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DeadSouls View Drop Down
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Points: 4255 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 07 2016 at 15:27
Yes, i did (when i was a kid). I'm agnostic.
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Points: 10266 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 07 2016 at 16:26
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

before one can state belief or disbelief in God one first has to define God. it is by no means certain that two people mean the same thing when referring to God.

to make my point clear: to believe in tigers one first has to define what a tiger is (a large animal of the cat family with black and yellow stripes), else the statements "I believe in tigers" or "I don't believe in tigers" are totally meaningless
Ermm I'm trying to think of a world religion that does actually define what god is and currently drawing a blank. Everyone is presumed to just "know" what it is they are expected to worship and why. That's the great confidence trick of religion - if you don't know then you're not part of the gang so those who don't know pretend to know on the understanding that enlightenment will come to those with sufficient faith. Failure to be "in the know" is a failure in the personal faith, not in the religion itself or its god. So within a single religion there are multiple definitions of godhead that are not universally shared by every member of that religion. I suppose if you had a religion with a 'congregation' of one then you could arrive a definition that each member would agree on but as the numbers increase with each addition adding its own interpretation of that definition then it becomes harder to actually say there is a mutually agreed definition that all would adhere to. I suspect that a religion with a world population of two could feasibly have a definition of god that was mutually acceptable (though maybe wholly acceptable) to both of them, but it would be highly unlikely that anyone outside that religion would agree with them.

Religions define their deities by their past deeds, by their expectations of their followers and by some non-guaranteed promises of a reward that can be achieved by worshipping them - not (necessarily or solely) by what they are or what they look like. Therefore in your analogy a tiger would not be defined by its physical appearance but by its status as a predatory carnivore of the genus panthera that can roar - which would make it indistinguishable from a lion, leopard, jaguar or panther (but not a puma or cougar, which is taxonomically a different genus) - No one needs to recognise that definition as fitting any of those creatures to "believe" your definition of a tiger. In fact you don't need to define a tiger at all for anyone to believe (or not) that such a creature exists (or not). All you need to say is there is a large predatory cat in Asia called a tiger and you will either be believed or you won't - of course some may be sceptical without physical proof, but that's an altogether a different philosophical argument. If on the other hand you said a tiger has six limbs, two of which were wings so it could fly, that it could breath fire and dined exclusively on virgin maidens then the number of people who would choose to believe you would be significantly less... perhaps.

Therefore you don't have to define what a god is in order to believe or not believe, however it should be a prerequisite to have some understanding of (more or less) what it is you are worshipping in order to believe.

You seem to have misread Jean's post, Dean. She is not saying that any world religion defines what God is. Which is exactly her point: Everyone has a different concept of God, even atheists. It does not make sense to say "I don't believe in God" if you don't have a concept what "God" is supposed to be, just as it makes no sense to say "I don't believe in tigers" if you don't have a concept what a tiger is supposed to be, which is why she made that example.


BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 00:35
Originally posted by BaldFriede BaldFriede wrote:

 
You seem to have misread Jean's post, Dean. She is not saying that any world religion defines what God is. Which is exactly her point: Everyone has a different concept of God, even atheists. It does not make sense to say "I don't believe in God" if you don't have a concept what "God" is supposed to be, just as it makes no sense to say "I don't believe in tigers" if you don't have a concept what a tiger is supposed to be, which is why she made that example.
I read Jean's post just fine thanks, and I'll not counter-suggest that you've misread mine because I'm sure you understood it perfectly but chose to interject just because it contradicts what she (and now you) are saying. All the evidenceš suggests that she (and now you) are wrong and you do not have to define what gods are in order to believe in them or not. The tiger example illustrates this because in Jean's definition a big cat with white and black stripes would not be recognised as a tiger whereas it would be if she had just said that there is an large predatory cat in Asia called a tiger without defining what it looked like. I suspect that religious leaders long ago realised that the more you define a god the less chance you have of being believed, after 300,000 years of "religion" there should be no ambiguity or doubt yet it has increased to the point were agnosticism is the preferred religion of many.

However you have chosen to use the word "concept" rather than "definition" and they are not synonymous; and I note that Jean changed from saying "has to define" in the post I answered to saying "should define" in her post that followed mine, and again those two phrases don't mean the same thing. By saying that there is a large predatory cat in Asia I have a concept of what that is without having a definition of what it is. Similarly I don't have to define what that is, however because I have a concept of what a large predatory cat is then possibly I could define what that is but that does not mean that I should (or would) because it is likely that I do not have enough information to produce a meaningful definition. If you have a definition of what god is then no further explanation is required, however if you have a concept of god then you can explain further by defining what that concept is. Semantic pedantry perhaps but if you accuse me of misreading then you have to be aware of the precision with which words can be used.

