God can be defined, and even worshipped and adored

@xris,

xris;131005 wrote:

Even a concept needs clarification...

It is evident that what I wrote in the original post needs some clarification. So this should help explain my position:

A TENTATIVE DEFINITION OF GOD

This is not a description, only a mere definition. God, as I said, is all the high positive values, rolled into one. I think we can all agree that if God is worthy of worship, God is a loving God.
By the definition I offer here God shall mean: the unlimited intensification of the positive values blended into a set. These values are the ones that comprise our ultimate concerns.
For example, God is a loving God. Yet God is more than this. God is the love of love. And God is the love of all that. Etc., ad infinitum. God is Truth. God is Morality. Yet God is the morality of morality, the morality of that. Etc., ad infinitum. God is Beauty. And the beauty of all beauty. Etc., for an indefinitely-large number of levels. And so forth for other positive values such as Integrity, Serenity, Liberty, Health, Prosperity, and Compassion. They also are qualities of God.

God is Energy, but structured energy and all of its transformations. There is a pattern there. Mankind cannot possibly have knowledge of this pattern any more than a quark in an atom, in a cell, in your thigh, can have knowledge of your whole life as you have experienced it so far - knowledge of its quality, its happiness or sadness.

Can that quark have very sophisticated knowledge of your entire life? No, because it is too small to see the big picture. In the same way, an individual cannot comprehend the pattern of God's energy. That energy is informed by a certain structure. It is the meaning of the universe.

This God is not merely truth, beauty, holiness, integrity, compassion, friendship and creativity. God is all these combined, and then some. Let's sum up these qualities in the one word Goodness. God is the unlimited intensification of goodness, and is enhanced and upgraded goodness without limit.

Since God is the Love of loves, would God permit us to burn in an eternal Hell for our sins? No way. An infinitely loving God would be patient for as long as it takes for every individual to come to God, to come to appreciate the beauty of God's magnificence, and to adore God (as defined here.) I cannot describe God in its fullness for I am small relative to the breadth of God: there is too much there for me to know. Yet I have sampled some goodness in my life, and I am grateful for it. God is Goodness.

Hence God will redeem, forgive and welcome every living individual who eventually comes to God. And God will wait for this to happen. A loving God condemns no one to a hell. Hell and heaven may be states we feel in this life and conditions right here on Earth. None of us need feel like hell. If we work on self-improvement, undergo spiritual education, we can learn to, in effect, "live in heaven." We learn cosmic optimism. We learn how to decide every morning to be happy and hopeful for that day - until it becomes a habit.

Once it is habitual, we need no longer make a conscious decision. We have then integrated the optimism into our nervous system. We at least see that much of the big picture; we have a quiet confidence in the love of God for us personally. We are at peace.

Those who say "There is no God" are claiming that there are no high values. Or that they can't be combined into a package. Why not? In my definition the positive values are elements in a set. The set is God. Since when can't elements be grouped into a set?

I offer you my definition as a consensus, as the common ground of all the other attempts to define our ultimate concern, our top values. So whether one is an atheist or an agnostic if he or she treasures nature, or humanity, or morality and integrity, that person is -- by my definition - appreciating God. This definition, as you will recall, included energy, and all its transformations. In pointing out that God is Energy it follows that natural scientists respect God - or ought to if they have high regard for the powers of energy.

I could go on at length; thick books can be written on the topic subject, and have been. In my brief remarks I defined God as the unlimited intensification of the positive values.

2 Replies

@deepthot,

Thanks a lot xris, you've egged him on!

1 Reply

@Scottydamion,

Scottydamion;131960 wrote:

Thanks a lot xris, you've egged him on!

Hi, Scotty

Is what you just said a philosophical argument?

....I may be mistaken, but I believe that's why we're here.

0 Replies

@deepthot,

deepthot;130798 wrote:

This God of which I speak is omnibenevolent (all Good), but neither omnipotent nor omniscient: It knows nothing of evil or badness. It is powerful enough. After all, energy can take many forms. It is quite versatile, and in the form of electomagnetism, it can render quite a jolt. But it is not all-powerful.

Whenever something good occurs, we can give thanks to God for it, whenever something is created we can give God the credit - for God is the Creativity Principle.

This is very William Blake, except Blake calls the human imagination or "Poetic Genius" God. "God only acts & is in existing beings or Man." This also reminds me of G.B. Shaw. But Blake also needed a demi-urge symbol to explain the evil and necessity that life experiences. He used "the Father" or "Nobodaddy" for this.

