Ignosticism: What Is God?

[Lord Emsworth]

LoL The idea that everything 'supernatural' is explainable through natural terms?

That is MetaNat in a nutshell. I meant, "supernatural" in the sense (amongst other things) does not fit MetaNat, i.e. not explainable in a natural terms as you've put it.

When we don't even know what constitutes something as "supernatural".

Rephrase that to:
When we don't even know what constitutes something as "natural".

Yeah I really don't see that solving anything.

 

[quatona]

I am not interested in apologetics in this thread. It is meant, for me, to be a discussion about whether definitions of "God" have meaning.

I am assuming that the definition of "god" is meaningful to the person who gives it, i.e. points to a concept he holds.

As an aside I think that the idea that we can just invent god concepts willy nilly is a bit strange, personally.

Who but us do you think can and do invent concepts? And who but us decides which name we attach to them?

You cannot just make the term "God" mean anything, otherwise it will stop having adequate relationship to the core family of qualities.

And that´s exactly the experience ignosticism refers to, addresses and tries to deal with: There are so many definitions of "God" that I must expect it to mean pretty much anything when someone uses the word.

I perceive your objections as shooting the messenger.

For instance I can't say "this baked bean is God, and I don't mean a creator or superintelligent being of some sort, but I simply call this baked bean "God", perhaps because it's a pinky orange colour, and define it as God, and that is that!" That would be to ascribe a name to something, rather than to thing that something to have divine attributes.

You mean it would be outside the spectrum of god definitions that you are willing to accept as valid?

I think that there is a sorry trend on the internet that says "because there is such thing as a stipulative definition, all definitions are arbitrary and made up. For instance I can define "cat" as "dog" if I like, and this is as good English as anything else".

Yes, this would cause the same confusion as the multiple, partly contradictory definitions of "god" that we are exposed to.
The problem with your example is not that "cat" is the naturally appropriate term for a certain concept, but that it´s an agreed upon term for a certain broadly understood concept. Now, if I would use it in a way that points to the broadly understood concepts named "cat" and "dog" nobody would know which of those animals I am talking about.
That´s the same problem we have with the term "god": countless different concepts that carry the same word.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

I am not interested in apologetics in this thread. It is meant, for me, to be a discussion about whether definitions of "God" have meaning.

They have, or can have meaning. This is not the problem at all.



Defining "God" as Miley Cyrus, or "Deity" as Bob Dylan most certainly does have meaning. Furthermore, defining "God" as money, family, science, love does have plenty of meaning too. But these are metaphors, and presumably not the subject of a discussion about wether God exist. Just like, when you are/were discussing the existence of dragons, you certainly would not be content if somebody pointed out this far eastern country called China (aka Great Dragon) to you.



It is presumably not about concepts either. (I hope I am putting that right) Defining God as for instance necessary being, or maybe the cause for the universe, or the source of morality, or ... is easily done, but hardly what matters. This can be likened to a discussion about circles, or mountains. If we have a circle, then by definition we also a have a center of that circle; if we have a mountain, then we also have a peak of that mountain.

One problem here is, that while we know that we have a center of our circle, or a peak of our mountain, it does not tell us squat about what that circle, peak is. Likewise, if we know that we have stuff that exists, we can easily say that amongst this stuff there is that which not contigent upon anything else. And fair enough. But this does not tell us anything about what it is.

Another problem is, and this is far more grave than what I have outlined in the previous paragraph, that these concepts of God oftentimes fall woefully short of how the word is used in everyday language. 'Anthropomorphic skydaddy' vs 'cause of the universe', to cite a crass example. If you want something a little less strawman-ish, then I can offer 'concrete explanation of the universe' vs 'abstract cause of the universe.'




Now, that I have outlined definitions of "God" have meaning, there are also meaninless instances of the word "God."


It is meaningless to cast God as a concrete explanation of how the universe and/or life and/or our moral values come to be, and then utterly fail to provide any detail, or at least any meaningful detail, of how precisely this looks.

