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Help please 'God' a nonsense word?

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Help please 'God' a nonsense word?

Makarismos
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Posted 09/30/09 - 02:12 PM:	#11
swstephe is quite correct, this chap has forced himself into the agnostic camp - he is effectively ignostic. He must accpt 123savethewhales position also, that you may personally comprehend what is meant, so he could not effectively talk to anyone about the subject. I suppose that the best retort is that 'God' has a great deal of meaning to you.

bert1
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Posted 09/30/09 - 09:50 PM:	#12
throng wrote: The 'God' is very easy to understand if you spell it backwards. If we take 'dog' to be symbolic of completely determined, conditioned, unfree response (a la Pavlov), then its reversal, 'God' could be taken to be symbolic of completely undetermined, unconditioned, free action.
"Like a ungroomed dog in which the desired look is it’s long hair but it has been so unattended to, that combing is impractical, and it might be better if the hair was cut and attended to as it grows back." d_martin

brainpharte
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Posted 10/01/09 - 07:28 AM:	#13
I think that there is no actually existing referent of the word "God", but there is a vague, muddled concept roughly shared by zillions of people. Though such vague, muddled concepts have no actual referent, they are very useful language expressions, which achieve various other purposes than designating a clearly defined referent. Much humnan behavior is affected not by what actually exists, but by what people believe exists, even if their beliefs are empirically deficient or logically unsound and invalid. Thus, 'God' is not the kind of word that 'chair' and 'table' and 'dog' are--it has different functions than those words. It's lack of an empirically observable or even intelligible referent are irrelevant to how people use it. It's a term in a different "language game" than chair and table, and it is a sort of category mistake to reject it as nonsense because it doesn't meet the riteria of terms in a different language game--although this mistake is often made by some apologists themselves. Whether we accept or reject a claim such as "God exists" is a function of which language game we're playing. Different language games have different rules, different epistemic standards, different ontological commitments, and meet different purposes. To insist that claims in the religion game must abide by the rules of the science game is to mistake the category in which the claim is used. The science game is centered on delivering claims that are demonstrably reliable and logically robust. The religion game has other goals, which it delivers for it's participants.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

Makarismos
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Posted 10/01/09 - 02:37 PM:	#14
Brainpharte , Spot on, Bravo. To make any claim at all for a thing for which their could be no proof is inherently unscientific. So of course it is rather strange and nonsensical to use the rules of science to investigate something for which their could be no evidence. We can also see that many things have no scientific evidence for them, and could not in principal ('the good'. love, hate, pain, pleasure, conciousness, qualia etc). So it seems that he who wants to deny (or affirm) god has a little dilemma - of course not everyone sees it that way. To my mind, the dilemma is mainly on the hand of the scientist - he is the one who is insisting on proof, the theist can easily and consistently say that such rigorous proof is not required.

180 Proof
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Posted 10/01/09 - 04:15 PM:	#15
Oh, why the eff not ... Makarismos wrote: To make any claim at all for a thing for which their could be no proof is inherently unscientific. So of course it is rather strange and nonsensical to use the rules of science to investigate something for which their could be no evidence. What distinguishes "a thing for which their could be no proof ... no evidence" from a fiction? brainpharte wrote: Whether we accept or reject a claim such as "God exists" is a function of which language game we're playing. Different language games have different rules, different epistemic standards, different ontological commitments, and meet different purposes. To insist that claims in the religion game must abide by the rules of the science game is to mistake the category in which the claim is used. Suppose scientific, or empirical, claims are made in a religious language-game, aren't we justified in pointing out the category mistake AND testing this claim by the appropriate language-game it implies? For instance, a scripture claims that 'sickness is possession by demons that can be cured by driving them out' (i.e. faith healing / exorcism) is a literally true historical claim; *this is not only "a matter of faith" but also a claim of fact* that implies being testable (i.e. possible to be tested).** To say "God created the world" makes claims about "god" & "the world", but claims about "the world" are factual (or have factual implications), that is, extra-religious; if the purported fact is falsified, then the claim, or conjecture, is also falsified. Religious language-games in which extra-religious claims are made invite examination of those extra-religious claims in those languages-games implied by what makes them extra (e.g. factual, of social, or public, consequence, etc). "God is love"? No problem; whatever floats your boat. "God tells us what is right & wrong, good & evil"? Which god? Why that god and not another? How is a real god differentiated from imaginary gods? Etcetera. To the extent religious language-games are played by their own inherent 'rules' they are immune to non-religious concerns (e.g. scientific inquiry). Edited by 180 Proof on 10/01/09 - 04:22 PM. Reason: Casting more pearls ...
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

