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Is the word "God" meaningless

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ouinon
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13 Dec 2007, 5:28 am

IpsoRandomo wrote:
Okay, now I seriously think you're just messing with me.

I am not. 8O I am being honestly genuinely serious aspie style, which i know from painful experience can look like messing, but it is not. :? :(
Please explain why you think i am.
It might be the subject matter; it has a tendency to look like messing. :lol: But i wasn't ; it is my feedback to the article, what i thought reading it. I think the argument might stand IF god was supposed to be something real. The argument might function, IF there was no such thing as unreality. But there is, and it's powerful. I think. And it makes the argument look completely beside the point. Like trying to attack a hologram with a sword! The hologram exists, but a sword is pointless against it.

8)



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13 Dec 2007, 5:01 pm

IpsoRandomo, I was thinking again about the foreign language analogy I used earlier. I think you are right in that it doesn't really work. However, what you said about color not having a smell or a texture gave me another idea for an analogy that might work better.

Suppose you are trying to describe color to someone who was born blind. That person could only understand color in terms of things they had experienced like smell, texture, or temperature. True, the person could never get the full sense of what color was in the sense of its primary attributes, but they would know a little bit about what it was like through the metaphor of their own experience. Of course, this analogy assumes that someone has experienced color in order to describe it to the blind person.

I guess I was just thinking that if there is a God or even some other being totally outside our experience who could perceive us, but we could not perceive them, and they wanted their presence known to us, the only way they could do it is by using our own experience as a metaphor to describe their attributes. We could not experience their primary attributes directly.

I'm not saying this is a proof for God or anything, far from it. It just seemed like a hypothetical that might explain why the term 'God' doesn't refer to primary attributes, even for believers.



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16 Dec 2007, 5:18 pm

spdjeanne wrote:
IpsoRandomo, I was thinking again about the foreign language analogy I used earlier. I think you are right in that it doesn't really work. However, what you said about color not having a smell or a texture gave me another idea for an analogy that might work better.

Suppose you are trying to describe color to someone who was born blind. That person could only understand color in terms of things they had experienced like smell, texture, or temperature. True, the person could never get the full sense of what color was in the sense of its primary attributes, but they would know a little bit about what it was like through the metaphor of their own experience. Of course, this analogy assumes that someone has experienced color in order to describe it to the blind person.

I guess I was just thinking that if there is a God or even some other being totally outside our experience who could perceive us, but we could not perceive them, and they wanted their presence known to us, the only way they could do it is by using our own experience as a metaphor to describe their attributes. We could not experience their primary attributes directly.

I'm not saying this is a proof for God or anything, far from it. It just seemed like a hypothetical that might explain why the term 'God' doesn't refer to primary attributes, even for believers.


Yeah, but the point of the argument is that theists don't know what they're talking about until they define "God."

Theists might respond that they know what God is but can't explain it, just as we know what color is but can't explain it to a blind man. That sounds like a bit of a cop-out though.



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16 Dec 2007, 5:21 pm

ouinon wrote:
IpsoRandomo wrote:
Okay, now I seriously think you're just messing with me.

I am not. 8O I am being honestly genuinely serious aspie style, which i know from painful experience can look like messing, but it is not. :? :(
Please explain why you think i am.
It might be the subject matter; it has a tendency to look like messing. :lol: But i wasn't ; it is my feedback to the article, what i thought reading it. I think the argument might stand IF god was supposed to be something real. The argument might function, IF there was no such thing as unreality. But there is, and it's powerful. I think. And it makes the argument look completely beside the point. Like trying to attack a hologram with a sword! The hologram exists, but a sword is pointless against it.

8)


Sorry, I thought you were joking because I could not make heads or tails of what you meant. Plus, you pretty much quoted what you wrote when I asked for an explanation.

As for the argument, I don't see how you can say "unreality" exists. If it's not a part of reality, then it doesn't exist by definition. To suppose otherwise is necessarily false because it poses a contradiction.



ouinon
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17 Dec 2007, 2:45 am

IpsoRandomo wrote:
I don't see how you can say "unreality" exists. If it's not a part of reality, then it doesn't exist by definition. To suppose otherwise is necessarily false because it poses a contradiction.
That's a tautology; for you "real" and "exist" mean the same thing virtually. You are just saying A=A. Someone else said " Reality is truth", a very similar idea. It's just arguing in circles.