For instance, if somebody demands concrete explanations for universe/life/morality/etc without God, he is implicity casting God as a concrete explanation for universe/life/morality. If we now go and look at precisely what this explanation is and find nothing, then "God" is meaningless. Presumably, without positing a God, we have to say that we cannot explain the universe and that we don't have idea how it is possilbe. Now, with positing a God, however, we still cannot explain the universe and we still have no idea how it is possible. What we do have though is a label for that cluelessness, the euphemism "God."

We can even take this a step farther extend this to flowery statements such as "God speaks the universe into existence" or some such. But is this not just another label for "We don't know"? An unknown mechanism, labelled as "speech", and an unknown cause, labelled as "God", still fit the bill of "I don't have any idea."

If we wish to explain stuff, I think, this involves quite some hard work. If, in the end, we can even agree on the proposition that we can not explain and/or know certain things, then we cannot also go and act, behave, walk and talk as if we did explain/know these things.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Not agreed. You cannot just make the term "God" mean anything, otherwise it will stop having adequate relationship to the core family of qualities. For instance I can't say "this baked bean is God, and I don't mean a creator or superintelligent being of some sort, but I simply call this baked bean "God", perhaps because it's a pinky orange colour, and define it as God, and that is that!" That would be to ascribe a name to something, rather than to thing that something to have divine attributes. It would be asking to saying "Ok officer, I may appear to be naked, but I define fresh air as clothing." See how that one stands up in court!

In your example the problem is not that you cannot define fresh air as clothing. This is perfectly fine, as long as we do understand this definition for what it is. And using the term "clothed in fresh air" as a euphemism for nudity is nothing out of the ordinary and just an example of flowery language just the way it has been used ever since.

The problem in your example has more to do with the fallacy of equivocation. One meaning of a word is swapped out for another meaning of the same word. ("clothing" as not naked vs "clothing" as naked.)



But overall, I would still agree that we cannot make words mean anything though.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I am not interested in apologetics in this thread. It is meant, for me, to be a discussion about whether definitions of "God" have meaning.

I'm not debating that,but I'm debating whether the term God is even useful to talk about varying and contradictory definitions ascribed to it. You can't simultaneously say that the definition of God as a rock or the universe is equally valid to the definition of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

So what would you use to replace it? For instance in the bible's "God created the heavens and the earth"?

THe deity, the creator any number of things that might express more specifically what the Abrahamic tradition means.

Not agreed on. I think that for a psychologist "world views" would be subjective, but most philosophers, when they say for instance that monkeys exist whether we like it or not, or whether we percieve them or not, mean just what they say.

We're talking about people's perceptions, not the actual existence of things. You didn't want to talk apologetics, why try to segue into the notion that God could be argued to objectively exist, which is just ontological acrobatics?

Ok you are not ignostic then *smiles*

Except you're still confusing the difference between accepting definitions as understandable with not seeing any use for the term these contradictory definitions are ascribed to. God means nothing when it is defined in so many varying and counterintuitive ways. That is my difficulty. I don't deny people define God and can make it seem rationally defensible, but my difficulty is that God is not the best term for all the definitions, if any of them.

Agreed that if there is a god, then not all definitions can be right if they are inconsistent. As an aside I think that the idea that we can just invent god concepts willy nilly is a bit strange, personally. Maybe we can invent "clothing" concepts willy nilly, and wear fresh air?

It's not that people just made them up, they genuinely believe them to be true in cases such as pantheism or animism. You can't just argue that people arbitrarily make things up just to be contrary.

Not agreed. You cannot just make the term "God" mean anything, otherwise it will stop having adequate relationship to the core family of qualities. For instance I can't say "this baked bean is God, and I don't mean a creator or superintelligent being of some sort, but I simply call this baked bean "God", perhaps because it's a pinky orange colour, and define it as God, and that is that!" That would be to ascribe a name to something, rather than to thing that something to have divine attributes. It would be asking to saying "Ok officer, I may appear to be naked, but I define fresh air as clothing." See how that one stands up in court!

