How? I don’t see that at all. It just imbues him with power. I would think that any god or God would be imbued with power.
Or just hoping that God sees fit to do so. I see no requirement that actions or required.
You’re assuming it necessitates some behavior. It doesn’t. Where do you see it. It doesn’t even necessitate that people believe that they can influence this Almighty God. But even if it is implied, that behavior is not described, so each person is free to act as they see fit: pray, do good works, go to church, temple, mosque, go commune with nature, do nothing, whatever.
Whoa. That guy is not God. Or even a god. How is anyone screwed? Whatever tht person who made the sign thinks he knows has no bearing on what I believe. He may think he needs to go to church and tithe and tech Sunday School. Good for him. I can believe that I should commune with nature and save a bug. Good for me. There is no specific set of actions described, let alone prescribed.
And that’s a different discussion. Step one is whether or not Almighty God necessarily points to one religion. That’s all I’ve commented on.
I agree with the options you put forth, strongly, but your larger points puts way to much emphasis on the word “almighty”. It’s simply a descriptor that points to the likely power most monotheistic Gods would likely have, even if they’d choose to not use it.
You’re mistaken - I didn’t provide the definition of the word; the merriam-webster online dictionary did. I’m afraid if you have a problem with it, if you feel that you know more about the definition of the word than they do, you’ll have to take it up with them.
I’m savvy to the fact that there are some religious people who don’t like the word “religion”, most likely due to the fact that, as has been noted by yourself, it has a relatively strong association with rigid authoritarian structure. That is, many people when they think the word “religion” they think of a building, with a dude at the front at a podium, with a holy book, with rules and rituals and so forth cascading down from, so to speak, on high. And some of the people don’t like this image, and don’t feel that it reflects their personal religious observances, and so have decided to shed it, instead adopting the word “spiritual”, which is not synonymous with religious and which has a more direct association with the supernatural and, currently, no connotations of structure, organization, or rigidity.
The thing is, though, that this doesn’t change the fact that the word “religion”, much less “religious” (‘ious’-type adjectives being rather looser and broader in meaning by nature) has not yet completely lost its meaning as a set of religious beliefs. So, no matter how people doth protest, it’s still correct to refer to any theistic or spiritual belief system whatsoever as religious, and even as a religion, even their beliefs have no relation whatsoever to anything that anybody else believes.
We recently had a thread about this, you may recall. About what it meant to self-identify as spiritual but not religious. As you recall the thread was largely composed of people derisively identifying the set of people who refer to themselves this way as being religious but not aligned with any mainstream religion. Now you are here claiming that the term refers to those who are “close to the threshold” of disbelief, which I feel to be spectacularly untrue. Case in point - a not insignificant participant in that thread was the self-proclaimed spiritual but not religious lekatt. Oh yeah, he’s an agnostic. Just waffling on the edge of belief, isn’t he?
Not hardly. “Spiritual but not religious” isn’t even slightly a useful measure along the atheistic-agnostic-theist continuum; the term is actually a catchy misnomer for “religious but not affiliated with a mainstream organized religion.” That’s what it means when people say that, not what you’re claiming. It’s worth noting that the ‘religious’ that’s being denied isn’t theistic belief (m-w definition 2); but rather rigid adherence to a code or ideal (m-w definition 4). There are religious fans of football. People who are “religious but not spiritual” are claiming not to be fanatics.
But, they’re still religious, by the other definitions of the word. Don’t like it? Tough.
I’m probably more pissy about this than some because I see this sort of word-hijacking all the time in religion. My family and closest friend are all mormons, and their religion is awash with it. Trying to make things sound better by giving then nice-sounding misnomers. It’s “patriot act” and “freedom fries” all the time. It’s frankly nauseating.
So yeah. I’m aware you have your lingo. I even understand it. But it doesn’t hold water with me. So, do us both a favor and don’t make arguments that rely on your terms of art. For example, in a thread mired in the establishment clause don’t tell me that your theistic belief system isn’t a religion. You think the state can establish it because it’s not mainstream? Hardy har dee ha ha. Not a chance. If I define slaughtering people as “freedom of speech” that doesn’t make it constitutionally protected.
If I start sniping at your lingo in a thread where definitions simply don’t matter, then you can start complaining at my definitional intolerance. Until then, though, suck it up. You may think I’m grunting like a wookie, but if I am then so is the law, and so you can just make like Han Solo and shoot first. Er, I mean, You can refrain from telling me I’m grunting wrong.
Frankly, yes. What, you want to claim that they were all deists? (And the Christian God is a creator god.)
You may if you like make the defense that every third word in that document is capitalized, though. It would actually be a pretty good defense, in its own way. Only applicable in this one document, though.
Actually, I’m giving you a lot of credit. I’m presuming that you’re not terminally stupid. Because if you’re not a blithering moron, you are well aware that God and god simply don’t mean the same thing, not in this country. And that being the case, you are a liar when you claim otherwise.
The part where you seem to think that I’m stupid enough to fall for this line of bullshit, that insulting part? That’s where you’re being a dick.