A few hundred years ago the word "real" meant central, and "unreality" was what surrounded it. That helps me get my head round it. Also the unreal is not very visible, is not very measurable, you have to divine what it's like. Which can be tricky!! :lol:

PS: I didn't just repeat my first post; i amended and altered to try and make it clearer. I'm sorry it didn't seem to make much more sense.

8)



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18 Dec 2007, 5:43 am

ouinon wrote:
IpsoRandomo wrote:
I don't see how you can say "unreality" exists. If it's not a part of reality, then it doesn't exist by definition. To suppose otherwise is necessarily false because it poses a contradiction.
That's a tautology; for you "real" and "exist" mean the same thing virtually. You are just saying A=A. Someone else said " Reality is truth", a very similar idea. It's just arguing in circles.

A few hundred years ago the word "real" meant central, and "unreality" was what surrounded it. That helps me get my head round it. Also the unreal is not very visible, is not very measurable, you have to divine what it's like. Which can be tricky!! :lol:

PS: I didn't just repeat my first post; i amended and altered to try and make it clearer. I'm sorry it didn't seem to make much more sense.

8)


Yes, but it's a tautology since we are forced to base all our conclusions on same base assumptions. Plus, even if it is plausible for a contradiction to exist, I don't see how it follows that we can entertain such a possibility with your high degree of certainty. Also, the second paragraph of this essay states the Law of Non-Contradiction has been proved: Skeptic. Furthermore, I would be much more cautious in totally allowing contradictions (it's the only way to tell what's false and what's true). By doing so, I could say you're wrong in everything you say while also being correct and not correct in everything you say.

A major problem for you is that any claim you make is automatically negated according to your philosophy.

(P.S. Your response misses the point of the Noncognitivist argument. The argument only states that the word "God" is meaningless; it is not meant to determine whether something called "God" exists or not)



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18 Dec 2007, 6:22 am

IpsoRandomo wrote:
P.S. Your response misses the point of the Noncognitivist argument. The argument only states that the word "God" is meaningless; it is not meant to determine whether something called "God" exists or not.

I wasn't trying to prove that god exists; it would be sign of serious confusion to think that could do so. :wink:
You missed my point which was my reply using the word god, as meaning something to me. As i discovered most strikingly when i tried repeating " i believe in god" to myself . It had very def effect, as if the word was loaded with meaning. Even down to the old testament kind of character that emerged after a while!
The word god has also formed the subject of many a conversation in the past. (Including amongst atheists, for whom it has lots of meaning :D ) . Proving by def that the word god is NOT meaningless. How could it be while people still use it?
Society/people determines what meaning a word has, whether it has meaning, not logical arguments.
Meaning has very little to do with logic. So long as people use the word god it has meaning. That is why the articles argument is so totally beside the point. It's behaving as if words are bits of mathematical equations.
What the articles argument seems to suggest is that if people stopped using the word god it would make no difference to the discussions because it is not vehiculing any information, or meaning. Obviously this is not true.
People use the word because it does have meaning. Meaning maybe like money, which changes in value all the time, but continues to form basis of transactions. At the moment the value of the word god on the international word market is shaky. But it is still currency.

8)



Last edited by ouinon on 18 Dec 2007, 6:55 am, edited 13 times in total.

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18 Dec 2007, 6:35 am

IpsoRandomo wrote:
Yes, but it's a tautology since we are forced to base all our conclusions on same base assumptions. Plus, even if it is plausible for a contradiction to exist, I don't see how it follows that we can entertain such a possibility with your high degree of certainty. I would be much more cautious in totally allowing contradictions (it's the only way to tell what's false and what's true). By doing so, I could say you're wrong in everything you say while also being correct and not correct in everything you say.A major problem for you is that any claim you make is automatically negated according to your philosophy.

PS: Are you referring to a contradiction in my posts? I don't see one. What "totally allowed contradiction" do you mean?
Not sure what you think my philosophy is that would negate any claim i made.

8)



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19 Dec 2007, 10:37 am

IpsoRandomo wrote:
spdjeanne wrote:
IpsoRandomo, I was thinking again about the foreign language analogy I used earlier. I think you are right in that it doesn't really work. However, what you said about color not having a smell or a texture gave me another idea for an analogy that might work better.

Suppose you are trying to describe color to someone who was born blind. That person could only understand color in terms of things they had experienced like smell, texture, or temperature. True, the person could never get the full sense of what color was in the sense of its primary attributes, but they would know a little bit about what it was like through the metaphor of their own experience. Of course, this analogy assumes that someone has experienced color in order to describe it to the blind person.

