What if God is a verb?
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Do theists disbelieve the same God as atheists? Topic open for everyone
- Thread starter Jumi
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Shad
Veteran Member
Your questions are flawed. If by traditional based view of god you must realize that each view is based on individual scripture first. Thus the very idea of a theistic god is based on the anthropomorphic concept of god. The philosophical arguments for god only led to deism. These argument are borrowed to augment the scripture based concept only after one accepts a given form of scripture. With this in mind the deistic, philosophical concept, is also a rejection of theism since theism is about a personal god which cares about us. Deism makes no such claims.
Theists only agree with the borrowed deistic philosophical arguments. Once this part of an argument for God is removed there is little in agreement from if god has a son to which revelation is true. The philosophical argument have no need of revelation nor use it. Traditional theism is not philosophical theism nor deism.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
How would that work? Would it be something people create by their thoughts?
Let's take a higher level perspective of this. It's based on a particular mindset that interprets what it reads within a certain framework. That's a little more accurate a description. So a mythic-mode of thought is going to read scripture in a way that reflects and concludes things to fit within that framework. A magic-mode thought will interpret a magical Jesus. A rational-mode thought will interpret a rational Jesus. A pluralist-mode thought will interpret a pluralistic Jesus, and so forth. We have to factor in how someone thinks in general, using their general interpretive frameworks.
Which is reflective of the mythic frameworks.
Which are reflective of the rationalist frameworks.
Accepts, within which framework? Accepting scripture to a rationalist means accepting its human origins and valuing its symbolic content. Accepting scripture to the mythic mind means it's the actual, literal words of God that much be believed exactly as they read it. Accepting scripture to the magic believer thinks the words themselves have power, and the book has magical properties.
Deism is actually just a rationalistic interpretation of theism. It's primary motive was to basically defrock church authority. It removes God from entering into the world, and thus any claims the church speaks for God. It still however leaves in place the transcendent God of theism. It just says no special interventions, and we're left to use reason. It's really not about God, but about making Reason the ultimate light of mankind, endowed upon him by the Creator.
Traditional theism is just the mythic-mode mindset, that supernatural forces outside you control everything. All that follows are just interpretations that fit with that overall framework of worldview. The magic-mode mindset, which comes before the mythic-mode, interprets the deity form magically, that if you incant the magical words, "Jesus, Jesus, I believe, I believe", that it affect the forces of nature coming from them, "through faith". They very much are part of the church as well. But they are not the "traditional theism" modes. They are more like the "prosperity Gospel" folks, or the "words of faith". "speak the word" folks. They are the magic believers, as opposed to the traditional mythic believers. They don't agree with each other, as you can suspect.
So with that all laid out, I am saying that what atheism is rejecting is really not far from that apple tree. It's all centered around that mythic view of God, such as deism itself was. You could call deism, "atheism lite", I suppose. I'll have to think about that.
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I would say it's like the verb, "to be".
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
God as the dance, the force that energize. Or, simply "being" (existing, existence) as a verb rather "a being" as a person.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Or like that.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Do theists disbelieve the same God as atheists?
The theists believe in G-d while atheists don't believe in G-d.
Regards
The theists believe in G-d while atheists don't believe in G-d.
Regards
gsa
Well-Known Member
What does that mean?
This is a problem with the mystic/pantheist/panentheist expressions discussed on this thread. You say that God is "the Absolute" or "Ultimate Reality." Or that God is a verb. But what does this mean?
For example, if "God is a verb," then that would imply that "God" is an action, state or occurrence or event. What is that action, state or occurrence/event? We are after all now discussing something that happens. You do not describe God as existing, since that is God as a noun. Instead "existing is God" is I suppose the corrected phrase. But what information is conveyed there? That sentence is difficult to make sense of, and even less sense can be divined from "We are goding." I do not know what information is being conveyed by the assertion that God is a verb. And frankly, it is clear that God is traditionally conceived of as a noun, one with several attributes. For example, holy is one of the many frequent adjectives used to describe the Abrahamic god. The Hebrew root, qadash, is juxtaposed with halal, which is essentially commonplace, so that we have a sacred(holy)/mundane(profane) dichotomy. One thing that seems clear to me, based on the historical record, is that these gods are loosely conceived of as imposing an order on a chaotic initial state. They achieve this order because they have a conscious will to impose on the initial state, because they are beings that are acting upon the world in this state.
But even if we set aside tradition, we still have to deal with the notion of "the Absolute" or "ultimate reality." It is not clear that such a thing or state exists. Ultimate reality could easily be an abstraction that describes a chaotic chain of causality and emergence, one that even loops cyclically. We really do not know. It may be that reality is irreducibly random. Is this irreducible randomness "god" in any meaningful sense?
The practical problem for atheists is that these rather speculative and I daresay esoteric God concepts are also minority positions. People do not attend church every week to worship Tillich's "Ground of All Being." This is simply not the god concept that is being used in most public discourse. Ultimate reality does not drive people to murder cartoonists, or to preach the gospel to unbelievers, or to worry about eternal torment. Yahweh and Allah motivate these things.
This is not to say that there is no "there" there when it comes to mystical experience. I think these mental states are worth exploring, rationally, without any preconception that they point to some ultimate feature of existence that lies beyond our physical brains or the interaction of our brains with the environment.
well named's grammar suggests that he used the word as a noun, not as a verb.
Thinking of god as a verb,
the winds of the spirit of creation,
the beginning and the ending,
the alpha and omega,
the soul within us,
the gnosis of being,
the reason for existing,
the realization of life.
~
It's kinda like a verb.
Makes one think of believing in something,
other than this fulfillment of life.
Gotta watch that....where's my bible !