I’m arguing that christians have tried with moderate success to slap their religion on everything possible - the currency business was of course a reaction to tensions caused by the civil war. (Note how the first appeal for it was from a christian pastor explicitly appealing for Christianity.)
Of course, it’s worth noting that the DofI, the decoration on the currency, and even the pledge of allegiance have no legal authority. The country remains effectively secular. Well, except in KY, apparently.
Of course, you already knew I wasn’t arguing that the US is a christian nation. It’s just more of the bullshit you’re shoveling, like the bullshit that all the Christians who are pushing to put capital-G-God place are totally talking about Krishna. Yeah. that’s it. :rolleyes:
You wouldn’t know “nicely” if it smacked you in the crotch with a spike-covered two-by-four. You don’t get nicely. So instead I speak down to you in a way you might have a chance of understanding.
Almighty in this context almost certainly means omnipotent. The problem in understanding is that it seems like you cannot imagine a god or God who created the universe but is not omnipotent. But, suppose 10,000 years from now, humanity has developed technology that not only allows time travel, but could also create matter from nothingness. Then one day, someone uses the time machine to go back to the moment time began and initiated the Big Bang or some other “start” of the universe. The person is still human and thus imperfect, but they nonetheless can be considered to have created the universe. Or, imagine a god or God who can create the conditions that will one day lead to intelligent life but due to free will, cannot actually control their lives or decisions. In either case, there is no omnipotence.
“In God We Trust” is ambiguous as to whether it is referring to an interventionist God or a deistic God. The Kentucky language contains no such ambiguity.
You dialed up the dickishness here rather well, implying that the m-w definition just miraculously appeared in this thread in one of your posts. Wow, the work of God.
Someone you see that arguing for a definition of a word and then providing the dictionary definition of the word that does NOT include the meaning you’ve been ascribing to it somehow helps you. Yikes! There’s not enough :rolleyes:s.
Whatever you say, King Idiot. Never mind that one can very well believe in a non-Christioan god and feel to give him a capital “G”. You insisting otherwise just make you Wrong.
See, you really are confused. YOU are the dick. And you seem to not be trying to not be a Dick. Tsk, tsk.
That may very well be true. The FACT remains, that “God” need not refer to the Christian God. Here watch, let’s say I believe in a god that created our universe and us and then siad “oops” and went to create a billion billion other universes to try to get it right, without giving us another thought. I can simply, by virtue of the fact he created us, decide to give the big guy the big “G”. So, I now privately wish for the day that my God comes back and corrects the mistake he made called begbert2. Do you really want to argue that “God” MUST refer to the Christian God? Really? Cause that’s what you’re arguing.
No, I thought you we’re NOT arguing that. Because given you;re position that would be stupid. But by insisting that all this “God” talk in documents, currency, etc. IS necessarily the Christian God, that IS what you are arguing. Check out some old threads. The people arguing that are the ones arguing that this IS a Christian nation. Fuck, you’re really confused.
Before you think you can speak down to someone you might want to know what the heck you;re actually arguing, which side should be making the points you’re making, and it would help you to provide definitions that actually support your position.
So, after you managed to do all those things, then and only then should you float the idea in your head that you’re going to “talk down” to people. Otherwise it just gets a chuckle with you the butt of your own snark. And I’m guessing that’s not what you were going for. Though, based on the other idiocy you’ve perpetrated, I admit that might be a hasty assumption on my part.
Given the late hour and my desire to not waste my time, I’ll have to request that if you’d like a response to something else, that you dial down the dumb. A good start would be to present arguments that actually support your position.
I assure you this is not the case. In countless posts in numerous threads I’ve argued using such Gods to make my point. I very much make allowance for all manner of Gods, including the ones you mentioned. I even said so in my reply. ::shrug::
Either God will act on his own, or he needs to be coerced in some manner to act. If it’s the former, we’re back to “wants,” and my original post on the subject. If he has to be coerced, then there’s got to be some set of actions or beliefs necessary for the coercion. That slogan doesn’t say what they are, but you can bet the person who wrote the slogan has some ideas along that line.
If we were just talking a general statement of belief, sure. But this is proposed as a slogan for a government organization. More specifically, one tasked with keeping the state of Kentucky from disaster. If the people running that organization believe you need to be right with God to keep the state safe, and you’re behaving in a way that they think is contrary to what God wants, that’s a powerful incentive for them to coerce you into changing your behavior. And being the government, that gives them a pretty big stick to do their coercing with.
I believe that “Almighty God” is a specifically Christian turn of phrase. But that’s somewhat besides the point. It doesn’t point to one specific religion, I agree. Even if it said, “Almighty God and his son, Jesus,” it wouldn’t point to one religion, because there’s a lot of different flavors of Christianity. But it’s still clearly endorsing a religious viewpoint, right? Well, just saying, “Almighty God” is also endorsing a religious viewpoint, only one that’s a step further back - this time, instead of just endorsing Christianity, it’s including Judaism and, arguably, Islam. But it’s still specifically excluding Hinduism and other polytheistic religions. You could take it back another step further, and say, “one or more Gods,” and bring in the Hindus, but you’re still excluding animists and ancestor worshippers, whose religious systems are not deistic - admittedly small groups, but still present in American society. Taken another step back, you could say, “supernatural spirits or beings,” but even then, you’re still endorsing a religious viewpoint. A ridiculously broad one, to be sure, but you’re still saying, in effect, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, so long as you believe something.” It’s endorsing the idea that one must be religious in some way, even if it’s not specifying which religion you should follow. Which excludes all of us who don’t believe in anything supernatural at all.
