Gary M, to answer your question about my previous post, where I wrote "But this
general person [God] is still not real independently of the believer’s belief" —
My point was that the pragmatic effects of belief in [a benign] God are real
and observable only because the believers have actually produced them. It’s
analogous to, say, a belief in Hamlet: he’s a real character for me because he
has a virtual existence independent of my beliefs about him, or any actor’s
performance of the role, etc. But that existence is dependent on his being
created by Shakespeare. (Questions about a historical Hamlet are irrelevant to
the reality of the character, of course.) It’s more paradoxical in the case of
religious believers who have created the object of their belief by acting in
accordance with its reality, because for the most part they have to believe not
only that God’s reality is independent of their belief, but that they
themselves are dependent on Him! (Unless their belief works something like the
“controlled folly” of Carlos Castaneda … )
gary f.
} You cannot see any thing until you are clear of it. [Thoreau] {
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
From: Gary Moore [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 22-Jun-14 3:45 PM
to Gary Fuhrman:
I agree with your comment, although I recognize the cultural pull (or
intimidation) to recognize, even though it is just a pure intellectual
principle", "God" as a "person". This might justly be considered "irrational"
but it certainly is cultural and inbred into most languages, ergo an
'opportunity' to convert "connotational" intensional language into seeming
"denotational" extensional language 'as if' pointing to something really
present at hand.
-x-
Could you explain your sentence, "But this general person is still not real
independently of the believer’s belief" which was not fully clear to me.
Gary C. Moore
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