~
'mud
the winds of the spirit of creation,
the beginning and the ending,
the alpha and omega,
the soul within us,
the gnosis of being,
the reason for existing,
the realization of life.
~
It's kinda like a verb.
Makes one think of believing in something,
other than this fulfillment of life.
Gotta watch that....where's my bible !
~
'mud
Orbit
I'm a planet
"God" is an unfortunate linguistic convention for connoting that which is beyond understanding or description.
A word that describes something that can't be described is, by definition, nonsense.
If that's what you mean by "God", then we don't even need to bother rejecting it. The term is hollow; there's nothing to reject (or accept).
gsa
Well-Known Member
Something that can neither be understood nor described is something that is unintelligible. It is something that cannot be communicated. As 9-10ths penguin says above, it would seem to be nonsensical. Moreover, "God" seems to suggest some singular state or process or action or thing that is beyond understanding or description, and therefore denying the possibility of multiple versions of "that which is beyond understanding or description."
If what you are describing is an experiential state, it would seem like that could be subject to a rational inquiry that could, over time, yield description, understanding and intelligibility. But if it is somehow beyond all that by definition, I am not sure what the point is. Or that we can say anything about it at all.
You're surprisingly close to understanding the reality of what is "God". Now you just need to quit trying to make reality a definition and you'll get it.
What do you mean it can't be communicated? Ever hear of art? Ever hear of dance? Ever hear of poetry, love, song, music, and so forth? What happens to you when you experience the inexpressible? How do you express it? Perhaps you've never experienced such a thing? Surely as a human you must have?
I think it may help you to understand the difference between understanding something in the sense of comprehension and understanding something with the heart in the sense of apprehension: Difference Between Apprehension and Comprehension
In the voice of Captain Kirk, "Spock, Spock, what's the matter with you? You're half human aren't you?"
God is not a logical proposition. In fact, humans aren't! Imagine that! Maybe we are made in the image of God afterall.
If the meaning of the dance could be explained, then why dance it out? Must everything fit within a rational box? This does not sound like human freedom. It sounds like a straightjacket, a cage of the mind.
Fluidity of being. That's the point. Being. Freedom. Not boxes.
We can say plenty, and plenty we do! It's just not definitions. It's song. Like all of life itself. The other half of being human.
gsa
Well-Known Member
What do you mean it can't be communicated? Ever hear of art? Ever hear of dance? Ever hear of poetry, love, song, music, and so forth? What happens to you when you experience the inexpressible? How do you express it? Perhaps you've never experienced such a thing? Surely as a human you must have?
I think it may help you to understand the difference between understanding something in the sense of comprehension and understanding something with the heart in the sense of apprehension: Difference Between Apprehension and Comprehension
In the voice of Captain Kirk, "Spock, Spock, what's the matter with you? You're half human aren't you?"
God is not a logical proposition. In fact, humans aren't! Imagine that! Maybe we are made in the image of God afterall.
If the meaning of the dance could be explained, then why dance it out? Must everything fit within a rational box? This does not sound like human freedom. It sounds like a straightjacket, a cage of the mind.
Fluidity of being. That's the point. Being. Freedom. Not boxes.
We can say plenty, and plenty we do! It's just not definitions. It's song. Like all of life itself. The other half of being human.
All of this would appear to reduce God to the functional equivalent of dance, painting, writing and other experiential forms of human expression. Yet consistently, and traditionally, God is conceived as something over and above the human.
Anyway, atheists probably have no major objection to this concept of God, because it has almost nothing in common with the traditional understanding of god, save sharing the name.
Well, we can speak of the world in terms of definitions too, but is that really the reality of it? No, not really. It's a mental model, not the reality itself. When you speak of matters approaching Infinity or the Absolute, concepts begin to break down. It doesn't matter what you are talking about. So the best you can do is point to it. "God", by use of the word itself points to the Ultimate, or the Absolute, so contradictions will be inevitable. If you can define the Infinite, it's not infinite because you placed yourself outside of it to look at it in order to define it. If it doesn't include you within it, it's not infinite. So you're left fumbling with words to describe what is inherently, inclusively beyond definition. It's like the sound of one hand clapping this way.
But if we understand that we ourself are part of that which we are trying to describe, and if we see it is infinite, then it of necessity is infinite within us. So we are that infinite itself, asking and looking to see and know itself. And now the whole thing of definitions breaks down. An infinite that is not infinite at all times in all ways, in all things, is not infinite. It can only be expressed and known as yourself. It's not reduced to dance, but it is the only language that is less constrained by the boundaries of subject/object dualities. We can certainly discuss in logical terms, but they must be held as pointers, not boxes. Words have meaning beyond definitions.
Bingo! You just made my point others seemed to object to. I said in post #9, "it's been my observation [atheists] are specifically targeting the anthropomorphic, mythic-literal view of God. When presented with other understanding, the typical response is, "Well, that's not God". I think after 10 years I get the pattern pretty well." This just supported what I said at the outset of this discussion which someone took great offense at me for saying. So then to that original point, atheism is defined in relation only to the anthropomorphic deity, and as such is not relevant beyond that. It cannot assert itself beyond that, as it doesn't recognize God outside that definition.
No, I think I'm all the way there... or at least as far as can be gone.
If "God" describes the indescribable, then we're done. There is not - cannot be - any merit in any theistic position that's based on such a god.
Do you think that trading traditional god-concepts for this word-salad navel-gazing makes your position any better? Do you really think that atheists - or rational people generally - don't reject the literal nonsense that you're peddling? The rejection is a bit more "meta", but you've actually made your situation worse - at least with traditional theism, there are claims that I can evaluate to see if they're possibly true. You don't even have that going for you.