There is no necessary correlation between what humans might want or expect from God and what God does. Humans may want God to bunch of things, and they may think that certain actions would entice him to do so. That exists in the mind of man. The will and desires of God are unknowable.
You talk as if 1) there is a God and 2) these people know how to move him. If people think he can be coerced by prayer or good works, let them think it. If they think that God moves in his own time and for his own reasons can simply hope that his plan will mesh with their desires. Hoping that to be the case is not a religious incantation.
But it is a general statement of belief. It just happens to appear in a state document, unless I’m not understanding you. The rest of the post amounts to a slippery slope argument. Not that that’s necessarily fallacious, but I don’t see reason to be concerned. Especially since there are laws about trying to force other people to do things. Government is a big stick, but there a big stick in all ways. Religious and areligious alike.
I agree that the Jesus mention makes it necessarily religious. Without it, no. It can be, but it is not necessarily so.
Again, this is where we disagree. I don’t see that as necessarily being the case. Yo parse it I think you have to imagine a substitute for “almighty”. If it were “the ultimate kick-ass God” you wouldn’t have a problem, right? But while almighty God might be an expression common in Christianity, they don’t own it. They don’t own either the adjective or “God”. I think that’s because “almightiness” is a quality you would expect a god to have. Now if there was language that distinguished the flavor of God with an adjective that was used by Christians, but wouldn’t expect to be attributable to most other Gods, I think I’d agree with you. For instance, if there was mention of The Trinity, or Son of Mary.
I think the last one goes to far. I don’t think that is necessarily religious.
Oh, it does. It also excludes any non monotheistic believers. But that’s a different discussion than the one I’ve been participating in. To me, the phrase being there is no more religious or less religious than the God mentioned in the DofI, our currency, and the oaths some officials take.
Huh? First, that definition starts with “action or conduct”. So if I simply believe in a monotheistic God the definition does not apply. If I simply state such a belief, or “hope” that he will see fit to keep me in his good graces, there is no action of the sort described. Similalry, if I do not engage in the exercise of rites or observances, that portion of the definition does not apply. Correct?
Just to be clear, I’m not disagreeing that this is a good definition of religion. I am saying that people can hold the position that there is a God and not be covered by the definition. To be covered one needs to 1) believe and then 2) act in a way that satisfies the definition.
Right. If it were a just a general statement of belief, I’d have no problem with it. But this is a general statement of belief that appears in a state document, which is a hugely significant difference.
No, I’d still have exactly the same problem. By referring to a singular, all-powerful deity, they are endorsing all religions that follow a singular, all-powerful deity.
Look at it this way. If the slogan just said “Jesus,” that’s not endorsing one religion: it’s endorsing all the religions that follow Jesus. It’s saying, “Hey, you may be Catholic, or Baptists, or Anglican, but we all agree that Jesus is the guy.” By saying Almighty God, it’s saying, “Hey, you may be a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim, but we all agree there’s one God in charge of everything.” It’s still an endorsement of religion, just a broader set of religions.
Well, hell, Christianity doesn’t “own” the name Jesus, either. If it said, “Belief in Jesus is necessary for the security of this nation,” you could argue that they’re really referring to Jesus Cordoza, who’s a really kick-ass FBI agent. But that’s pretty fucking unlikely, right? Similarly, someone using the specific phrase, “Almighty God” is almost certainly referring to the Christian God, because that phrase in particular is widely used to describe God in Christianity, and is not used to describe God in other religions.
Well, hell, I agree with you there entirely. Although I suspect that similarity leads us to drastically different conclusions.
Actually, I think this gets to the crux of it. And that is not the point I’ve been arguing. That is an entirely separate discussion. But I think it is the one many have have replied to me think I’m engaged in or want to have. I’d be curious as to your take on my original post on page 1, leaving the possible application (mention of God in a state document) of the outcome out of it.
magellano1, putting aside the stimulating debate over which one of us is being a dick (which I’m sure we would be able to reach agreement about after just a few more exchanges of “No U”), is it your opinion that when Christians try to require a plaque to be placed at the entrance to the state’s Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort that says, in part, “the safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”, that they are not intending to refer specifically to the Christian god known as God?
I’m sure that in their mind, they’re doing all they can to word it such that it doesn’t explicitly refer to the Christian God. I’m not sure that they can do it in such a way that doesn’t tweak their anti-secular-humanist motives.
Wouldn’t a footnote solve that difficulty for all:
It seems something like that would be fair to everyone, deists, atheists, religious christians, and all the rest alike, and that’s what’s important here, right?