Except you can if it's all a matter of faith. If you're trying to say it's a rationally coherent and falsifiable definition, then of course you have a point. But people saying they believe in God or a higher power don't have to necessarily follow those basic rules, which makes the whole discussion of consistent language of theology and religion somewhat superfluous and context sensitive.

I think that there is a sorry trend on the internet that says "because there is such thing as a stipulative definition, all definitions are arbitrary and made up. For instance I can define "cat" as "dog" if I like, and this is as good English as anything else".

Stipulative definitions are context sensitive and thus are not universally applicable. People could agree in an esoteric context that God is defined in a certain specific way, but that doesn't mean everyone else will agree or see it that way by their own faith experiences. This is where people have to admit one basic limitation, being that any word they use to describe the sacred has to stop at that limitation in terms of a universally understandable concept. God or deity or divinity could all be said to go too far from what is at the bare minimum a manifestation in one way or another of the "sacred"

Hes entitled to his own opinion, but I don't think too much of it so far. You yourself have said that specific definitions of God make semantic sense, so the term can't always be practically redundant.

It's still practically redundant if there isn't any universally agreed definition. Faith based language is pointless to discuss in any sense beyond comparisons between dissonant concepts of the same word. God is defined by many to be transcendent, but others contest that and say it is immanent. And then there's those that try to have it both ways with more philosophical acrobatics.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

But overall, I would still agree that we cannot make words mean anything though.

Yes. That would be the "Humpty Dumpty theory" of language and meaning. link.

Sorry for not getting back to your other points, but I have trouble understanding your probably very insightful comments at times.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

That's just me though, I'm finding it rather difficult to construct a non-contradictory explanation of "supernatural". Perhaps you'd like to mix & match.

It seems to me that you are trying not to comprehend anything you don't want to believe in. As I said before, the supernatural is at least a sub-set of non-natural, and the natural can be defined as per Kieth Augustine's "A Defence of Naturalism".

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I'm not debating that,but I'm debating whether the term God is even useful to talk about varying and contradictory definitions ascribed to it. You can't simultaneously say that the definition of God as a rock or the universe is equally valid to the definition of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

I don't see how thats a major stumbling block, there simply needs to be a clarification of which tradition we are considering, and we go to the particulars of that tradition. I suppose if we are to try and find an essence that runs through all traditions, I accept we might not have a good definition of the term "God" in that case... ...but then again who actually uses the word "God" in that sense in the mosques, churches, gurdwaras etc?

THe deity, the creator any number of things that might express more specifically what the Abrahamic tradition means.

Isuppose you could exchange terms along those lines, but are you sure that, just because Muslims and Christians define the term "God" differently, you cannot understand the stipulated meaning of the term in a given context of let's say the Catholic tradition?

We're talking about people's perceptions, not the actual existence of things. You didn't want to talk apologetics, why try to segue into the notion that God could be argued to objectively exist, which is just ontological acrobatics?

I wan not engaging in such an argument, sorry, but simply noting that people who believe in God often believe that God has an objective rather than subjective existance. I leave them to defend their own opinions.

Except you're still confusing the difference between accepting definitions as understandable with not seeing any use for the term these contradictory definitions are ascribed to. God means nothing when it is defined in so many varying and counterintuitive ways. That is my difficulty. I don't deny people define God and can make it seem rationally defensible, but my difficulty is that God is not the best term for all the definitions, if any of them.

That point is subtle, and well argued. Maybe the general essense that prevails amongst all those definitions of God (from the dharmakaya to pantheistic) is too puny or banal to deserve the name? But are you sure that when people talk about God that you thing that such a transfaith essence is what they actually intend to refer to?

It's not that people just made them up, they genuinely believe them to be true in cases such as pantheism or animism. You can't just argue that people arbitrarily make things up just to be contrary.