Now - an atheist does not need a definition of something they don't believe exists, and nor could they have just one - they can reject the basic notion or concept of gods or they can consider all the disparate concepts of gods and goddesses, and either reject each in turn or en masse (as opposed to a believer who could consider all the disparate concepts and rejects each of them except one, but is more likely to have believed the first one they heard and simply dismiss the rest).


š We need to be careful of the use of the word "evidence" here - the evidence is that none of the worlds religions have a definition of god yet three-quarters of the world population believes in some form of god, gods or goddesses. Of course this is not evidence that gods exist, just evidence that religion exists.


Edited by Dean - June 08 2016 at 00:42
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Points: 10387 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 01:13
sigh.

[def-uh-nish-uh n]
noun
1.
the act of defining, or of making something definite, distinct, or clear:
We need a better definition of her responsibilities.
2.
the formal statement of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc., as found in dictionaries. An online dictionary resource, such as Dictionary.com, can give users direct, immediate access to the definitions of a term, allowing them to compare definitions from various dictionaries and stay up to date with an ever-expanding vocabulary.
3.
the condition of being definite, distinct, or clearly outlined:
His biceps have great muscle definition.
4.
Optics. sharpness of the image formed by an optical system.
5.
Radio and Television. the accuracy of sound or picture reproduction.

concept

[kon-sept]
noun
1.
a general notion or idea; conception.
2.
an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.
3.
a directly conceived or intuited object of thought.

when I spoke of definition I was referring to meaning 1. when I spoke of concept I also referred to meaning 1. so when I said you should define God it meant you should make your concept of God clear.

I suspect your concept of God is that of many atheists: God as "he" is depicted in the bible. so you actually don't reject God, you reject the bible, which is by far not the same. it is like rejecting the menu instead of the dish. it is perfectly possible to believe in God without believing in the bible.

and sorry, Dean: the idea of rejecting something, whatever it is, without having a definition of it is simply ridiculous


Edited by BaldJean - June 08 2016 at 01:16


A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 03:21
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

sigh.
Really? Okay...*sigh*
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:


[def-uh-nish-uh n]
noun
1.
the act of defining, or of making something definite, distinct, or clear:
We need a better definition of her responsibilities.
2.
the formal statement of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc., as found in dictionaries. An online dictionary resource, such as Dictionary.com, can give users direct, immediate access to the definitions of a term, allowing them to compare definitions from various dictionaries and stay up to date with an ever-expanding vocabulary.
3.
the condition of being definite, distinct, or clearly outlined:
His biceps have great muscle definition.
4.
Optics. sharpness of the image formed by an optical system.
5.
Radio and Television. the accuracy of sound or picture reproduction.

concept

[kon-sept]
noun
1.
a general notion or idea; conception.
2.
an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.
3.
a directly conceived or intuited object of thought.
<<insert equally pointless cut and paste here>>
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

when I spoke of definition I was referring to meaning 1. when I spoke of concept I also referred to meaning 1. so when I said you should define God it meant you should make your concept of God clear.
You never spoke of "concept", Friede did, so only she can say she was referring to (1) when she spoke of the concept and not the actual meaning (2) because neither you nor I can draw that inference from the use of the word alone. As their completely different definitions show, the two words are not synonymous.

Would you now like to quote the dictionary definitions for "have to" and "should" to show that the first is an imperative that one must follow while the second is merely an obligation that one can neglect? When I ride a motorcycle in the UK I have to wear a crash helmet because that is the law, I should also wear other protective clothing but I don't have to because there is no law that enforces me to do that. So yes, people should define what they mean by god but that does not follow that they have to or even need to.
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:



I suspect your concept of God is that of many atheists: God as "he" is depicted in the bible. so you actually don't reject God, you reject the bible, which is by far not the same. it is like rejecting the menu instead of the dish. it is perfectly possible to believe in God without believing in the bible.

Never assume or presume anything. If you had read and remembered a fraction of what I have written on this forum on religious topics then you would not arrive at that conclusion. 

