So, “God” can exist, but what people would be referring to this type of “God” is not what people originally had in mind (like the type of “God” that would condemn you to eternal fire).
However, regardless of what anyone called it, there is an actual object that everyone is referring to. A rose is what it is, and would be even if humans vanished tomorrow. There’s no evidence for gods of any kind and the word “god” isn’t based on any actual entity; “god” is a term wholly manufactured & defined by humans. Humans aren’t referring to any actual entity when they use the term god*, there’s nothing there that people can point to and agree that that’s what they are talking about regardless of the name. Any hypothetical being that’s out there that doesn’t fit our definition of a god, isn’t a god.
That’s just word games. If I claim a hat is God, that isn’t evidence of God; it just means I like playing word games.
*Even if there actually are gods; we made the term & concept up, and if there’s anything out there that fits the definition we just made a lucky guess.
So, one can say “Thank God that you are safe!” or “Thank heavens that you are safe!” instead of “Thank the agreeable probable outcome in this contingent scenario that you are safe!”
Right? :dubious:
If that is the case, then “God” = an agreeable or disagreeable probable outcome in a contingent scenario based on certain cues and context. If the outcome is agreeable, then “God” is doing good. If the outcome is disagreeable, then “God” is doing bad. Why? We don’t know. Perhaps, “God” is punishing us. Perhaps, “God” is playing with us. Perhaps, “God” is testing our faith on probability and statistics.
If you’re arguing (as you appear to be) that God is real because humans have a concept of God, then isn’t atheism also real because humans have a concept of atheism?
Just because we imagine something, doesn’t make it real outside of our imaginations. People have imagined the Tooth Fairy, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman but none of them are real.
People also “imagine” that a 50-dollar bill has worth. Apparently, this belief is strong enough to be useful. If not, then how else are you going to persuade that some pieces of fiber can be traded into goods and services?
The Tooth Fairy is not real in the sense that it actually exists as a living, breathing entity that you can see and touch. It is real in the sense that they exist in the form of strong belief in them and manipulating them into several manifestations that can be objectified and therefore create an impression in one’s mind that the characters are real simply by appearing on a poster or at a supermarket, for instance. People have a concept of Santa Claus. Cecil Adams once answered a question about Santa and gave a clever response as usual. It sounds improbable that a man can live in the “North Pole”, own several reindeer, have a wife, run a toy workshop with elves and magic, and travel around the world delivering presents or sacks of coal to every good and naughty child and return homeward by Christmas Day. However, the belief of Santa Claus, I think, is connected with philanthropy, so people volunteer to fit into Santa suits and ask children what they want for Christmas or deliver presents during the Christmas season, pretending to be Santa Claus, so that, to a naive observer, “Santa Claus” appears to be real. Note that this “Santa Claus” is merely a perception of reality; it’s not reality itself. There may be no Santa Claus in reality, but what some people perceive as reality tells a different and interesting story. Hence, I am starting to wonder what is the difference between reality and the perception of reality. Where do I draw the line? What is true reality? :dubious:
No, I’m saying that “God” is a mythical creature, created and defined by human mythology. That’s why I used the example of a unicorn earlier; if a creature does not in any way resemble a quadruped with one horn, then calling it a “unicorn” is abuse of the term.
Also think about doing an online transaction without actual money involved. There is no money involved, but you know that something is happening: that you are buying or selling something (in other words, you may be trading a good/service for money that only exists hypothetically). I am talking about the perception of reality here, since you would probably be perceiving that actual monetary transaction has occurred, when in reality, you are not touching any actual money. All money are really in the figures on the computer screen.
You’re avoiding the question. Do you think God has an existence outside of human imagination? If humans beings all died out next week, would God still exist? Or is God just a product of human imaging?
Gold’s worth is also partially imaginary (it is a portable representation of the labour required to mine it that has some useful properties). Both gold and paper’s exchange value is reliant on the belief that others will accept it as currency. This is totally independent on the question of whether it will have use value to either party of an exchange.
Edit: Also, the qualities of that God are completely disparate from what most individuals would define as God. More people believe in heaven than in God, though there are a few that believe in inverse.
Well… it depends on how you define “God”. If you define “God” as this (even if the definition is frowned upon by the scientific community), then it is possible that this “God” exists when this particle exists, since people in popular culture like to refer to it as “God”.
I have heard a witty quote: “If one person is deluded, it’s called insanity. If many people are deluded, then it’s called a religion.” So, if many people are deluded to think or perceive that this particle is “God” and this particle is confirmed by the scientific community to exist as a tangible substance, then yes, “God” exists in the form of this substance.
Now, if “God” is solely the product of human imaging and if humans all die out, then yes, you can correctly say that this type of “God” does not exist because the belief here is that God is solely the product of human imaging and relies on the existence of humans to exist itself.
Please stop avoiding the question. Let me try to take the wiggle room out-As you define God, do you believe that she/he/it has existence outside of human imagination?
