Is the word "God" meaningless

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Thank you for the references; i will go and look at them. But will just reply to your post, the question why am i so sure that something called unreality exists.

I think it's that i experienced "something" when i decide to repeat the phrase " i believe in god" until i stopped collapsing with internal laughter at the idea and it seemed to stick, ( it only took about six deliberate repetitions), that has apparently been partly explained by cognitive psychology to do with belief structures and their real effect on people, but which partly seemed to step outside of anything which is generally considered "real".

Two things mainly, (apart from feelings of lightness, euphoria, etc which are explained by cog psych,) were the impression of suddenly vastly increased space in my head, as if i had literally opened a door to another place/dimension/world, ( and which was very refreshing to someone , like many introverts/aspies, whose head often feels full to bursting! ), and the other thing which is that as time passed ( over weeks/months) my sense of "a presence" got stronger, and also more defined; from being pleasant to becoming an increasingly oppressive one, which i began to dislike.

A catholic recently to whom i told this said "it could not have been god" in that case. But she would not allow that it might have been the devil either! She said that gods presence would have been a warm loving one. ( that's her idea) The thing is that i, and many others, have experiences which aren't quite included in the real, but we have had them. There IS something out there! not in space, but around reality, ( reality being that which is observable, measurable etc . But perhaps you have a def of reality which includes anything i experience?)

I will follow up your links. Thank you.it's very interesting.

Last edited by ouinon on 21 Dec 2007, 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

NB: just noticed on rereading my last post that my theism, however brief it may have been, did not fall into either of the two categories described in the first article you linked, Arg from non-cog. That divides theist belief into Maintained and Obtained. My belief in god was simply decided upon, without any reasons for believing in god, and i found that the belief was most interesting in its effects if i avoided starting to think that "there might be something, "real", in it". That is if i started to believe god was real then the belief lost its power and became mundane and banal. The trick was to keep reminding myself that i was choosing to believe, and there was no evidence at all for god being real.

What about the possibility that the word "god" is about as meaningful as the word "aspergers"?

Is the word "God" meaningless

For you obviously it is....

No feeling can be "wrong" or "right" its either understood or misunderstood.

If you feel it, of course it exists, its just it might not exist in the physical plane.

The word God is as meaningful as you want it to be.

Personally when I think of the word it leads me to pondering about the universe, about life, about death, about plasma, about matter and energy, about conciousness.

So..

No word is meaningless.