...sorry Piggy...this thread gallops along and I should respond to your earlier responses and I've got my challenge to Wasp to flesh out (re-define the universe no less) but you just keep sayin stuff that annoys me and that is my name after all so I write stuff and out it comes in a big puddle of mangled meanings. I still think you're mistaken...and here's why...
Again, Piggy, your argument is predicated on the firm assumption that we have the ability to definitively rationally understand our experiences. You do not allow for the fact that this is indisputably not the case. You argue that because this God cannot be defined in terms that we can rationally understand, therefore this God cannot exist (and those who insist on it must be neurotic or psychotic)…because every rational ‘God’ can be argued out of existence (except the ones Wasp has proposed [which you disagree with anyway]…which, IMO, do not include the full range of possibilities)
Can you prove that we have the capacity to understand all the terms within which God can be defined (.....this does not automatically allow for pink unicorns etc. etc. [explained below])? Can you prove that we understand even the terms of our own existence?
I gave you an example of one (a ‘God condition’…a description of God). God has all our dreams in mind. Your argument basically amounts to…because this is meaningless to your level of strictly rational comprehension, it must therefore be false. You completely ignore the indisputable fact that there are legitimate varieties of understanding that rational understanding has no understanding of. IOW…to expect to achieve an accurate understanding of a non-rational condition by imposing a rational template is a category error.
Ever heard the phrase…’the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of’. Does this phrase accurately reflect the reality of human nature…or not? Does the ‘heart’ have an epistemology that your rational epistemology simply cannot effectively adjudicate…or not?
What all this means, simply, is that there is a vast area of human activity that you cannot simply rationalize out of existence because neither you nor anyone else has any way of rationally understanding what is going on there. Only the person who is experiencing themself knows what is going on there. It is precisely there where individual people discover their own ‘meaning of God’. Insisting that it must be suspect because it cannot be resolved within your narrow over-rationalized interpretation of religious psychology is an indictment of your reasoning, not their experiences.
What it boils down to is you insist that the rational template that you refer to has to be the same rational template that everyone refers to (….’the God they are talking about has to be the same ‘God’ I am insisting does not exist therefore since I can prove this ‘God’ does not exist they must be somehow deluded’…). Perhaps you could cite the stone tablets whereupon this is inscribed….but before you bother, consider, again, the basic fact of human existence. Life is not rational. There is another epistemology. We have ways of reaching entirely legitimate conclusions…note that word LEGITIMATE …that are effectively ineffable…even contrary, to our rational minds. Thus…’the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.’
So I am proposing a God. I am proposing a God who is known through the primary epistemology of human nature. This is a variety of knowing that we each practice in our own unique way…and is therefore impossible to rationalize. The ‘God’ that I know is not the ‘God’ that the person immediately beside me knows. IOW…my description is not their description. Many would simply have no description. The fact that it can be abstractly referred to as ‘the creator of the universe’ is actually about as meaningless to many a believer as it is to you (IOW…who cares!). Those things that are meaningful are meaningful precisely because they are ineffable. The fact that it is widely accepted that ‘ineffable’ is a legitimate quality of human nature lends substantial credence to these experiences…contrary to your insistence that ‘if it can’t be described then how can they (or I) know what the hell they’re talking about’. It is precisely because it can’t be described that people do know what they’re talking about (I mentioned Wittgenstein before and his famous quote: ‘…there are those things that must be passed over in silence…’…assuming he was right [he was a stupid philosopher, but he was a pretty smart guy], what might these ‘things’ be and why must they be passed over in silence?)
What the hell is anyone ever actually talking about anyway? We don’t actually know (literally…personally I think it’s somehow related to all that ‘tower of babel’ stuff…but that’s another story) when it comes right down to it…and that precise area…’when it comes right down to it’…is exactly where people encounter what God means to them (that is, of course, a generalization).
How would a person prove that they are an atheist?