I agree that there are varied ideas of "God" but some posters here seemed to believe they could redefine the word without any respect to any rules whatsoever.

Except you can if it's all a matter of faith. If you're trying to say it's a rationally coherent and falsifiable definition, then of course you have a point. But people saying they believe in God or a higher power don't have to necessarily follow those basic rules, which makes the whole discussion of consistent language of theology and religion somewhat superfluous and context sensitive.

But wouldn't you agree if I were to redefine the term "God" as lightspeed, as per physics, and then say that E = mGOD^2 I would not be speaking good Eglish and would not be using the term "God" in a religious sense? I think my point is that althought there are various conceptions of God, it is not a case that absolutely anything goes and qualified as a religious concept just because of a redefinition of the term "God". Wittgenstein might have said that "God" has a particular style of philosophical gammar and is associated with certain forms of life. Similarly I can't redefine "lightseed" as "a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions" and call that new definition a form of physics!

Stipulative definitions are context sensitive and thus are not universally applicable. People could agree in an esoteric context that God is defined in a certain specific way, but that doesn't mean everyone else will agree or see it that way by their own faith experiences. This is where people have to admit one basic limitation, being that any word they use to describe the sacred has to stop at that limitation in terms of a universally understandable concept. God or deity or divinity could all be said to go too far from what is at the bare minimum a manifestation in one way or another of the "sacred"

Not sure what you mean here.
If you think the term "God" has lost its meaning because it is used by so many different faith groups, then fine, but still I am sure that when a Muslim says "Allahu akbar!" you do not mistake him for a pantheist, a trinitarian or a Hindu.

It's still practically redundant if there isn't any universally agreed definition.

The argument being? Certainly people, like the ones who shout "Allahu akbar" or say "Glory to God in the highest" do not think it is practically redundant. Then again, they are not sat in their armchairs focusing on a semantic weakness that is irrelevant to most everyday usage.

Faith based language is pointless to discuss in any sense beyond comparisons between dissonant concepts of the same word. God is defined by many to be transcendent, but others contest that and say it is immanent. And then there's those that try to have it both ways with more philosophical acrobatics.

Like I said, if you think that "God" becomes a useless term as soon as there is a major difference in theology, you ought to go and see people make good religious use of it, as per their tradition and understanding, in the churches and mosques etc.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Yes. That would be the "Humpty Dumpty theory" of language and meaning. link.

You can't make them mean anything. But there is still wiggling room.

Just look at what people do, and keep in mind that linguistics is descriptive.

Sorry for not getting back to your other points, but I have trouble understanding your probably very insightful comments at times.

Can't say that I am overly surprised. OTOH, you could always ask.

 

[UnReAL13]

It seems to me that you are trying not to comprehend anything you don't want to believe in. As I said before, the supernatural is at least a sub-set of non-natural, and the natural can be defined as per Kieth Augustine's "A Defence of Naturalism".

That still doesn't correlate with the meanings of the root words for "supernatural". You may as well call it "the unnatural", or "the non-natural". Why not even go as far as to say it's "the unreal"? Is it even real (rhetorical)? Or how about "the unknown"?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

That still doesn't correlate with the meanings of the root words for "supernatural". You may as well call it "the unnatural", or "the non-natural". Why not even go as far as to say it's "the unreal"? Is it even real (rhetorical)? Or how about "the unknown"?

To imagine that current English usage is dictated by etymology, or how people spoke thousands of years ago, is called the "etymological fallacy". I learnt that at a secular forum, you know.In any case, if supernatural means "beyond" the natural, then the idea of it being a sub-set of the non-natural fits well with the etymology (although it might not fit with your contrived distortion of it, I humbly admit).

 

[UnReAL13]

To imagine that current English usage is dictated by etymology, or how people spoke thousandsof years ago, is called the "etymological fallacy". I learnt that at a secular forum, you know.

Then what is "supernatural"? This concept is pretty much as vague and ambiguous as "god", "deity", "spirit", etc....

