In the case of the Judeo-Christian God, the meaning is quite clear. It is an integral part of Christian dogma. Every Christian denomination, irrespective of their differences on points of dogma, worships a God with three abiding characteristics; Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.
The fact that evil exists means that he can’t be all three.
No two people have ever shared the same experience, as different people experience the same things in subtly different ways.
I simply wanted people to answer the questions.
Erek
Ok-doo.
Logically, if you have no knowledge of an object, then you cannot deny it’s existence. Thus, I can safely, and logically, deny the existence of a deity that people believe in, for example, beause they have characteristics. But not, and indefinable object is impossible to prove existence-wise, either way.
Yep, sure. I’m sitting on my chair - you’ve never sat on my chair.
What’s the point of your questions? It seems worryingly like you’re building to a strawman, but i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. What are the questions for?
As for your three questions.
-No
-Irrelevant
-God is intrinsic to the universe, this is a false language paradox, nothing more. It proves that your words are insufficient to describe what they are describing, they do not reveal anything about what actually exists empirically. The difference is one is true the other is false.
GeorgeKaplin Assuming that you know the purpose of evil, and what God’s goals are. Your temporary suffering could just be a lesson that you are being taught. But again, the Tri-Omni question is a language paradox, it does not accurately describe the object itself.
Erek
Just so I’m clear, is this what you are offerring as your meaning when you use the word “God” in the OP?
If so, then thanks. Now, could you describe the meaning of your above statement?
I truly don’t know how one would address the existence or non-existence of the thing described by that statement. And that’s not even getting to the conditions that you view as required to establish existence.
Ack - on preview, I see that the discussion has been progressing at a frantic pace.
Well, the problem is that the question can be turned around and lose not one whit of its profundity–
If you don’t know what God is how do you know God does exist?
The answer to both questions is the same.
Some questions for you.
1–Are two questions that have the same answer the same question?
2–Is it possible for one person to have the same experience as another person?
3–Does a proposition that has an equal chance of being proved right and being proved wrong have any value as a functional guide to life?
4–If a hen and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many monkeys with a wooden leg does it take to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?
5–If someone says that God is intrinsic to the universe, has that person not defined God and therefore committed Blasphemy?
Well if you have no knowledge of the subject then no you cannot deny its existance, but if you are denying it based upon a few little fragments you’ve picked up of other peoples definitions. One thing that people tend to share about the idea of God is that it’s pretty fucking expansive, so is it any more than vanity that causes one to deny a concept that is awfully important to a lot of people based upon a few out of context fragments that one has picked up from the experiences of others?
I believe what I said before, because I can see it.
Schuyler I will not EVER give you a solid definition for God. Don’t expect it to ever come.
I don’t believe in the existance of Strawmen, though of course I don’t really know the meaning of it in terms of this forum the way its bandied about any time someone disagrees with something someone else said.
Erek
I do not need to know everything about something in order to know it does not exist. For example, If I hear that there is an elephant that has wings, then I know this cannot exist, because part of the definition of an elephant is that they are not birds, nor can they fly. I don’t need any other information, like an elephant is grey, or that some species have larger ears than others - that’s superfluous.
As can schizophrenics, when they hallucinate. Why are you different from a schizophrenic?
A strawman would be saying this:
Person A: I believe Trees are actually red.
Person B: Why?
Person A: Because your argument is that trees are always green, when sometimes they can be brown! See, you’re just not willing to take into account other coloured trees, so clearly i’m right.
Person B: …?
In that case, surely you must understand that that any attempts on your part to illustrate your beliefs must needs be fruitless. How can we talk about anything when we cannot even agree on what it is we are talking about?
Jeez luweez - I think that the people who have responded to this thread have done a nice job of saying, "please inform us of your meaning when you use the word “God” in a sentence.
I mean, even if you had said something like “by God I mean the wonderment I feel in experiencing and perceiving the universe, and the glorious knowledge that each person and everything in it are connected in some beautiful harmony - it is so profound that I am given this wonderful insight into the cosmos, and I truly wish to share and communicate the wonderful insights it provides me on my journey through this life.”
(I’m not saying that you believe this, I’m just giving it as an example of what someone might say who feels free to use the word “God” in conversation but who doesn’t buy into the Judeo-Christian concept of a personal deity.)
Then we could try to address whether this feeling or awareness or yours is necessarily completely physical, or if there are insights to be realized by considering a metaphysical or supernatural model for the concept that you have just described.
But it seems like you are ducking the question you yourself raised in the OP, and I think that folks have been pretty understanding (if maybe a bit frustrated). Thanks.
Let’s start at the beginning. In order for God to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, God must know the future.
