Religion as a body of propositions

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Since I accept the (non-)thesis(?) that meaning is use in language, I'd like to ask: What is the justification for treating utterances or expressions such as "I believe in God" or "God is love" as merely truth-apt (or truth-functional) propositions? Is it simply because Aquinas et al did, and we today are merely following a tradition? Or is there really no justification at all for treating such expressions as truth-apt?

When I say "truth-apt" what I am focusing on is the activity of strong-arming (perhaps I speak to presumptuously?) such phrases into logical argument proper. Of course, logical argument demands that a sentence be in the declarative form. The natural question is: Is all meaning we are concerned with (as philosophers, first, and as religious folk, scientists, politicians, laypersons, etc) only declarative propositional meaning?

And if we cannot find adequate justification for treating religion merely as a body of lifeless propositions, do we at the same time lose our justification for entertaining "Premise, Premise, ..., Conclusion" as even incisive and relevant to actual practice of religion?

Are we simply playing logical games, under which the validity or invalidity of our argument is nothing more than an object for hopeless pedants, idle philosophizing, myopic intellectualizing and mental gymnastics? Are we really concerned with truth or following the rules of our disparate social practices?

Today we ridicule the ontological proof for the existence of god, but today, I laugh at the problem of evil and juggling effort made by atheists to give god an adequate definition.

For a more precise question: Are we still doing "formal philosophy" as laypersons and self-described atheists? And does the methodology (logical proof, validity, consistency, etc) of formal philosophy adequately show the flaw of religious discourse?

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@nerdfiles,

YO!

God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
Joseph Campbell

Those that cannot stand mystery close the door of wonder, with personifications of that mystery as a concrete entity.

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@nerdfiles,

Which is part of my point.

A metaphor for who exactly? The cultural anthropologist? The social scientist? The philosopher?

Would the religious person indeed say, "Yes, it's a metaphor, and that's all there is to it"? Are we simply to say "God is love" doesn't really mean love? If that is the case, what is the religious person actually meaning by the things she says?

It's easy to say "it's a metaphor" but what does that actually mean? And what does it afford us in our analysis? Have we actually gained a better understanding by calling a large region of religious language "metaphor"?

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles, Smile

It is all metaphor, meaning it is connotation, connotation of the mystery, the wonder and the awe, it really cannot be concrete understanding, is not being itself a metaphor for that mystery? Can you indeed think of something which is not a metaphor?

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@nerdfiles,

Well, the "Quarks are theoretical posits" is not a metaphor.

But this is really all beside the point. I understand that it can be interpreted as metaphor, but my question is: Are we in a position to say religious persons take it to be metaphor? Are we in a position to respond, when the religious person says "God is a loving father", by saying "That is not to be taken literally." Does the religious person intend to not be taken literally?

Is it that taking the religious literally or figurative distracts us from the actual meaning of the utterance? In philosophy, we might use that proposition as a premise in an argument.

We might say, "ah yes, the problem of evil shows that to be false." And what we do is "prove" the "proposition" (as if it were just some premise in an argument) is false by logical argument. But is that all "God is a loving father" used for by the religious person? As an "assumption" in an tentative argument?

Really, these questions are not directed at religious language. They're directed at what we do in philosophy and how we operate as philosophers and analysts. My questions are directed at the method's of philosophy. Perhaps this is a question that best fits into the "philosophy of philosophy" forum.

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@nerdfiles,

Nerdfiles,

To be sure the religious do take these terms literally, but that is their problem, what can one do with a mystery, the mystery as Campbell put it is beyond the human intellect and when you try and make it into something concrete, you close the door of wonder, the rest is semantics.

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@nerdfiles,

So, the question is: Why are, presumably, atheist's or atheistic philosophers satisfied with disproving God's existence by logical deduction? Why do they do it? And what is it that they think they are doing? Are they practicing a religion themselves?

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles, Smile

I do not think most atheists even want to try to disprove the existence of god, it is an absurdity. One is called an atheist if you do not buy into their fantasy, I believe in the mystery, perhaps on that basis it is they who are the atheists, they chose to not believe in the mystery. There will always be someone out there that will jump into a fools folly and argue about concrete terms, they are just a foolish as those who take their metaphors literally. A connotation is meant to go beyond the word, the metaphor and open to mystery. If god is not transparent to the mystery he is in your way.

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@nerdfiles,

What do you mean by "absurdity"? Here we get right into the gist of what I'm talking about. God's existence is not self-evidently an "absurdity." Argumentative atheism is the thesis that God does not exist, or that theism is false. And there are argumentative atheists.

But what I'm getting at is a bit more narrow. It's the method of taking religious propositions as using them as bits of a logical argument. It's not so much that one is taking "metaphorical terms" and treating them as "concrete." It's that argumentative atheists treat religious expressions as bits of an logical argument at all.

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@nerdfiles,

I don't take "connotation" to be about something beyond the world. A connotation is simply a definition that serves the purpose of defining an extension or object.

So the extension of "cat" is all cats, where the connotation of "cat" might be what a biology or zoology textbook describes as a cat.

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles; Smile

Well, it is one mistake talking to another mistake, they make good company for one another. If the atheist gets into a argument on the terms of the believer, don't you think that is folly? What are they going to debate about but concrete terms.

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles wrote:

I don't take "connotation" to be about something beyond the world. A connotation is simply a definition that serves the purpose of defining an extension or object.

