@Jebediah,
Jebediah;123394 wrote:
I don't quite follow the link here. What is special about our being unable to express something? We can't express the vastness of the universe or the minuteness of quarks. They are real and beyond our capacity to comprehend, but that doesn't make them particularly special. I think most abstract concepts cannot be expressed adequately in language.
We can give a size for the universe...
God is supposed to be difficult. The inability of human language to adequately express God, coupled with the voluminous examples of beautiful language pointing to God - people struggling with such a powerful experience that defies language's bounds - shows the God concept to be immensely powerful.
Another reason I do not understand the hostility, the aggressive dismissive of so many people when God comes up - calling people childish, foolish, simple, stupid for believing in God. Frankly, it's childish to be so inconsiderate of other people's feelings and experiences.
Back to language - I think beauty is a great example; not a perfect analogy, but close enough to be useful. We cannot define beauty in a precise, universally applicable way, but we can invent many, many different definitions which point to the ultimate reality of beauty. We know that there is beauty, although it is beyond language to define (which is also to
confine), and we know it primarily through the experience of it. God is understood to be too great for confining.
It's like the opening lines from the
Tao te Ching: "The tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao". The same could be said of God, and essentially has been said for over a thousand years. Still, people go on about ignorant theists, too stupid to give a concrete definition for God...
Jebediah;123394 wrote:
Hmm, what I was trying for with that sentence was the idea that even people who don't believe in god per se have some symbolic construct that they understand the world by. We all filter our sensory data and fit it to our mental conceptions.
Right. This is typically called metaphysics. I'm a big fan of the idea that there are many metaphysical systems worthwhile, beautiful, and more importantly, useful.
Hunter Thompson said in his Vegas book something like... "the old mystic fallacy, the belief that someone, or something, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel." And maybe he was right.
But I'm not sure we have to stick to some grand purpose. Couldn't we just as well have unique purposes, perhaps a purpose every moment, rather than some big universal purpose for which the whole universe strives? Now, I'm just talking here, haven't really worked this out, but imagine with me if you would: at any given moment, we have the option of doing a great many different things. I could dance right now, or finishing typing this sentence, or watch TV, ect. Plenty of options. Yet we only go with one. Now, we seem to have two ways of determining what we do at any given moment: one is automatic response, an unthinking, mechanical routine; the other is present minded decision making.
Let's put this in a scenario. I'm walking down the street. My mind is elsewhere, day dreaming, thinking about work. And so I walk down the street. Ah, but I did not notice the pregnant woman, child in arms, struggling to get through the door way! So let's try this again, I'm walking down the street, aware, observant. I notice the woman struggling, and so I hold the door for her.
I could have passed her by unconcerned with her trouble. But at that moment, aware of my environment, I knew it was my purpose to help the woman. It was the right thing to do. Maybe this is purpose, that each moment we should be doing something to improve the lives of others and ourselves unselfishly. Maybe something like that.
Jebediah;123394 wrote:So, you were talking about it being challenging to accept those conceptions as real, but perhaps the simpler answer would be that they are false, which would be hard to accept. How much of a "self" is there really? Hard to think about.
It's not so hard to say "I believe in God". That's just as easy as denying God's existence. The real trouble is developing any kind of understanding about God. It takes work, serious effort. To listlessly believe or dismiss altogether, these are easy.
In approaching a definition of God, Anselm said something very interesting. He establishes what is called God's
aseity - this means that God must exist, he necessarily exists. Going back to beauty: beauty necessarily exists, while a beautiful work of art may or may not exist, it might exist. What Anselm is trying to say (he says a lot, but this is part of it) is that if you are denying God's existence, you are denying something other than what the theist is talking about. To say that God does not exist is to talk about something else, arbitrarily labeled "God".
So, when people say "I don't believe in God", I shrug. They are talking about something other than God. And this can be difficult at first, too. This goes back to metaphysics. It's the basis of catholic ontology, that God is the 'ground of being' if you will, rather than just another being.
Jebediah;123394 wrote:Ah well, I've been that angry (or at least annoyed) atheist in the past. I know how it goes. Once you can get a glimpse of why other people think the way they do it becomes less of a passionate argument. Also, it's not like people are convinced by passion.
And that's the way to be. Also, when you start to understand the way others people think, you tend to coexist a little easier. And that's a good thing no matter who you ask. After all, we're here, so we might as well get along. We can't get along without understanding. Better understand one another and celebrate differences rather than belittle people over differences. Belittling, dismissing people over differences is the root of violence - that's what allows people to kill indiscriminately and feel no remorse.