I think your view is noble. Philosophically, you are going to run into some problems as "God" is often considered as something more total. Incidentally, Blake thought that the only true worship of God was the love of beautiful-noble-inspired human beings through which Jesus-Love-Creativity is manifested. To love the greatest men best, that was his "religion." But Blake was actually a philosopher who used myth as a more potent language for communicating the numinous aspect of thought.
"Beauty is the splendor of truth." That refers to this numinous aspect, which is the actual driving force of philosophy. If the numinous symbol of Sophia or Wisdom is removed from philosophy, then philosophy is simply conceptual prudence, no longer heroic or sacred in the least.

1 Reply

@deepthot,

deepthot;131957 wrote:

this should help explain my position:

A TENTATIVE DEFINITION OF GOD

Either there are gods or there aren't gods. The idea that one can decide what god is, according to an arbitrary definition, and then state that god exists, is nonsense. Unless god is some form of free variable, like an algebraic x. But this has two consequences, first; your definition must be functional in standard god-formulas, "god bless you", "thank god", etc. Second; free variables do not have independent existence, they allow for substitution, that's all. So, if god is a free variable, then god doesn't exist as anything independent.

2 Replies

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;132642 wrote:

Either there are gods or there aren't gods. The idea that one can decide what god is, according to an arbitrary definition, and then state that god exists, is nonsense. Unless god is some form of free variable, like an algebraic x. But this has two consequences, first; your definition must be functional in standard god-formulas, "god bless you", "thank god", etc. Second; free variables do not have independent existence, they allow for substitution, that's all. So, if god is a free variable, then god doesn't exist as anything independent.

I see what you are getting at, but philosophy is the reshaping of concepts. A word like "God" is largely a free variable. In fact, all words are. Meaning depends on social practice. "God" never had stable meaning to begin with. It has a relatively stable meaning in certain places and times, but it's just a mark and a noise except for it's place in living human social practices.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;132656 wrote:

I see what you are getting at, but philosophy is the reshaping of concepts. A word like "God" is largely a free variable. In fact, all words are.

If I state that my definition of "tiger" is; a bipedal animal, standing 20cms at the shoulder, 200cms at the hip and subsisting entirely on stallion's eggs, and therefore tigers do not exist, I assume that you'd agree that I haven't stated anything meaningful, that I haven't demonstrated that there are no tigers, that I have, at best, engaged in a perversion of language and that "tiger" is not a free variable.

1 Reply

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;132663 wrote:

If I state that my definition of "tiger" is; a bipedal animal, standing 20cms at the shoulder, 200cms at the hip and subsisting entirely on stallion's eggs, and therefore tigers do not exist, I assume that you'd agree that I haven't stated anything meaningful, that I haven't demonstrated that there are no tigers, that I have, at best, engaged in a perversion of language and that "tiger" is not a free variable.

I disagree. You have replaced the usual concept of tiger with a fictional tiger. But your redefinition was not meaningless but only fictional. An artist could draw one of these new tigers up for you. Open any dictionary and look at the etymology of the entries. Words have and do continue to shift their meanings.

You say "perversion." Perversion is to twist or make crooked. The word trope, which means figurative language, is derived from a word for twist. Language evolves/changes by mean of perversion or trope.

Of course I agree that one can not afford to randomly replace meanings. At the same time, theology is full of redefinitions of the God concept. The tiger concept is tied to the experience is names. The God concept is more complicated, less tied to common/objective experience and therefore a "freer variable."

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;132668 wrote:

Of course I agree that one can not afford to randomly replace meanings.

Well, this thread appears to rely on the assumption that one can arbitrarily re-define a mooted entity and then make statements about the entity newly defined as if it were the homonymous entity as previously defined.

Reconstructo;132668 wrote:

theology is full of redefinitions of the God concept.

Which, if true, suggests that there are no gods.

Reconstructo;132668 wrote:

The God concept is more complicated, less tied to common/objective experience and therefore a "freer variable."

This might carry some weight if the concept of "god" under consideration was the class of gods, just as there is a wide selection of animals that can be pets, so there can be a wide selection of entities that can be gods. Nevertheless, they must still qualify as gods, and they do not become gods simply because someone wants to define them as such. This is where the god-formulas come in. I've read people claiming that hydrogen is god, that coffee cups are gods, both claims are perversions of language, as neither "coffee cups" nor "hydrogen" function in god-formulas.

1 Reply

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;132671 wrote:

Well, this thread appears to rely on the assumption that one can arbitrarily re-define a mooted entity and then make statements about the entity newly defined as if it were the homonymous entity as previously defined.

I agree that the statements made could be more frankly metaphorical.

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 12:20 AM ----------

ughaibu;132671 wrote:

This might carry some weight if the concept of "god" under consideration was the class of gods, just as there is a wide selection of animals that can be pets, so there can be a wide selection of entities that can be gods.