So the extension of "cat" is all cats, where the connotation of "cat" might be what a biology or zoology textbook describes as a cat.

nerdfiles; Smile

Connotation, metaphor is a holding place, its referance, it is not defining an object, object is concrete, nobody knows the origin of their being the origin of the world, or the origin of object, that is why they are all metaphors transparent to the ultimate mystery.

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@boagie,

Hi All!

I should like to hear from believers on this aspect of mystery and the metaphoric terms used to referance that mystery. Wonder is the key ingredient to a spiritual life. Carl Jung once stated that religion is a defense against a spiritual experience, your thoughts.

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@boagie,

boagie wrote:

nerdfiles,

I do not think most atheists even want to try to disprove the existence of god, it is an absurdity. One is called an atheist if you do not buy into their fantasy,

Never once did I have to pay to believe in God. You must be confusing believing in God with Scientology.

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@neapolitan,

neapolitan wrote:

Never once did I have to pay to believe in God. You must be confusing believing in God with Scientology.

neapolitan, Smile

You have taken what I said out of context, and it is thus meaningless. Please try to address the topic.

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@boagie,

nerdfiles wrote:

A metaphor for who exactly? The cultural anthropologist? The social scientist? The philosopher?

For everyone. For the spiritual practitioner.

nerdfiles wrote:

Would the religious person indeed say, "Yes, it's a metaphor, and that's all there is to it"? Are we simply to say "God is love" doesn't really mean love? If that is the case, what is the religious person actually meaning by the things she says?

Right - to say "God is love" does not really mean love. What the religious person means (setting aside fundamentalism) is something to be experienced. To use the old saying, don't mistake the finger for the moon.

nerdfiles wrote:

It's easy to say "it's a metaphor" but what does that actually mean? And what does it afford us in our analysis? Have we actually gained a better understanding by calling a large region of religious language "metaphor"?

We just have to understand that the religious person is talking about an experience of the ineffable. We have gained a better understanding by calling religious language metaphor because we are reminded that the language is not absolute.

boagie wrote:

To be sure the religious do take these terms literally, but that is their problem,

Often times the language is taken literally, but we should not make the mistake of ignoring the overwhelming majority of believers and theologians: that the language is figurative.

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@Didymos Thomas,

"Often times the language is taken literally, but we should not make the mistake of ignoring the overwhelming majority of believers and theologians: that the language is figurative" quote

Thomas, Smile

You make it sound here that the majority do not take their metaphors literally, I woud contend that the majority do indeed take those metaphors literally. The bible would not persent anywhere the difficulties it does for the average man if they where not taken literally, my Chrsitians friends certainly take theirs literally. Personally other than in these forums I have never even met a Christian who does not take them literally. The majority Thomas do not even know what a metaphor is. One Christian friend of mine who surely did know what a metaphor was, told me there are no metaphors in the bible.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas;48049 wrote:

We just have to understand that the religious person is talking about an experience of the ineffable. We have gained a better understanding by calling religious language metaphor because we are reminded that the language is not absolute.

But how are we to distinguish certain religious utterances from within? How might "God is love" and "God is looking after me" be contradistinguished?

Surely they do not mean the same thing. They are not substitutable (salva veritate), for instance. Admittedly, they hit at the same idea of the ineffable, but admitting this affords us no better understanding of why these utterances are used and what they actually mean.

Their meaning cannot merely be "the ineffable." Surely there is some logic behind them that can be given precision and an expressible fullness that does not at the same time express what is meant to be expressed by the utterance themselves. We can distinguish and classify certain religious utterances (and note family resembles) without at the same time robbing them of their "mystery." If we class them all merely as "the ineffable in linguistic expression" we ultimately rob them of their richness and complexity. Doing this would be worse than being a logical positivist who demands that all statements be analytic or synthetic, or grammatical or empirical, because then we'd, instead of paying our respect to religious discourse of the layperson, we'd be making myopic and sweeping generalizations about a self-evidently complex and rich linguistic practice.

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@boagie,

That's all fine boagie, but you should know that your experience does not translate to a majority.

If you look at the work of theologians, you will find that fundamentalism (literal reading of the Bible) is a modern development and a minority perspective.

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@Didymos Thomas,

nerdfiles wrote:

But how are we to distinguish certain religious utterances from within? How might "God is love" and "God is looking after me" be contradistinguished?

Well the first statement, "God is love", describes what God is whereas the second statement, "God is looking after me", describes some action God does.

nerdfiles wrote:

Surely they do not mean the same thing. They are not substitutable (salva veritate), for instance. Admittedly, they hit at the same idea of the ineffable, but admitting this affords us no better understanding of why these utterances are used and what they actually mean.

Recognizing that the language of God points to the ineffable does mean something: this certainly says something about what the phrases mean. This fact does not explain all of the meaning of such phrases, but it's a start.

nerdfiles wrote:

Their meaning cannot merely be "the ineffable." Surely there is some logic behind them that can be given precision and an expressible fullness that does not at the same time express what is meant to be expressed by the utterance themselves. We can distinguish and classify certain religious utterances (and note family resembles) without at the same time robbing them of their "mystery." If we class them all merely as "the ineffable in linguistic expression" we ultimately rob them of their richness and complexity.

Recognizing the fact that the language of God is not equivalent to God does not rob all the meaning from the language of God. Instead, recognizing this fact is what gives the language meaning in the first place.

Of course we can introduce further classifications without diminishing the meaning of these phrases. But being able to break these phrases down into smaller and smaller groups does not mean that the larger classification should be cast out. We can have compacts, sedans, ect and still have cars. To call a sedan a car does not rob the sedan of it's size.

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Religion as a body of propositions

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