The pot calling the kettle black.
How so? I actually understand these things more than Dawkins does, apparently. As a point of reference I'll quote Elaine Pagels in reference to Dawkins. She said, "He's not talking about any God I know." She is any Episcopalian scholar. Any far more amusingly, she referred to him as the "Village Atheist".
How is my stating this about Dawkins the pot calling the kettle black? How am I speaking outside my area of knowledge?
Because it doesn't express just the sense of awe and wonder. It doesn't just express the ineffable.
True, but don't you know the bit about
throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
Language is not owned by any particular religious group. I never said otherwise.
Oh but your arguments clearly show you believe it is, "the majority" owns it, you claim.
You do realize that the majority begins as a minority? Change begins with the minority? That's how these things work.
It hasn't evolved. It has changed over time.
Hmmmm..... it hasn't evolved (which is change over time), it has changed over time (which is evolution). Error, does not compute. Short-circuit in logic pathways....
I see no reason to willing use a word in a way that could confuse listeners and readers alike.
Because it is a valid word. How it is used is determined by... context! Context is everything.
If it is required to lay some groundwork to explain the context to convey the meaning, than so be it. You'd have to do that using some bogus made up word too, right? Just to blurt out Treplate in a discussion is less meaningful than to use God in clearly a larger context.
Did I have to explain the context in any fashion whatsover for you to get that I wasn't talking about sky-daddy God? No. You said it yourself without me having to spell it out for you. You're smart. Other's are smart too. Give them some credit.
I highly doubt you would have any success in making yourself understood without properly defining what you mean by 'God' anywhere outside your community.
You understood.
I don't mean to say you are alone, but that you are simply part of a minority in this use of the term. A minority that is only relevant at this very moment because you are part of it.
Not at all. It is a growing minority to be sure. Take away, deny it the valid use of language, and what do you have? Something that is a watered-down "safe" language that lets ignorance in the majority prevail.
You started that quote with: God is used...
Yes. And what?
If you use it like that is another matter entirely. You are free to use any word as you wish, under the consequence of not being understood correctly depending on the popularity of the definition you use. Just do not extrapolate your use of the word as if it were the general use of the word.
I fully understand the limits of how people currently use the word. I think they're big enough, perhaps ready enough to allow the word to have greater reach for themselves. But how will that happen if we make up some other word? Boy, talk about saying we're not talking about the same thing! That's not what I'm saying. We are talking about the same thing. It is God, just "grown up" some in our understanding. Why use a different word?
And this is true because...?
Because it is a perceived experienced reality to many. Perhaps not to you, but it is to many.
Once you set a goal it is obvious that anything that moves towards that goal is to be considered as a development. However, most certainly i do not have to share your goal(s).
The goal of development? Sure, you're free to stay static all you wish. This is the world in this box I've drawn. My point is that development by definition transcends and includes what came before it, whatever that is. The goal is development. But not to many, of course who are happy with the world just the way it is, easy and unchanging.