God, for some, is one of those inclusive concepts, like being or experience. At the top of the chain of concepts one bumps into the concept. Call it "reality" or "the universe" or just "everything." Call it the "transcendental unity of apperception." No way around the circle around all circles.

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 12:21 AM ----------

ughaibu;132671 wrote:

Which, if true, suggests that there are no gods

I'm agnostic. But redefinitions don't prove anything either way. Of course they are suggestion according to interpretation. Another might argue that our desire to define or understand god is evidence. Not me, but another might.

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 12:23 AM ----------

ughaibu;132671 wrote:

Nevertheless, they must still qualify as gods, and they do not become gods simply because someone wants to define them as such.

If God or gods do not exist in spatial reality, then they only exist as concepts. These concepts are synthetic. Concepts made of concepts. We create synthetic concepts in discourse such as this.

1 Reply

@deepthot,

This isn't necessarily a new concept, in fact the majority of early Christian Theologians spoke of God existing in this light. For Clement, Augustine, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas God wasn't a noun, but more of a verb. God was Goodness, God was Being/Existence, God was Love, and for them God was the concept of omniscience and omnipotence. God was the totality of all experience on Earth, therefore, he was the one objective reality.

Hebert McCabe (a more recent Dominican) once said something along the lines of, if by God you mean an entity existing in time and space that can have characteristics attributed to it, then Aquinas and the tradition leading up to him were all atheist. People become to trigger happy to shoot down any concept of religion due to the fact that America is dominated by the noun-like concept of God. The truth is though that even for the leaders of major religions this isn't how God exists, and it becomes obvious once the consequences of this type of God is reasoned out, it just seems impossible for most to envision God in any other way.

0 Replies

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;132673 wrote:

redefinitions don't prove anything either way. Of course they are suggestion according to interpretation.

If gods exist, then gods are what they are, unless you are prepared to throw out the law of identity. If "god" means x on day one, y on day two and z on day three, then it is an example of the kind of free variables that I am talking about. "God", as a free variable, has no more existence than the x in x+y=z.

Reconstructo;132673 wrote:

Another might argue that our desire to define or understand god is evidence.

I can imagine arguments of the form:
1) we try to understand god
2) it would be daft to try to understand the non-existent
3) therefore god exists.
But I've no idea what kind of argument from trying to define god could conclude that the act of trying to define god is evidence for the reality of that which is as yet undefined.

1 Reply

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;132684 wrote:

If gods exist, then gods are what they are, unless you are prepared to throw out the law of identity.

The law of identity cannot apply to living language but only to formal logic or mathematics which are essentially tautological. We use imperfectly defined words every day, and no word can be perfectly and authoritatively defined. Language is but one aspect of social practice as a whole.

You use the figurative language "throw out." Indeed, it must be figurative unless I am to somehow throw a law out of some undefined space. The "law of identity" seems to be nothing but the formalization of our transcendental concept of substance.

Quote:

These categories, then, are the fundamental, primary, or native conceptions of the understanding, which flow from, or constitute the mechanism of, its nature, are inseparable from its activity, and are therefore, for human thought, universal and necessary, or a priori.

1 Reply

@deepthot,

It has been a generally recognized notion that god would transcend the ability of human language to describe or human thought to adequately conceptualize. That all religious symbols and language are merely pointers to a divine reality that transcends material existence or ordinary experience. God is spirit. To see god as something that can be described or grasped by the senses is not to see god at all. No profound religous thinker or religious tradition views god in this simplistic and antrhopomorphic fashion. A notion of god that depends on scientific demonstration or complete lingustic description is always inadequate (neti, neti, not this, not that).
You either see the universe as rational, ordered and purposeful or as accidental, capricious and indifferent. Science and reason do not force one conclusion or the other upon you (god is a choice).

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;132633 wrote:

This is very William Blake, except Blake calls the human imagination or "Poetic Genius" God. "God only acts & is in existing beings or Man." This also reminds me of G.B. Shaw. But Blake also needed a demi-urge symbol to explain the evil and necessity that life experiences. He used "the Father" or "Nobodaddy" for this.

I think your view is noble. Philosophically, you are going to run into some problems as "God" is often considered as something more total. Incidentally, Blake thought that the only true worship of God was the love of beautiful-noble-inspired human beings through which Jesus-Love-Creativity is manifested. To love the greatest men best, that was his "religion." But Blake was actually a philosopher who used myth as a more potent language for communicating the numinous aspect of thought.
"Beauty is the splendor of truth." That refers to this numinous aspect, which is the actual driving force of philosophy. If the numinous symbol of Sophia or Wisdom is removed from philosophy, then philosophy is simply conceptual prudence, no longer heroic or sacred in the least.