Now, let’s hypothesise a God that stands outside of time. Time, in our hypothesis, is a series of connected dots on a piece of paper. Each dot represents an event, no matter how small. God is holding the paper and can see how the dots connect. If he chooses, he can erase a dot, place it somewhere else, reconnect it to the previous and subsequent dots and thus altering the shape of the line. This is obviously an oversimplification, but it will do for the purposes of this discussion.
Now, consider Hurricane Katrina. Over 1000 people died. Hundreds of thousands of people were utterly dispossessed. Over a million were displaced. However, thanks to the tireless efforts of hundreds of climatologists, meterologists, and environmentalists, the Government had enough advance warning to evacuate most of the city. Had the fate of New Orleans been left in the ethereal hands of God, the human toll would have been exponentially higher. There would have been no warning and no clemency.
In order to believe that Hurricane Katrina served a positive, ultimately beneficial purpose known only to God, we need to make several highly unreasonable assumptions.
Firstly, we must assume that God deemed all the residents of New Orleans to be in need of moral tuition at precisely the same time. This is ludicrous on its face.
Secondly, we need to assume that the human intervention against God’s divine fury actually worked in Gods favour.
Thirdly, we need to assume that a great many people needed to die in order to fully grasp the complexity of their “lesson”.
Fourthly, we need to assume that they could not have been taught the same thing any other way. If this is true, God is not omnipotent or omniscient and so we’re right back where we started, with an internal contradiction in the fundamental nature of God.
I think it’s safe to say that the majority of people left beind in New Orleans, once their friends and neighbours had fled to higher ground, believed in an all powerful, compassionate, and loving God. Surely this God heard the prayers of the old men and women as they hobbled upstairs, away from the rising waters, to their bedrooms, to their attics where they eventually drowned. Surely he heard the inarticulate screams of the babies, and the mothers hunting for their babies.
Surely he could have accomplished the same thing by moving a few of those dots around a bit.
This sounds interesting, but I’m not sure of your meaning. Can you elaborate on this, please?
If the concept of God is incapable of being described in words*, isn’t it rather silly to try and debate, with words, the existence of God? I think **mswas **just needs to be content with his/her belief and leave the rest of us alone.
*according to mswas
Sorry. I left out a few words in one of the paragraphs in my last post. Here it is in full with the added words bolded
First you say you feel God’s presence, then you say the experience is ineffable. Ineffable means it cannot be expressed in words. Saying you feel God’s presence is expressing it in words. Don’t you see a problem with this?
Is it just me, or are you saying you’re a pagan? multiplicities, heirarchy, archetypes, myriad of aspects - sounds like a pagan to me. I’m not seeing any monotheism here. In other words, I’m thinking you don’t believe in a monotheistic definition of “God” which is a bit of a contradiction.
So how can you believe in God if you don’t know what God even means?
George Kaplin, you are going to fall into his trap.
mswas has a serious hard-on for atheists for having the temerity to say they do not believe that whatever is represented by the word “god” exists.
The reason for this appears to be that mswas has an entirely different meaning that he assigns to the word “god” and he gets tired of throwing out posts discussing his god only to be challenged by unsuspecting atheists who are not yet keyed in to his idolect.
I deny the fundamental premise of this thread (which looks a lot like a new take on the Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Nature of God thread, in which I posted an apparently pre-emptive rebuttal to this thread along with a clarification).
(Don’t worry, mswas, I’m not going to hang around this thread, interrupting. I just figured I ought to provide one perspective to prospective posters before I find myself with another multi-page tangle of misunderstandings to moderate. Enjoy your discussion.)
By defining what god isn’t you’ve defined what god IS as well.
I guess that makes you a blasphemer.
As usual, go for less verbosity and more content.
-Joe
I have a pflurgle. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. The mere fact that I own one means that you now have to send me a check for $1.98 every day, otherwise you’ll be struck by lightning and die.
By your logic, you now have to concede that I might, in fact, have a pflurgle- and unless you’re willing to get hit by lightning and die, you need to break out the checkbook. 'Cause, you know, I have a pflurgle.
Just as a side note, I thought the discussion was going fine without reference to that other trainwreck.
Of course, as you’ve surmised, many of the posters here are aware of the importance of describing the usage of the word God before answering questions about it/him/her/whatever. I think that’s why many of us are focused on the request for a definition of a word that is used in the OP. I thought that your brief comments here to George Kaplin were very concise, and didn’t even need the last two paragraphs (which IMHO only serve to muddy the waters in this thread). Thanks.
Because even though we may not be able to wholly describe God, we can still infer things about it from what we perceive.
‘Just ignore the shadows on the wall; there’s nothing to think here.’