On 10/19/2014 9:33 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 10:13 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 10/19/2014 8:12 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
I don't recall Bruno ever csaying if you don't believe in something
then you
believe in it.
What he's said is that atheists defend/support/reinforce the same
idea/conception of god that the literalist or fundamentalist abrahamic
religions
use.
Atheists can't say there is no God without defining what they mean by
God,
Yeah, they tend to be rational like that.
It's not raining so it never rains. There are no such things as sophisticated French
subtleties like humidity, cloudy with chance of showers, the isolated drops before a
possible light shower and such modal nonsense, and their definitely, positively,
ABSOLUTELY is no such thing as fog or romantic notions like mist. Rain or Sunshine.
Clarity, ok?
Did you bother inventing that, or do you have a random phrase generator?
Weather unclear or unpredictable, please... I knew that before I was twelve.
Were you and John K. Clark twelve at the same time?
and invariably they choose some variant of an omniscient omnipotent
creator who
answers prayers and judges us, rather than any of the myriad of other
conceptions of god.
Maybe it's because they speak the same language and that's what "theism"
means.
Yes! Or maybe not. More precision and maybe not.
In this way, atheists pretend there is only one acceptable definition
and will
usually fight to say that it is only definition, or the one everyone
means, or
believe the one all believers believe in.
That's a perfect case of defending the idea of what God is or can be,
even if it
is only to then attack the idea. Honest theistic reasoning would use
logic to
say, "okay perhaps God cannot be this, but we have not ruled out these
other
possibilities which are as far as we know not inconsistent",
Other possibilities for *what*? What is the thing? What are its essential properties?
Pure awesomeness. The collection of all awesomeness, everywhere at all times/histories +
its side effects, but ask your doctor, shaman, lawyer, and accountant for possible bogosity.
Pure?...as in, "without other attributes"? Not even any shock?
Sorry, I'm not awed.
What is its definition?
Let "it" be a "thing".
Done.
Q.E.D.
They start with a word, a few attributes, and an emotional attitude and
they seek
a definition they can attach them to. Which would be OK, except they
insist that
the word "God", which already has millenia of baggage, must apply. That's
my
complaint with Bruno. He explicitly renounces all that baggage, but he
still wants
to use the word "God".
Because it could be "that thing" in the lost baggage. I hate losing my luggage, so I can
relate to Bruno, because I don't care about Samsonite but about the awesomeness I had
prepared in it. Buying clothes is a drag.
rather than "we have ruled out this definition of god, and it is the
only
definition, therefore there is no god"
Yes, that's exactly the approach taken by theologians. First they take a word
"God"
and then they see if they can give it some meaning that makes them feel
good. But
notice that they capitalize it already, implying it is a person.
No, it's the fresh "thing". We don't know what it is, but we know it sometimes when we
see it. And when we think we know that, we become dumb.
If only it were so, kemo sabe.
Brent
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