On 1/13/2015 11:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 3:39 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 1/12/2015 8:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Atheism is a variant of christiniaty, because for non atheist non christian,
"God",
like any term in a theory, is defined by axioms or semi-axioms indeed.
I suppose by "semi-axioms" you mean definitions by description, like
"ground of all
being" or "creator of the universe" or "that of which we cannot speak" -
which are
used to define "God" by Christian theologians too. But I'll bet you $100
that if we
pick a person at random who is neither a Christian nor an atheist and ask
him if
"God" refers to a superpowerful, immortal person who judges human behavior
he'll say
"Yes".
That stars weren't holes in the celestial sphere didn't mean stars didn't exist, it
meant we had to update our conception of what stars are.
That Earth wasn't flat didn't lead to people denying the existence of Earth or throwing
out the word altogether, it meant we had to update our conception of the Earth to
something more like a ball.
Two people might both say they believe in Quantum Mechanics, but yet they might have
very different ideas about what that means. Person A might mean they believe in the
Everettian view, while Person B might believe in the Copenhagen view.
Such it is with the concept of God.
No it's not. As Bruno says "God" is defined by description. Stars are defined
ostensively.
That some, or even most people's conception is faulty is not justification to throw out
the term. It means only that there is room for progress to better approximate reality
with our conception. Furthermore, the possibility for the same word to mean different
things to different people make a word useless. As we see with the various
interpretations of QM, there is common-root meaning, and minimum set of ideas commonly
held ideas, even if they aren't exactly the same.
You may find some particular tribe's conception of God to be ridiculous and unworthy of
acceptance, but to reject the notion of God altogether on this account alone would be
like rejecting the ground you walk on because flat-Earthers are mistaken about that
ground's geometry.
I only reject the concept of God that I understand to be designated by the word "God", and
I've specifically explained that I understand the term to refer to a supernatural,
powerful person who created the world and judges human behavior. Some people say "God is
love", Bruno says "God is unprovable truths.", Paul Tillich said "God is whatever you
value most." But just because somebody says "Unicorns are rhinocereses" doesn't mean I
have to start believing unicorns exist, or that that when I say unicorns don't exist I'm
denying the existence of rhinocereses.
Brent
Jason
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