing, we doubters might be less certain that, not only is your emperor naked, he never existed in the first place save as a tale (told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!)

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

From 2005, addressing half a dozen believers who were trying to reach a mutually acceptable definition of 'God'-

Language is imprecise.

But when we speak of real things, observable things, that imprecision is open to refinement. When our terms and definitions are sufficiently anchored in reality, we can be *far* more precise than our unaided senses can detect. Until we get down into realms where Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle reigns, we can focus our language precisely- and even below that level, we can make precise probabilistic statements. Because we have reality to hone away the imprecisions of our terms.

But when we try to talk about things with no anchor in reality- well, we get just what we're seeing here, and in Kang's thread. One says "God is this!" Another says "God is that!" A third says "No, God is some other thing!"

As both atheist and pantheist, I say: Not this. Not that. Not the other thing either.

You theists have no anchor to hold you, so you flail about meaninglessly. You are not just imprecise, for imprecision can be refined; you are incoherent, and you cannot possibly agree on any mutually acceptable definitions or attributes or properties of God (save that he is undefineable!)

You attempt to report the mental states you identify with 'God', but those states vary wildly from individual to individual; just as we see here.

If you all could agree on just a single positive thing, we doubters might be less certain that, not only is your emperor naked, he never existed in the first place save as a tale (told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!)

God is simply how I feel.

 

[Speakpigeon]

William of Okham claimed that God was so beyond our capabilities of understanding we could not really know anything about God, except what we learned from revelation. Thus God cannot truly be defined.

Sorry I don't understand where your conclusion comes from. Your conclusion that we cannot define God does not follow from the premise that we can only learn about God through revelation.

To define God, God would have to be logically definable. But if God is said to be by definition beyond any possible logical understanding, God cannot be defined except to a limited extent that must in theory be less than accurate.

But what do we do when the supposed revelation leads to contradictions and obvious false mythology?

All definitions are less than accurate, be they of God or of anything else, of 'human beings' for example. Definitions need to be non-contradictory but that in itself does not give them any accuracy. So I don't see that there is anything special about a possible definition of God. Such a definition is necessarily inaccurate to some extent, possibly even necessarily false. But again, there's nothing special about that. All definitions may well be all necessarily false, for all we know. In effect, we are in the same situation regarding reality as we are regarding God. We only know of reality what reality "reveals" to us about itself. Whether it reveals anything is debatable. And so it is for God. The question of God is not so much about what really exist as it is about what we mean by the word 'God'. And if we all mean different things, so what? That in itself does not entail that any particular idea of God is wrong. No even that only one could possibly be correct since each idea of God may well have its own referent. The only difference is that some ideas of God are falsifiable (for example, 'I am God'), and others are not (for example, 'God is a perfect being'). That's the way things are. Most believers are naïve, unsophisticated, believers, so their ideas of God are pathetic and laughable. That does not entail that all ideas of God are like that. However, from a practical angle, it's definitely achievable to rid most human beings of the belief they currently have. Some countries have low counts of believers in the population, France for example, which shows ordinary religious belief is susceptible to context, culture, public policies, etc, Something else would be to prove all ideas of God to be false.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Humans are definitely not animals. Humans evolved from fish but humans are not fish. Humans evolved from animals but humans are definitely not animals. Humans are an emergent phenomenon. Humans have emerged from the Animal Kingdom.

Coming from someone who claims that a lack of ego is godly, I find this claim bizarre and somewhat hypocritical, as well as laughably stupid and wrong.

Humans are most certainly animals, by any sane definition of the word 'animal'.

Human beings are something that other animals are not so it is justified to think of human beings as not being animals. You just have to define 'animal' as something like human beings but different from human beings. Sure, 'animal' already has a definition that makes human beings animals but it's only because the term has been redefined to that effect by scientists at some point in the history of the word. Of course, it's also natural to look at human beings and see that the similarities with other animals are many and very obvious. But the question is whether you believe that humans have or have not something that other animals do not have, like, say, consciousness. We could look at humans v. animals like we look at animals v. plants rather than animals v. living things. It depends on your beliefs and some beliefs may not have been proven wrong, like the idea that consciousness makes human beings unlike other animals.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

... the question is whether you believe that humans have or have not something that other animals do not have, like, say, consciousness .... It depends on your beliefs and some beliefs may not have been proven wrong, like the idea that consciousness makes human beings unlike other animals.
EB

Sorry. No chance there. Beliefs are toys the leisure class use to play what if ...... and consciousness? Well now there's a what if that requires time travel.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The only things humans know is evidently their own beliefs.

They don't actually know anything about the physical world.