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I don't see how you can (probably) understand the term "subterranian", or "transcultural", or "epiphenomenal", but not "supernatural". Unless you're not trying, of course. But that would be against the tendency to look for a falsification of one's beliefs, in the scientific spirit, which deficit your methodology would never be guilty of, would it?

Maybe as Einstein said:

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Note to self: Perhaps I ought to admit that for Unreal13 the terms "God" and "supernatural" apparently have no cognitive meaning. I suppose the next question would be "Is that the fault of the terms, or his?"​

 

[UnReAL13]

Yeah, I'm becoming rather non-cognitive towards the definitions you've provided. So is that my fault? Is it my fault that you can't rationalize your terminology?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Unreal, I still don't believe you have given any general criteria whereby we might establish whether a term (e.g. "God" or "evolution") actually has meaning or not.

 

[UnReAL13]

Unreal, I still don't believe you have given any general criteria whereby we might establish whether a term (e.g. "God" or "evolution") actually has meaning or not.

Perhaps you missed the wiki I provided in the 1st post?

Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Unreal, I still don't believe you have given any general criteria whereby we might establish whether a term (e.g. "God" or "evolution") actually has meaning or not.

In linguistics, meaning is what is expressed by the writer or speaker, and what is conveyed to the reader or listener. Meaning is inferred from objects or concepts expressed by words, phrases or sentences in semantics. Meaning is inferred from the current context as intended by the writer or speaker in pragmatics. Ambiguity in meaning may cause confusion in what is conveyed, and lead to different interpretations of the current context.​

Meaning (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unreal, I still don't believe you have given any general criteria whereby we might establish whether a term (e.g. "God" or "evolution") actually has meaning or not in the context in which it is used.

FTFY.

Looking for meaning in de-contextualized sequences of letters or sounds is a dud to begin with.

 

[ToHoldNothing]

I don't see how thats a major stumbling block, there simply needs to be a clarification of which tradition we are considering, and we go to the particulars of that tradition. I suppose if we are to try and find an essence that runs through all traditions, I accept we might not have a good definition of the term "God" in that case... ...but then again who actually uses the word "God" in that sense in the mosques, churches, gurdwaras etc?

From what I read about definitions on Wiki, we have the distinction of stipulative and ostensive definitions, or what I would define as particular and general definitions respectively. With particular definitions of God, there's already an agreement that we're not trying to understand God across faith traditions, but only in that one tradition. But the general definition of God seems to fall apart because we have contradictory properties that are claimed by each tradition to be essential to what God is. Many Christians argue that God is both one and three, whereas Jews and Muslims argue that God has to be solely one. Not to mention difficulties in Deism and Pantheism that I've emphasized before.

And it's not the matter of people using the word God in a universal sense in individual religious contexts, it's people assuming ignorantly that everyone will just agree on what God means, when clearly we don't and won't.

Isuppose you could exchange terms along those lines, but are you sure that, just because Muslims and Christians define the term "God" differently, you cannot understand the stipulated meaning of the term in a given context of let's say the Catholic tradition?

Like I said, if it was already agreed upon that we were discussing stipulative definitions, this wouldn't be a problem, but if we have to qualify every use of God with a preface of Catholic/Muslim/Mormon/etc people would become frustrated in some sense of feeling like their God was supposedly universal to everyone. That's my difficulty on another level: most people won't just accept that notion of stipulative definitions; instead they'll say their definition of God is ostensive and then try to argue from examples that God is something everyone agrees upon in definition anyway, which is my larger problem

I wan not engaging in such an argument, sorry, but simply noting that people who believe in God often believe that God has an objective rather than subjective existance. I leave them to defend their own opinions.
That point is subtle, and well argued. Maybe the general essense that prevails amongst all those definitions of God (from the dharmakaya to pantheistic) is too puny or banal to deserve the name? But are you sure that when people talk about God that you thing that such a transfaith essence is what they actually intend to refer to?