In that case, I would say “no, I do not believe that she/he/it has existence outside of human imagination”, because there is no evidence to support such an existence. However, my belief is based my perception of the evidence. There is a possibility that I may not be perceiving a god when really there is a god that is not supported by the evidence as it stands currently. Read this article. It can describe better than I can!
I admit that I have been an atheist since birth. Nevertheless, I have always been intrigued at the religious concepts such as “sin” or “god” or “reincarnation” or “karma”. Sometimes, I wonder what exactly religious people are referring to when they use these terms. There was one time when I was about 10 or 11 years old that I was invited to attend church with some Christian friends. I sat in a group or circle with a few people in a building. The circle consisted of mostly children and one adult. I asked the woman (the adult), pointing at the picture of a big stuffed bag labelled sin, “What is sin? What does it look like?” because in my head I had no concept of imaginary existence. The woman gave me all sorts of replies, but I wasn’t satisfied until she simply said somewhere on the lines that “sin is dust and looks like dust. This is why the bag is stuffed up.” So, I come to the conclusion that sin really is dust and loving sin means one strays away from God in the sky to face this stuffed bag of dust on the ground. When I hear the term, “god”, I think of nature, as if natural phenomena, whether perceived to be good or bad by the subject, is done by a deity. I wonder why Christians love to refer to “God” using the masculine pronoun, but I suppose it’s to simplify nature as though nature is supposed to be masculine. Now, if sin means a stuffed bag of dust or god means nature, then yes, I would say that it’s all right to believe in “sin” and “God”, but only in this specific context. Life for me has always been a word game, because I really want to know what exactly people are referring to when they speak of these things.
You’ve got it bass-ackwards. Shakespeare’s phrase is that there is an object that can be called a rose or a tulip or a stinkweed, but it is still the same object. Changing the name does not change the object. So you are proposing taking the word rose and applying it to a completely different object, like a pine cone, then proving that that pine cone exists. Ergo, you have proven the existence of your “rose”. Except your proof does no such thing, because instead of referring to the same object by a different name, you are referring to a different object by the same name.
Well that’s all well and good for you, but has nothing to say about what everyone else is talking about when they say “God”.
If that is the case, then why are you calling it God? What does it gain you to do so? The ability to confuse the masses, to make them think you are supporting their incorrect definition of God?
That kind of wordsmanship is the fostering of confusion and ignorance.
The God concept can certainly be used as a metaphor. Certainly those phrases are so common that they in themselves may be functioning as such, and not necessarily conveying the emitter’s religious sentiment. On the other hand, one can choose to avoid such metaphors because there are enough around who take them at face value.
You are correct, money is an abstraction. It is a collective agreement that there is some worth or value on certain placeholders. Once we agree that placeholders can hold value purely on the symbolism and not inherent worth, then it doesn’t matter if the placeholders are bits of metal with impressions stamped on them, bits of paper or plastic or cloth with images stamped/woven on them, or numbers transferred electronically.
I don’t see how that has any connection to the God concept.
Once again, your word games only serve to foster confusion and ignorance. Redefining God does nothing to address the use of the word at large and the concept to which that term applies for the bulk of the population. You are pointing at a pine cone and calling it a rose again.
I read that article, it doesn’t seem to have any connection to what you’re saying.
So when you were a child and couldn’t grasp abstract concepts, an adult made up some silly analogy using a bag of dirt to represent the concept of sin, and so now you continue to use that pitiful inadequate analogy as your working definition of what the word means to believers?
Then I suggest you not go around redefining words willy nilly. You will never understand other people if you keep making up your own definitions.
My original post on this thread was this: “So, the main point of the article is that a god can exist, but the traditional definition of existence of such a god is questionable. Perhaps, a god does exist, but its existence has a definition or argument that we do not have yet. You know, Cecil Adams may be on to something. On Wikipedia, I read that he went to a Catholic school, so he might have some concept of a personal god. However, being a Christian himself, as he examines the arguments for the existence of this god with the current, modern knowledgebase, he realizes that the traditional definition of this existence of this god is questionable and that a god can exist but is undefined yet.”
I was merely commenting on what I thought the article meant. Of course, my interpretation at that time was liable to misunderstanding. I would really appreciate it very much, if you could politely correct my misunderstanding of Cecil Adams’ article rather than attacking the person behind this erroneous interpretation, ad hominem. Apparently, the members questioned my validity right from the start, even though they don’t seem to realize that my original statement is merely an interpretation of what I thought Cecil meant. My interpretation is prone to error.
You could have said that my interpretation of Cecil Adams’ words are incorrect, because Cecil Adams is so witty that he can create seemingly misleading sentences to his most ignorant readers (such as I!) rather than treating my own words as fact and negating my claim ad hominem. Furthermore, you think that I “keep making up my own definitions”, as if that is all I do all day long. I do not intend on making my own definitions; I have never said that I make up my own definitions. You misunderstand me. I just form hypotheses of what people may be thinking. These hypotheses can change and will change, if they are found to be false. I am not as dogmatic as you may think I am, and I do not adhere to my formed hypotheses so ardently as you may think I do.
