A couple of quick points on God, and then (to borrow a Biblical image),
back to the old salt mines.
On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
> Folks,
>
>
> I'm going to respond to a couple of points from various people,
> including some who responded privately. Then I think I'll give it a
> rest. I've got other things to do.
>
>
> >1) God as defined in public discourse (especially in the US, the
> Islamic
>
> >world, and observant catholics) has a very clear meaning, being an
>
> >anthropomorphic, omnipotent parent-surrogate.
>
>
> This is the God I rejected at age eleven. I believe any intellectually
> honest person will reject such a God.
>
Okay. But then why use the same term to refer to
whatever-it-is-we're-talking-about-here? Why confuse things that way?
Especially in light of how all the non-"intellectually honest" people use
the term in public discourse (creationists, congress voting for 10
commandments in response to Columbine, etc.)?
>
> But can you back up your statement that this is "God as defined in
> public discourse?"
>
Sure. The simple fact that you evidently know what I'm talking about is
prima facie proof. Or to be less glib: if there really are multiple
meanings to the word "God" in public discourse, some which are
intellectually honest and some not, then as scientists it is our
responsibility to introduce some order into said discourse and
disambiguate all those meanings. Not to confound them.
>
> The God of the Hebrew Bible explicitly forbids anthropomorphizing. Not
> only are we not supposed to build graven images (prevents us from
> imagining the statue is God), but we are not even supposed to say his
> name.
>
Er, "his" name? Isn't that an anthropomorphization? Isn't the fact that
"he" speaks (in hebrew, initially), is so clearly psychologically a human
being, etc., isn't that rather strong anthropomorphization?
>
> >("There's this thing I call 'glosboss' that I think exists,
>
> >and is very important to me personally, but no, I can't tell you what
> I
>
> >mean by the term. Isn't this profound? Shouldn't we talk about it at
>
> >length?")
>
>
> Oh, but I CAN tell you what I mean by the term.
>
I was referring here to the quote that prefaced my email, in which 'God'
was defined, in essence, as that which is undefinable. (A nice trick, by
the way, for those discomfited by how vulnerable all their successive
definitions have turned out to be.)
See how much trouble we run into when we aren't precise about which
meaning we assign to the term "God"? :-)
*************************
The central point is that if 'God' is considered as a proposition to be
addressed the same way as any other in science (or more generally,
Bayesian statistics), then anyone who professes to assign it a high
probability while assigning Zeus, Kali, or the tooth fairy low
probabilities appears to be rather inconsistent.
The detailed calculations of those probabilities, involving specification
of the event space, prior probabilities, etc., do NOT need to be gone
through to reach this conclusion. Rather the burden is on the believer in
God to point out which part of those calculations they treat differently
when considering God and when considering astrology (for example).
And then justify that difference.
David Wolpert