Clearly pantheists would disagree, but this re-emphasizes the difficulty I pointed out before: people are rarely willing to let their God just be one definition among many. If they were speaking in a more isolated context and everyone agreed that it was just their particular stipulative definition, then there'd be less of a problem. But I doubt the congregation at even my parents' church just says God like they mean the Presbyterian Protestant Christian Trinitarian God.

I agree that there are varied ideas of "God" but some posters here seemed to believe they could redefine the word without any respect to any rules whatsoever.
But wouldn't you agree if I were to redefine the term "God" as lightspeed, as per physics, and then say that E = mGOD^2 I would not be speaking good Eglish and would not be using the term "God" in a religious sense? I think my point is that althought there are various conceptions of God, it is not a case that absolutely anything goes and qualified as a religious concept just because of a redefinition of the term "God". Wittgenstein might have said that "God" has a particular style of philosophical gammar and is associated with certain forms of life. Similarly I can't redefine "lightseed" as "a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions" and call that new definition a form of physics!

Not everyone defines God as something personal though, which is where the difficulty arises. God can be reduced in quality to something still transcendent and numinous without therefore ceasing to be considered something worthy of being called divine and godly, one might say. You seem to think God can only be adequately defined in possession of some kind of personality and anthropomorphic qualities, which is where we'd disagree, considering pantheism already can demonstrate otherwise. Lightspeed wouldn't be considered God in pantheism, but moreso the laws of the universe itself from what I understand. Which is still worthy in the religious sense of awe and reverence, even if not worship.

Not sure what you mean here.
If you think the term "God" has lost its meaning because it is used by so many different faith groups, then fine, but still I am sure that when a Muslim says "Allahu akbar!" you do not mistake him for a pantheist, a trinitarian or a Hindu.

Already we have the distinction of particular and general definitions. Muslims saying that are probably saying it in a more general sense, as if everyone should believe in God. But of course, I can understand in the Islamic context that he is more a Unitarian of sorts, to use a Christian parallel.

The argument being? Certainly people, like the ones who shout "Allahu akbar" or say "Glory to God in the highest" do not think it is practically redundant. Then again, they are not sat in their armchairs focusing on a semantic weakness that is irrelevant to most everyday usage.

It is practically redundant in a general sense, not in the particular sense where it's used in the context where people all agree the word God only has one meaning. That's the difficulty I keep trying to emphasize.

Like I said, if you think that "God" becomes a useless term as soon as there is a major difference in theology, you ought to go and see people make good religious use of it, as per their tradition and understanding, in the churches and mosques etc.

I didn't deny people can make good use of the term God as attached to a meaningful concept. But only where that particular meaningful context is not questioned or doubted in any sense can the term God be used meaningfully AND practically without people succumbing to general skepticism as to WHY God must be defined in this particular sense.

 

[quatona]

Note to self: Perhaps I ought to admit that for Unreal13 the terms "God" and "supernatural" apparently have no cognitive meaning. I suppose the next question would be "Is that the fault of the terms, or his?"​

Wrong dichotomy, and, on top, one of the options makes no sense: Terms aren´t intentionally acting entities, and thus can´t be blamed for anything.

Next question: Why do you think that whenever there´s a problem there must necessarily be someone whose fault it is?

 

[UnReAL13]

Rephrase that to:
When we don't even know what constitutes something as "natural".

This is another good point. People assume that everything exists "naturally", but what if it's all artificial? What if intelligent design is correct to some extent and the universe was designed by other humans? Maybe what we perceive is only meant to appear that way to us "naturally", but is in fact an artificial creation.

And where exactly do we draw the line between "natural" and "artificial"? Like the abiogenesis experiments, if we can recreate something "natural" in a lab, is it artificial or natural? Is everything artificial in a "natural" state of existence?

On top of that, how do we draw the line between "natural" and "supernatural"? What qualifies something that's "naturally existing" to be "super" in any way? This is why I feel that the word supernatural has such an empty meaning that's completely open to interpretation.