Now, I apologize for any misunderstandings. After rereading my posts, I find that it’s quite silly of me to offer this interpretation in the first place. Then again, that’s the point of the Straight Dope, isn’t it? To cure us from ignorance!
Oh, by the way, I once had a Biology lecturer who taught us (the class) about the “Central Dogma of Biology”. The part when he said “and all dogmas are false” really cracked me up. Well, I have to admit that if one thinks so dogmatically, then one fails to reason that there may just be an exception to the truth. For example, one notable exception to the Central Dogma of Biology is the retrovirus.
Wow, I quoted you and explained how your statements are in error, and that’s a lot of drama to you? So how do you engage in a conversation?
This is a very muddled statement. The “traditional definition of existence”? What is that supposed to mean? That there’s a form of existence that isn’t existence as we know it, but would still use that word to apply to it? head scratch Are you trying to compare the difference between existence meaning “I have a rock in my hand” and existence “I am thinking about the concept of a rock”? What are you trying to say?
Or is it not existence that you are questioning the definition of, but rather talking about the definition of “god”? I can at least follow you on that. If so, then I agree that appears to be what Cecil is saying - that we can prove the existence of some abstract concept that has only a passing resemblance to this concept over here we call “God”, so if you want to call that concept God, then you can think he’s proven God, but it isn’t the God everyone else is thinking of.
I did not address your understanding of Cecil’s point. I addressed your responses to other posters as you elaborated on your own thoughts. It is appropriate for me to aim my responses at you when I am addressing your position. I did not, however, at any time attack your character or assert you were wrong because of your character or identity.
I addressed the comments in this thread. In this thread, you proposed that the word existence has the wrong definition, that the word god can have a different definition. You stated you wish to know what other people mean when they use words, but the two cases listed show you trying to propose people use different definitions for the words instead of understanding the words they way they are using them. Then you told a story about being ten and asking to see sin. Sin is an abstract concept, it does not have a physical form you can see, any more than happiness or love. So some teacher trying to give you something came up with a lousy analogy and called sin a bag of dust. Whoo hoo. Would you feel the same way calling love a bag of puppies? Sure, a bag of puppies may inspire love, but it isn’t love.
Actually, you said, “bass-ackwards.” If I am not mistaken, I think you are trying to call me an “asshole” or maybe you were losing your temper. :rolleyes: I can’t tell.
[QUOTE=Irishman]
Or is it not existence that you are questioning the definition of, but rather talking about the definition of “god”? I can at least follow you on that. If so, then I agree that appears to be what Cecil is saying - that we can prove the existence of some abstract concept that has only a passing resemblance to this concept over here we call “God”, so if you want to call that concept God, then you can think he’s proven God, but it isn’t the God everyone else is thinking of.
[/QUOTE]
Finally you get my point. I interpreted Cecil Adams’ claim exactly like that (and made a crappy analogy to William Shakespeare’s rose, but that’s another story). I once read in the original Is there a God?, not the so-called “revisited” one, and I do recall that Cecil Adams said that God doesn’t exist in the popular sense, but does exist in the esoteric sense (yes, he did say that). At that point, that’s how I changed my thinking on how I viewed the word, “God”, and this is why I thought I could refer to a hat as “God” and thereby proving “God”, when really I just proved the existence of a hat with “God” as its name. Anyway, I think Cecil Adams is both clever and elusive on this issue. Instead of answering directly whether this is a god or not, “yes” or “no”, he gives a very clever, equivocal explanation about it.
[QUOTE=Irishman]
…Sin is an abstract concept, it does not have a physical form you can see, any more than happiness or love…
[/QUOTE]
I see your point here. Some abstract concepts are difficult or impossible to quantify or measure. Yet, we know that they exist. If one believes in love or happiness, then can one also believe in sin? If one believes in love or happiness, then can one also believe in a god or goddess? Perhaps, some further explanation and differentiation between “love” and “god” is the key here. Is there a reason why people choose to believe “love” but not “god”? Is there a reason why people choose to believe in “happiness” but not “sin” (which is a religious abstract concept)? Can a computer recognize “sin”, “god”, “happiness”, and “love”? Or are all those concepts chiefly human? Can one prove with evidence the existence of love and happiness? How about sin and god? What sets the two apart? OK, maybe I am getting too philosophically Socratic, but I think those are important questions I would like to see addressed.
[QUOTE=Cecil Adams]
By this route we arrive at a fuller understanding of whether God exists. Can we identify some fundamental principle or essence at the root of the universe and define that as the deity? Sure. Does doing so provide us with grounds for belief in a benevolent, all-knowing Creator? Clearly not. In short, by acknowledging the possibility that God in some esoteric sense exists, which was the point of my original column, we show that God in the popular sense probably doesn’t. To put it another way, the more closely we examine arguments for the existence of God, the more surely traditional belief in the deity slips from our grasp.
[/QUOTE]
Well, at least God can “exist” in this esoteric sense.
By “traditional”, I was referring to Cecil Adams’ usage.
Well, I have to admit that if one thinks so dogmatically, then one fails to reason that there may just be an exception to the truth.