Actually I'm a great admirer of both William Blake and of Bernard Shaw.

0 Replies

@prothero,

prothero;132719 wrote:

It has been a generally recognized notion that god would transcend the ability of human language to describe or human thought to adequately conceptualize. That all religious symbols and language are merely pointers to a divine reality that transcends material existence or ordinary experience. God is spirit. To see god as something that can be described or grasped by the senses is not to see god at all. No profound religous thinker or religious tradition views god in this simplistic and antrhopomorphic fashion. A notion of god that depends on scientific demonstration or complete lingustic description is always inadequate (neti, neti, not this, not that).
You either see the universe as rational, ordered and purposeful or as accidental, capricious and indifferent. Science and reason do not force one conclusion or the other upon you (god is a choice).

Well said, P. All of it. I understand God to be the ultimate concept, or the concept of the trans-conceptual. I'm sure we both like this guy:Nicholas of Kues - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unfortunately the sophistication of some theistic thought is too little known.

0 Replies

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;132707 wrote:

The law of identity cannot apply to living language but only to formal logic or mathematics which are essentially tautological.

If god is nothing other than an artifact of "living language", then god is not any thing with independent existence. If there are gods, then the law of identity applies to those gods, the language is irrelevant. And if the law of identity does not apply to gods, then gods are free variables without independent existence!! None of your responses has addressed this point.

1 Reply

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;132642 wrote:

Either there are gods or there aren't gods. The idea that one can decide what god is, according to an arbitrary definition, and then state that god exists, is nonsense. Unless god is some form of free variable, like an algebraic x. But this has two consequences, first; your definition must be functional in standard god-formulas, "god bless you", "thank god", etc. Second; free variables do not have independent existence, they allow for substitution, that's all. So, if god is a free variable, then god doesn't exist as anything independent.

The question naturally arises, Does God exist?

I exist.
I, as a believer, give God give God my existence. Not that God needs it. Speaking poetically, God "wears existence in his lapel buttonhole as a decoration."

ughaibu:

Don't you believe that energy exists? As you know that is part of the meaning of the God I propose here for your consideration.

Furthermore,as far as the ontological status of God, in the theology that is derived from the definition given in the o.p.,I would add this: Reality is defined in my system as the Intrinsic Valuation (the I-value) of being. (*) The latter is an undefined term, It is a primitive.
God - technically - being the infinitely recursive exponentiation of I-value, does not merely exist: God is real.

God is not merely real; God is the Reality of all realities.

It follows that God more-than-exists.
__________________________
*) To comprehend what is meant see the charts on pp. 55-58 in the link below. They constitute Endnote 4.They display 'the value generator'; and definitions are derived from the basic dimensions of value, the value types, explained early in the paper.

0 Replies

@deepthot,

deepthot;132753 wrote:

as far as the ontological status of God, in the theology that is derived from the definition given in the o.p.

Here are your definitions from post 1:

deepthot;130798 wrote:

For x to be valuable is for x to be meaningful, is for x to have some attributes that the valuer is looking for, or expecting - else he or she would not call it 'valuable.'
To be better is to be richer in meaning, to be more valuable: for when we say x is better than y we mean x is more valuable than y.
God =df.= that than which there is nothing better.

What this amounts to is; for any he or she, that thing, which he or she is most looking for or expecting, is god.
This definition may well describe something real, but it also describes something individually and transiently idiosyncratic. And at the moment, the thing that for me is the thing than which there is nothing better, is the thing of all human beings acknowledging the mythological and fictional nature of so-called gods. In short, according to your definition, god is the non-existence of god. Therefore, your definition is not a definition of god.

deepthot;132753 wrote:

Reality is defined in my system as the Intrinsic Valuation (the I-value) of being. (*) The latter is an undefined term, It is a primitive.
God - technically - being the infinitely recursive exponentiation of I-value, does not merely exist: God is real.

This is what's known as word salad. What on Earth are you trying to say?

0 Replies

@ughaibu,

ughaibu;132751 wrote:

If god is nothing other than an artifact of "living language", then god is not any thing with independent existence. If there are gods, then the law of identity applies to those gods, the language is irrelevant. And if the law of identity does not apply to gods, then gods are free variables without independent existence!! None of your responses has addressed this point.

It is my opinion that you are applying the "law of identity" in an incorrect way. Have you looked into Wittgenstein?

---------- Post added 02-26-2010 at 04:33 AM ----------

ughaibu;132751 wrote:

If there are gods, then the law of identity applies to those gods, the language is irrelevant.

If God is a concept, then language has everything to do with god.

2 Replies

God can be defined, and even worshipped and adored

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