What if the ‘idea’ of God does not reside in our rational epistemology, but in our ‘spiritual’ epistemology. This alternate epistemology does, after all, exist. It is exactly that by which we all navigate the tortured roads of meaning and purpose in our lives….seeking whatever it is that human beings seek in search of whatever it is that is actually worth searching for. And there is, most indisputably, that which is worth searching for….because people find it….and when they do, they often find it so compelling that all they want to do is share it with those who haven’t.
So this ‘idea’ can quite legitimately exist as an ineffable understanding that, because there is no other name for it, people refer to as God. The origin of meaning, the architect of reality, the truth of truth, the identity of love. I once described the anatomy of God as being mathematics. Do any of these, or the others that I’ve mentioned here (‘God has all our dreams in mind’…remember that one) have some variety of rational objection? Of course not, they are all essentially incomprehensible metaphors….but, and it is not irrelevant, ALL of our vocabulary – scientific or otherwise – is ultimately incomprehensible metaphor. What ‘God’ provides, is the simple ability to approach the metaphor…and maintain sanity in relation to it (existence, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is blatantly insane). This isn’t speculation…this sanity upon which all of our lives depend is nothing but a consequence of something we are all but utterly ignorant of. And the only thing greater than our ignorance, is our ignorance of our ignorance.
You are applying rational conventions to a primary concept. This, as I said earlier, is a category error. The primary concept is merely that, it exists outside of rational conventions. Obviously, rational ideas have been created to ‘enclose’ God because that is what people do, but the place of ‘God’ in people’s lives (and I’m obviously speaking generally here) is outside of rational concepts.
The mistake you are making is assuming that people take whatever rational concept you are referring to and create of it some equivalent ‘God’ for themselves. First of all, this assumes people are rational…and this is demonstrably false (people do not do anything rationally…let alone create a ‘God’ in such a manner). Second, ‘God’ is nothing more than a placeholder for many believers. People don’t seek ‘God’ in their concept of ‘God’, however it is arrived at. Quite the opposite….by definition. People seek ‘God’ outside of every concept of everything (and, though you may find it incomprehensible, they find it). That, by definition, is ‘God’, and quite reasonably should be as well given how dubious our definitions ultimately are.
I found this on one of the other threads: “Sometimes it's hard to explain abstract concepts in words, but how else to explain them?” Our primary condition is that of ‘abstract concepts’…not rationally intelligible concepts (what do we rationally understand anyway?....nothing! [kind of scary for the science-obsessed skeptic but it is indisputable]). ‘God’ is the ultimate ‘abstract concept’. Naturally people discuss it, sometimes more specifically and explicitly, sometimes less. You are assuming that because people discuss it, ‘it’ must therefore exist under the same conditions as all else that people discuss….which you assume to be some kind of explicit intellectual state (rationalization). First, that is incorrect (there are no explicit states…everything disappears behind a veil of abstraction [or, as the great SF writer Ursula K. LeGuin once put it “all our words are merely approximations of meaning”) and, second, ‘God’ is the ultimate ‘abstract concept’. The definition of ‘God’…according to many believers…is not comprehensible. It is, though, ‘experienced’… in as many ways and shapes and forms as there are believers (often in ways that are utterly ineffable…except in the sense that they are ‘of God’)…thus there is belief.
This sums up the mistake of your position. You fully believe that you are capable of adjudicating any and all descriptions of God. You’re a human being. You don’t know what you are, you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you are, and you don’t know who you are. You didn’t create you, you don’t create you, and you don’t understand you. You live in a place that by whatever measures we are capable of comprehending is infinite in every dimension we can recognize as being one. The geography you occupy in this place is all but insignificant and you will be here for the equivalent of a blink of an eye (all, of course, metaphorically speaking).
….and yet, you are utterly convinced that you have sufficient ability to conclusively adjudicate the description of whatever it is that is, by definition, responsible for all this.
As David Fincher said, you’re in charge, you’re not in control.
But ignoring all that….I’ve presented you with a whole pile of ‘God conditions’….here and elsewhere. They may not ‘sufficiently’ describe God to you, but they sure do to a lot of believers.
So on what stone tablets is it written that God must be defined according to your ability to understand?