I guess I was just thinking that if there is a God or even some other being totally outside our experience who could perceive us, but we could not perceive them, and they wanted their presence known to us, the only way they could do it is by using our own experience as a metaphor to describe their attributes. We could not experience their primary attributes directly.

I'm not saying this is a proof for God or anything, far from it. It just seemed like a hypothetical that might explain why the term 'God' doesn't refer to primary attributes, even for believers.


Yeah, but the point of the argument is that theists don't know what they're talking about until they define "God."

Theists might respond that they know what God is but can't explain it, just as we know what color is but can't explain it to a blind man. That sounds like a bit of a cop-out though.

Theists, along with everybody else, are no more able to see God than blind people are able to see color. We are all God-blind. I'm suggesting that originally it is God, not a person, who must create the metaphors which enable us to understand God through our own experience. A being outside our perception, who wanted their presence known to us, would know their own primary attributes. However, the being outside our perception would only be able to communicate with us through that which we can perceive. Theists are just people who believe that there is some actual being outside our perception described by the metaphor handed down to them in the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, etc. Atheists are people who believe these books are just man-made descriptions of communal imaginary friends. Blind faith is all that separates the two points of view.



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19 Dec 2007, 11:58 am

No, the word "God" is too meaningful. It means so many different things to different people.



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19 Dec 2007, 2:06 pm

ouinon wrote:
IpsoRandomo wrote:
Yes, but it's a tautology since we are forced to base all our conclusions on same base assumptions. Plus, even if it is plausible for a contradiction to exist, I don't see how it follows that we can entertain such a possibility with your high degree of certainty. I would be much more cautious in totally allowing contradictions (it's the only way to tell what's false and what's true). By doing so, I could say you're wrong in everything you say while also being correct and not correct in everything you say.A major problem for you is that any claim you make is automatically negated according to your philosophy.

PS: Are you referring to a contradiction in my posts? I don't see one. What "totally allowed contradiction" do you mean?
Not sure what you think my philosophy is that would negate any claim i made.

8)


If you something called "unreality" exists that does not obey the Law of Identity, then unreality is a contradiction. If unreality includes all things that are not real, which would be everything that is not, then how are you not allowing for all contradictions?

BTW, what makes you think "unreality" exists even if it is, assuming for argument's sake plausible?



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19 Dec 2007, 2:08 pm

monty wrote:
No, the word "God" is too meaningful. It means so many different things to different people.


Yes, words can mean anything but that doesn't mean they always do.

Some posters claim the word "God" has a subjective meaning, which is actually addressed in the article referred to in my first post.

The argument actually states that the word "God" is only meaningless as long as primary attributes are not defined.



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19 Dec 2007, 2:34 pm

ouinon wrote:
You missed my point which was my reply using the word god, as meaning something to me. As i discovered most strikingly when i tried repeating " i believe in god" to myself . It had very def effect, as if the word was loaded with meaning. Even down to the old testament kind of character that emerged after a while!


That's just your feelings, which are sometimes wrong. As for subjective meaning, see my Thu Dec 20, 2007 5:08 am post.

ouinon wrote:
The word god has also formed the subject of many a conversation in the past. (Including amongst atheists, for whom it has lots of meaning ) . Proving by def that the word god is NOT meaningless. How could it be while people still use it?


The "illusion of coherency" counter-argument is also addressed in the article on noncognitivism. Plus, people tend to be confused more easily than they like to think and are very good at self-deception, especially when others help in the self-deception. There is also a natural tendency to assume a word means something. And people often don't think too deeply about what they believe and why. Even when they do, they often give in to the confirmation bias.

ouinon wrote:
Society/people determines what meaning a word has, whether it has meaning, not logical arguments.
Meaning has very little to do with logic. So long as people use the word god it has meaning. That is why the articles argument is so totally beside the point. It's behaving as if words are bits of mathematical equations.


Wrong. Society might determine what words mean, but the only way for society's members to understand anything or believe anything is through the use of logic because that is all we know. Even in understanding that a contradiction is in fact a contradiction, logic is necessary to understand that if two or more distinct propositions are true, a contradiction results via violation of the Law of the Excluded Middle. Even to believe the most absurd thing imaginable requires that we not believe the opposite and that we understand belief in the opposite entails a contradiction. We also use logic to relate one idea with another idea.

ouinon wrote:
What the articles argument seems to suggest is that if people stopped using the word god it would make no difference to the discussions because it is not vehiculing any information, or meaning. Obviously this is not true.


See my response as to how there may be an illusion of coherency.

ouinon wrote:
People use the word because it does have meaning.


See my response to the above quote.