[I suspect that possibly you are Friede using Jean's account to answer this post as this has happened before but I don't actually know this is the case, it is just a possibility]

Also, since I have ten years on either you or Friede it is entirely possible that I have been aware of such things as the concept of Gaia and the Gaia Hypothesis for more years than you have but I would never suspect that was actually true as it is perfectly possible for you to have known this in 1975 or maybe a little earlier as I'm not completely certain of when I first read of it. I am sufficiently comfortable with the science of a self-stabilising, self-regulating, seemingly self-sustaining, seemingly closed-loop ecosystem for me not to dismiss the basic premiss. I say seemingly here because it requires a constant external power source to function and when that power source is exhausted in ~5.4 billion years time it will destroy the ecosystem it currently feeds as this is a (reasonably) predictable "life-cycle" deduced from observation (each star does not have an unlimited supply of hydrogen) so extrapolating the hypothesis to encapsulate the entire Universe is not that much of a leap. However, there is nothing to say that any of this requires a supreme consciousness to instigate or maintain it, or that it is in some way forms part of a supreme [Universe] consciousness (for example, that it is self-aware) or that it maybe unaware of, or aware of but indifferent to, the human consciousnesses that live within it. We are not aware of our blood cells but we know what they are, that they are there and what they do - we know for example that humans cannot exist without blood cells, but it does not follow that the Universe does not exist without humans (though some idle philosophers would perhaps argue otherwise). However the concept that gods would not exist without humans to create them is something I can see the logic in.
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:


and sorry, Dean: the idea of rejecting something, whatever it is, without having a definition of it is simply ridiculous
Ah, no. I can easily reject everything something that has no definition by virtue of the fact that it has no definition  - if you came to me with a concept for producing food for human consumption from basalt rock but couldn't define that concept then I will reject it without further thought. Yet if you said your concept was to produce food for human consumption from grass clippings but couldn't define what it was I would be less dismissive because cows can do this so the concept is more believable. 

It is far harder to accept something that has no definition which is why, as you said in your post that Friede accused me of misreading that "it is by no means certain that two people mean the same thing when referring to God" - each believer has their own personal definition of the concept of god they believe in, that they don't all mean the same thing is irrelevant, the definitions differ but there is a degree of commonality in basic concept (a supreme being/consciousness god/gods exists).

What we are doing here is assessing probability that a concept is viable and thus believable within the personal definition that each person has. People are perfectly content with rejecting mythological supreme beings that do not fit within their own concept of what a supreme being is without requiring a definition of what those other supreme beings are. Everyone who believes in a concept will reject all other concepts, and the believers of each of those rejected concepts will reject every other concept except their own so it is conceivable that every concept has more people rejecting it than accepting it - all an non-believer does is assess the probability that all those rejected concepts are equally unviable and thus not believable.



Edited by Dean - June 08 2016 at 03:51
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dr wu23 View Drop Down
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Points: 20671 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 12:20
Dean said: "I suspect that religious leaders long ago realised that the more you define a god the less chance you have of being believed, after 300,000 years of "religion" there should be no ambiguity or doubt yet it has increased to the point were agnosticism is the preferred religion of many."
 
 
How exactly is being agnostic a 'religion'......?   (or atheism either, for that matter...?)
Confused
 
 
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 12:55
Originally posted by dr wu23 dr wu23 wrote:

Dean said: "I suspect that religious leaders long ago realised that the more you define a god the less chance you have of being believed, after 300,000 years of "religion" there should be no ambiguity or doubt yet it has increased to the point were agnosticism is the preferred religion of many."
 
 
How exactly is being agnostic a 'religion'......?   (or atheism either, for that matter...?)
Confused
 
 
I suspect that most who refer to themselves as agnostic would be agnostic christians, agnostic jews, agnostic muslims, etc., rather than just simply 'agnostic' and when asked to state their religion on an offical form would most likely tick 'christian', 'judaism' or 'muslim' rather than 'none'. But other than that, yeah, I f**ked up - agnosticism that is not aligned to a specific religion is a doctrine not a religion (and atheism is neither).
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Points: 20671 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 13:01
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by dr wu23 dr wu23 wrote:

Dean said: "I suspect that religious leaders long ago realised that the more you define a god the less chance you have of being believed, after 300,000 years of "religion" there should be no ambiguity or doubt yet it has increased to the point were agnosticism is the preferred religion of many."
 
 
How exactly is being agnostic a 'religion'......?   (or atheism either, for that matter...?)
Confused
 
 
I suspect that most who refer to themselves as agnostic would be agnostic christians, agnostic jews, agnostic muslims, etc., rather than just simply 'agnostic' and when asked to state their religion on an offical form would most likely tick 'christian', 'judaism' or 'muslim' rather than 'none'. But other than that, yeah, I f**ked up - agnosticism that is not aligned to a specific religion is a doctrine not a religion (and atheism is neither).
 
Thanks for the clarification.......btw I'm an agnostic (I was raised as Presbyterian) who always tick's none on the forms.
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Points: 65760 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 08 2016 at 13:48
Despite being raised Catholic I've come to realize I never had any real belief of my own. I remember getting my first reconciliation and going "so that's it?" As I got older I was less and less accepting and became more critical. I would consider myself an agnostic atheist now.

Atheism may not be a religion but the new atheism movement might as well be the religion of the alt-right.
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