Gadfly II
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Posted 10/02/09 - 05:59 AM:	#16
I'm with 180, brainpharte is claiming an extreme form of consenualism. If scientific claims have no truth in the language game of evangelicals, how are they able to fly in plane? Do they talk scientific on the flight? God exists or does not; water is H2O or is not, regardless of the sounds we highly evolved primates make.
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

brainpharte
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Posted 10/02/09 - 11:03 AM:	#17
180 Proof wrote: Suppose scientific, or empirical, claims are made in a religious language-game, aren't we justified in pointing out the category mistake AND testing this claim by the appropriate language-game it implies? Sure. When our purposes require demonstrable reliability and/or logical robustness, we apply the criteria of science to the claim rather than that of the particular faith system. My point about the categories is that if we keep in mind that a person's purposes vis-a-vis a given claim provide the context in which the sense and truth value of that claim resides for that person, we can avoid pointless dispute and misunderstanding.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

brainpharte
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Posted 10/02/09 - 11:33 AM:	#18
Gadfly II wrote: I'm with 180, brainpharte is claiming an extreme form of consenualism. If scientific claims have no truth in the language game of evangelicals, how are they able to fly in plane? Do they talk scientific on the flight? God exists or does not; water is H2O or is not, regardless of the sounds we highly evolved primates make. See my response to 180 above. I don't know what you mean by "extreme form of consenualism" (and I'm not talking about the typo.) Christian Evangelicals and fundamentalist literalist apologists of every religion are prone to confusing categories. I recall Joseph Campbell remarking something along the lines that such believers commonly don't get it that their faith and its beauty and truth resides in its mythos. As well as something like: "Myth is other people's religions."
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

Gadfly II
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Posted 10/02/09 - 01:54 PM:	#19
brainpharte wrote: See my response to 180 above. I don't know what you mean by "extreme form of consenualism" (and I'm not talking about the typo.) I said, consenualism, sorry I hab a code. What I meant was consensualism, i.e. truth is determined by a consensus of a discourse community. Now, I assume that we live in a physical world of objects and relationships that are independent of human minds. This being the case, truth is a correspondence between the world and our representations. Now truth can also be semantic as well as metaphysical, logical truths for example. The OP is asking a metaphysical question. When two or more people agree to accept a statement as true it is a consensus. The only thing that can be claimed is that it is true that these people agree. Consensus is obviously and (cough) categorically not the determiner of the state of the world. (Remember that Wittgenstein was concerned with the MEANING of statements not their ability to generate truth.) If you are correct all that would be required to make pigs fly is to get people to agree that they do. Is that what you are trying to claim? Edited by Gadfly II on 10/02/09 - 02:11 PM. Reason: refinement
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

brainpharte
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Posted 10/02/09 - 04:11 PM:	#20
Gadfly II wrote: I said, consenualism, sorry I hab a code. What I meant was consensualism, i.e. truth is determined by a consensus of a discourse community. Most witty. Yes, I assumed you meant "consensualism", but I was under the impression that consensualism was about morality/ethics. I'm not familiar with the term, but from your explanation I now understand. Now, I assume that we live in a physical world of objects and relationships that are independent of human minds. This being the case, truth is a correspondence between the world and our representations. Now truth can also be semantic as well as metaphysical, logical truths for example. The OP is asking a metaphysical question. When two or more people agree to accept a statement as true it is a consensus. The only thing that can be claimed is that it is true that these people agree. Consensus is obviously and (cough) categorically not the determiner of the state of the world. (Remember that Wittgenstein was concerned with the MEANING of statements not their ability to generate truth.) If you are correct all that would be required to make pigs fly is to get people to agree that they do. Is that what you are trying to claim? I don't know about or talk about whether or not claims really are true, I only know about claims being judged as true. And whether a claim is judged to be true (or not-true) is a function of the epistemic criteria the claim can meet (or fail to meet.) Is this a semantic take on the situation as distinguished from a metaphysical? Seems to me it's epistemological, not metaphysical? I really don't know. So I am not asserting that the claims of some faith group or other really are true, I am asserting only that we can analyze how it is that they've made the judgment that one of their faith claims is true, and we can realize that their judgment is based on entirely different criteria than the criteria that we (or for that matter they) would apply to non-faith claims. In their language game, true claims are those that meet the epistemic criteria of that language game. Which in faith games typically downgrades the importance of rigorous logic and empirical evidence while emphasizing tradition, dogma, coherence with established texts, intuition, personal conviction, emotional commitment, uncorroborated testimony, and even dreams and personal revelations. Thus if we unpack all this we can see that "true" essentially has a different meaning in the two language games (any protest from the faith group that they're not using true in any different sense notwithstanding.) One consequence of the fait game using different epistemic criteria is that they lose demonstrable reliability and robust rationality. But that's not what the faith game is about. Construing the issue this way reveals how it is that sometimes literally millions of people assert "P is true" while millions of others assert "P is not-true." In either case, what almost always differentiates the contradictory judgments are the criteria that were used in making the judgment. It also reveals the pointlessness of using the term "true" since in order to understand how people actually are using it in any given instance, we need to understand the criteria that they've based their judgfment on. Someone's assertion that a claim is true tells us little. We presume that the claim has met whatever criteria they've deemed appropriate for that claim--but without further analysis we don't really know what those criteria were.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

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