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19 Dec 2007, 2:44 pm

spdjeanne wrote:
IpsoRandomo wrote:
spdjeanne wrote:
IpsoRandomo, I was thinking again about the foreign language analogy I used earlier. I think you are right in that it doesn't really work. However, what you said about color not having a smell or a texture gave me another idea for an analogy that might work better.

Suppose you are trying to describe color to someone who was born blind. That person could only understand color in terms of things they had experienced like smell, texture, or temperature. True, the person could never get the full sense of what color was in the sense of its primary attributes, but they would know a little bit about what it was like through the metaphor of their own experience. Of course, this analogy assumes that someone has experienced color in order to describe it to the blind person.

I guess I was just thinking that if there is a God or even some other being totally outside our experience who could perceive us, but we could not perceive them, and they wanted their presence known to us, the only way they could do it is by using our own experience as a metaphor to describe their attributes. We could not experience their primary attributes directly.

I'm not saying this is a proof for God or anything, far from it. It just seemed like a hypothetical that might explain why the term 'God' doesn't refer to primary attributes, even for believers.


Yeah, but the point of the argument is that theists don't know what they're talking about until they define "God."

Theists might respond that they know what God is but can't explain it, just as we know what color is but can't explain it to a blind man. That sounds like a bit of a cop-out though.


Theists, along with everybody else, are no more able to see God than blind people are able to see color. We are all God-blind. I'm suggesting that originally it is God, not a person, who must create the metaphors which enable us to understand God through our own experience. A being outside our perception, who wanted their presence known to us, would know their own primary attributes. However, the being outside our perception would only be able to communicate with us through that which we can perceive. Theists are just people who believe that there is some actual being outside our perception described by the metaphor handed down to them in the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, etc. Atheists are people who believe these books are just man-made descriptions of communal imaginary friends. Blind faith is all that separates the two points of view.


I see no evidence of such communication. Plus, if you don't know what's "communicating" with you, then how do you know its really communicating with you? Maybe it's primary attributes cause the thing to act in such a way that it only *seems* to communicate with you. To claim a being outside our perception would know its primary attributes just begs the question. For God to be a being, it would have to have certain secondary attributes (e.g., ability to know propositions). However, this doesn't refute the argument's claim that primary attributes are necessary before defining secondary attributes.



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19 Dec 2007, 4:13 pm

IpsoRandomo wrote:
That's just your feelings, which are sometimes wrong.

The only way for society's members to understand anything or believe anything is through the use of logic because that is all we know. Even in understanding that a contradiction is in fact a contradiction, logic is necessary to understand that if two or more distinct propositions are true, a contradiction results via violation of the Law of the Excluded Middle. Even to believe the most absurd thing imaginable requires that we not believe the opposite and that we understand belief in the opposite entails a contradiction. We also use logic to relate one idea with another idea.

Hasn't this idea of logic about contradictions recently been rather exploded with the theories about "fuzzy thinking"?
Feelings aren't wrong OR right.

8) 8)



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21 Dec 2007, 12:52 am

You still haven't answered my question. What makes you so sure something called "unreality" exists?

ouinon wrote:
IpsoRandomo wrote:
That's just your feelings, which are sometimes wrong.

The only way for society's members to understand anything or believe anything is through the use of logic because that is all we know. Even in understanding that a contradiction is in fact a contradiction, logic is necessary to understand that if two or more distinct propositions are true, a contradiction results via violation of the Law of the Excluded Middle. Even to believe the most absurd thing imaginable requires that we not believe the opposite and that we understand belief in the opposite entails a contradiction. We also use logic to relate one idea with another idea.

Hasn't this idea of logic about contradictions recently been rather exploded with the theories about "fuzzy thinking"?
Feelings aren't wrong OR right.

8) 8)


Wrong. You're thinking of fuzzy logic. It's just a way of grasping imprecise concepts, which are not the same contradictions as long as they do not violate the Law of the Excluded middle. Try this this article on it.

Also, the second paragraph of the following article, as stated in one of my previous posts, even states the Law of Noncontradiction has been proved: skeptic.

Your remark about feelings is also flawed. Feelings in themselves maybe neither wrong nor right. As part of a method, however, they may not be very trustworthy. Also, all propositions have a truth value, so all propositions are either true or not true. It can't be neither or both. And no, fuzzy logic does not mean a proposition is something other than true or false. It means that some details of a proposition maybe false and others maybe true or that a proposition consists of more than one distinct idea (as long as they are not antithetical to one another).

Remember the Law of the Excluded Middle.