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}Hey, John - you forgot: Happy Mother's Day.
[mutter, mutter, seethe, fume...if my kids ever did that..mutter,
mutter].
By the way - I fully agree with your comments. I think it is
bordering on the ridiculous to declare that because someone says:
"I believe in God'..that this means that 'God is Real'..and that
this person is also a theist...[That's a reverse and invalid
Argument]...\
..and then, when asked to define the term. people.come up with a
multitude of descriptions which differ from those of other people -
So, we cannot conclude, as some would like to conclude: That God is
Real. Nor can we conclude that these people are all 'theists'.
That's what the 'Five Ways' was meant to deal with; the different
subjective descriptions of the term 'God'. It certainly set up the
Authoritative definition of the Church, but as purely rhetorical it
doesn't, in my view, have any validity as an Argument.
So- I think it remains; belief in God is subjective and the
definition of God is equally subjective. Therefore - to move from the
subjective to the objective [ie to declare that God is Real]...can't
be done.
Edwina
On Sun 13/05/18 9:41 AM , John F Sowa [email protected] sent:
On 5/13/2018 8:50 AM, John Collier wrote:
> I am afraid I do not find these arguments coherent with anything
> I was taught to be God.
I recall a survey some years ago in which the interviewers asked
people two questions: (1) Do you believe in God? (2) How would
you describe God?
What they found: No two people described God in the same way.
The descriptions by believers and non-believers showed the same
amount of variation. And from the way God was described, they
couldn't reliably distinguish believers from non-believers.
This was not a statistically reliable survey. And very few
of the people they surveyed had studied any philosophical
or theological arguments.
But from my own experience, I find it convincing. And from hearing
or reading what people who have studied philosophy or theology say,
I suspect that the results would have been the same, independently
of how much they had thought, read, or studied.
Happy Sunday, Sabbath, Meditation Day, or Picnic Day to all,
John
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