On 28 January 2014 09:21, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > But Jason I want to ask you a direct question, and this isn't rhetorical >> I'd really like an answer: If there is no all encompassing purpose or a >> goal to existence and if the unknown principle responsible for the >> existence of the universe is not intelligent and is not conscious and is >> not a being then do you think it adds to clarity to call that principle >> "God"? >> >
> I consider this question equivalent to asking "If there is no elan vital > found within organisms, does it still make sense to call those organisms > life?" Asking this question illustrates the attitude of holding the word in > higher esteem than the idea, which to me seems little different from a kind > of "ancestor worship" (which you are also opposed to). I think there is a > common kernel of idea behind the word God, which is common across many > religions, though each religion also adds various additional things on top > of and beyond what is contained in that kernel. If our theories lead us to > conclude God has or doesn't have these attributes, that is progress, and > our definitions ought to update accordingly, just as we did not throw out > the word "life" when we discovered it is just matter arranged in certain > ways. Similarly, even if we were to determine God is not "omnipotent", or > not "conscious", should we abandon that word and come up with something > else? Should we do this every time we learn some knew fact about some > thing? If we did, it seems to me that any old text would have an > incomprehensible vocabulary, as scientific progress forced us to adopt knew > words each time we learned something new. > > Nevertheless, might there not be a threshold beyond which it seems ridiculous to drag a word and its associated baggage? Hence we *could *say the planets move in epicycles, but we prefer to call them orbits, since that word doesn't carry the baggage of a discredited theory. Similarly, we don't talk about the aether, but space-time; we don't talk about elan vital, but DNA....I'm sure you can think of a few similar examples. I think "God" has enough baggage that the answer to John's question should be "no". Although given the unconscious reification of various things (matter, maths, minds...) we might still want a relatively neutral term for "the (possibly unknowable) principle behind the universe". (Assuming most people on this list are Westerners, I suppose we could try "Tao" ... or maybe "Ylem" ?) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