So the life of all humans fundamentally rests on whatever beliefs they can have.

That makes your post particularly irrelevant.

Well, that's life for you anyway.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

Channel that untermensche buddy.

 

[Kharakov]

Humans are definitely not animals. Humans evolved from fish but humans are not fish. Humans evolved from animals but humans are definitely not animals. Humans are an emergent phenomenon. Humans have emerged from the Animal Kingdom.

Coming from someone who claims that a lack of ego is godly, I find this claim bizarre and somewhat hypocritical, as well as laughably stupid and wrong.

Humans are most certainly animals, by any sane definition of the word 'animal'.

no one's point, that you in particular are acutely aware of, is that human development is an order of magnitude above that of most ?denizens of the animal kingdom? due to humanity's usage of complex, external memory storage technology (written language) to pass on knowledge.

 

[Atheos]

Humans are animals who have developed intelligence far greater than any other members of the animal kingdom. Claiming that somehow that removes us from the animal kingdom is logically a sharpshooter fallacy. Electric eels are able to generate 600 volts of electricity, far greater than any other animal. Does that remove the electric eel from the animal kingdom? Do the special capabilities of the Peacock Mantis Shrimp remove it from the animal kingdom as well? Does the Peregrine Falcon's superlative speed separate it from the animal kingdom?

Selecting a trait in this way and using it to sustain an argument is no different from drawing a series of concentric rings around a bullet hole and claiming to be a sharpshooter.

 

[bilby]

Humans are animals who have developed intelligence far greater than any other members of the animal kingdom. Claiming that somehow that removes us from the animal kingdom is logically a sharpshooter fallacy. Electric eels are able to generate 600 volts of electricity, far greater than any other animal. Does that remove the electric eel from the animal kingdom? Do the special capabilities of the Peacock Mantis Shrimp remove it from the animal kingdom as well? Does the Peregrine Falcon's superlative speed separate it from the animal kingdom?

Selecting a trait in this way and using it to sustain an argument is no different from drawing a series of concentric rings around a bullet hole and claiming to be a sharpshooter.

^That.

 

[Brian63]

My mom makes a far better carrot cake, elevated magnitudes above than anyone else in any animal history. Therefore, she is not an animal to begin with.

Her carrot cake is magnitudes above any other brunette-haired animal of any other species in all of time, and therefore she is not an animal to begin with.

She makes a carrot cake far elevated over any other organism with the name "Mary" and therefore she is not an animal to begin with.

Hey...I think I am getting the hang of how this argument goes now...

Brian

 

[Speakpigeon]

Humans are animals who have developed intelligence far greater than any other members of the animal kingdom. Claiming that somehow that removes us from the animal kingdom is logically a sharpshooter fallacy. Electric eels are able to generate 600 volts of electricity, far greater than any other animal. Does that remove the electric eel from the animal kingdom? Do the special capabilities of the Peacock Mantis Shrimp remove it from the animal kingdom as well? Does the Peregrine Falcon's superlative speed separate it from the animal kingdom?

Selecting a trait in this way and using it to sustain an argument is no different from drawing a series of concentric rings around a bullet hole and claiming to be a sharpshooter.

Yet this is what we do all the time. Our distinctions are mere conveniences. We could put an old shoe in the same category as animals if it suited our needs. We don't because we've identified convenient criteria, criteria we can all recognise easily enough, that allow us to make a distinction. It's a caretaking business. Tidiness at work. Your brain has long drawn rings around things well before you can articulate the word 'animal'. And we do put animals and an old shoe in the same category of material objects for example.

Fundamentally, animals are animals to us. And to us there's a natural distinction between animals and us even if, again, it's clear there are obvious similarities and connections between us and all other animals. If you could prove consciousness is to be explained entirely as a material process then the distinction would become pointless. But for now at least, we'll have to wait.

To put it differently, naming is an empirical matter and as such it's not independent of the observer, no matter what you do.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

My mom makes a far better carrot cake, elevated magnitudes above than anyone else in any animal history. Therefore, she is not an animal to begin with.

Her carrot cake is magnitudes above any other brunette-haired animal of any other species in all of time, and therefore she is not an animal to begin with.

She makes a carrot cake far elevated over any other organism with the name "Mary" and therefore she is not an animal to begin with.

Hey...I think I am getting the hang of how this argument goes now...

Brian

Fallacy. It's not a distinction in 'magnitude'. It's a "0 and 1" distinction.

You have consciousness or you don't have it. Not just cognitive awareness. Consciousness, i.e. subjective experience. Can you prove for certain that other animals possess subjective experience? I don't think anybody can do that, for now at least, so we are all free to assume either way until such a time as somebody does.
EB