Pantheism vs. Atheism (Others are welcome)

[Copernicus]

No, that's an analogy.

Metaphors are analogies based on words.

 

[Willamena]

Metaphors are analogies based on words.

What do you mean by "metaphors always break down"?

 

[Copernicus]

What do you mean by "metaphors always break down"?

Metaphors are analogies based on words. Analogies are logical fallacies. They always break down. Do you need me to explain why?

 

[FlyingTeaPot]

My particular take on it is as follows: I believe that the Universe is God and it is personal and intelligent, albeit not yet on a cosmic scale or in a metaphysical sense.

How can the universe be personal and intelligent? You are applying adjectives to something that does not need them.

 

[EverChanging]

Some of what you say is meaningful to me, but other things you say are not. Most atheists posting on this thread find problems with your specific descriptions of the universe or else don't have any need (or perceived need) to approach the universe with reverence or religious awe or else they have that without resorting to pantheistic spirituality.

I find a problem with it because I don't care to base an entire religion on the results of the scientific method alone. Science has been invaluable for me in creating a world view that is physicalist, monist, and natural, but the scientific method itself, while useful, is not based on objective observations. None of our observations are objective.

Nor do I wish to discard my mythic heritage, my liturgical heritage, or theological heritage because those things are not scientific. To limit a religion to strictly subjective scientific observations strips it of much of its creativity and appeal for many people. I do not accept your proposal that monotheistic or polytheistic models of relating to the divine are inadequate or that the universe must not be anthropomorphized. We anthropomorphize our own behaviors and intentions, so of course we anthropomorphize the universe, whether we think so or not. It is natural for humans to perceive that way. So if atheistic neo-pagans want to relate to the universe through the lens of specific deities with specific associations and myths does not strike me as inferior to your approach. I don't say that it is superior to your approach, either, but for me personally, I find such devotions and practices helpful. It is a form of story telling, a way of attributing divine (and human) qualities to the universe. It's not objective or scientific, of course. It isn't meant to be. It's a human story about how we relate to the universe.

Though you criticize our Enlightenment-age conditioning, it is apparent that you yourself are not really beyond it any more than the rest of us. You have rejected all religious inspiration that does not involve data obtained from the scientific method, and you have failed to take into account other ways of constructing the world, such as myth. You are indeed quite dismissive of it, which shows that you are primarily thinking along the lines of logos. Therefore, atheists perceive you as offering nothing new or useful, and for me as a religious person, I see you dismissing myth as somehow inferior to limited, flawed, and ultimately subjective scientific observations, and you even show a tendency to think inferior worldviews that are basically the same as yours as a Scientific Pantheist, but which also include mythic elements, anthropomorphic deities, liturgies, traditions, and ritual. How are mythic metaphors in and of themselves inferior to your own metaphors about the physical universe and your experience thereof?

 

[Willamena]

Metaphors are analogies based on words. Analogies are logical fallacies. They always break down. Do you need me to explain why?

Yes. In what sense do you mean "break down"?

Edit: "Bad analogy" is a logical fallacy, as is "weak analogy" and "false analogy." Did you mean to claim all analogies are logical fallacy? If so, can you point me at an explanation of that?

 

[Copernicus]

Yes. In what sense do you mean "break down"?

Edit: "Bad analogy" is a logical fallacy, as is "weak analogy" and "false analogy." Did you mean to claim all analogies are logical fallacy? If so, can you point me at an explanation of that?

Metaphors and analogies are used to explain things--to increase insight and understanding. An analogy is a comparison of two different things with similar properties. Since the things compared are not identical, there will always be properties not shared by them. The breakdown is in the properties not shared, and sometimes those unshared properties can give people misleading "insights".

Let me give you an example of how a metaphor breaks down. Historically, scholars have treated language as if it were a pipeline between speaker and hearer. Meaning flows from the head of the speaker into the head of the hearer. This is called the "conduit metaphor". It is a powerful metaphor, and it has allowed linguists to make a lot of progress in understanding how language works. The conduit metaphor has been a dominant theme in almost all past schools of linguistic theory.

The problem with the conduit metaphor is that natural language expressions are ambiguous. Take, for example, a sentence like "The boy on the hill saw the girl with a telescope." This can describe various situations that depend on how you group words into phrases. For example, the boy could have seen a girl who had a telescope, or he could have seen the girl by using a telescope. There is no way to get the proper meaning of the sentence outside of the context in which it is uttered. Hence, the meaning is not contained completely within the "pipe", i.e. the linguistic expression. Any linguistic theory that fails to take context into account--which is where the conduit metaphor leads you--will ultimately fail to capture proper insights about how linguistic semantics works. The metaphor makes people blind to the contextual aspect of meaning.

Contrast natural language with a formal language like symbolic logic, a computer programming language, or a mathematical language. The ambiguity in formal languages is always "local". That is, it is contained within the "pipe". Hence, the conduit metaphor is a pretty good one (albeit not perfect) for explaining how meaning in formal languages works. The meaning of a formal expression is always going to mean the same thing, given the values that you plug into the variables. So metaphors always break down somewhere, and they can even impede correct understanding.

Edit: Notice that the conduit metaphor is also behind the general understanding of how the interpretation of religious scripture works. The idea is that the wording of the Bible "contains" the meaning of the text. You can understand it just by knowing the meanings of the words. Similarly, the legal profession implicitly bases its interpretation of legislative language on the conduit metaphor. The conduit metaphor leads people to think that meaning depends entirely on the words that they see, whereas the meaning of the words was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the information that the original authors were trying to convey. To properly understand a text, one needs to understand the context in which it was written. It is misleading to think that meaning flows just through words alone.

 

[Willamena]

Metaphors and analogies are used to explain things--to increase insight and understanding. An analogy is a comparison of two different things with similar properties. Since the things compared are not identical, there will always be properties not shared by them. The breakdown is in the properties not shared, and sometimes those unshared properties can give people misleading "insights".

Let me give you an example of how a metaphor breaks down. Historically, scholars have treated language as if it were a pipeline between speaker and hearer. Meaning flows from the head of the speaker into the head of the hearer. This is called the "conduit metaphor". It is a powerful metaphor, and it has allowed linguists to make a lot of progress in understanding how language works. The conduit metaphor has been a dominant theme in almost all past schools of linguistic theory.

The problem with the conduit metaphor is that natural language expressions are ambiguous. Take, for example, a sentence like "The boy on the hill saw the girl with a telescope." This can describe various situations that depend on how you group words into phrases. For example, the boy could have seen a girl who had a telescope, or he could have seen the girl by using a telescope. There is no way to get the proper meaning of the sentence outside of the context in which it is uttered. Hence, the meaning is not contained completely within the "pipe", i.e. the linguistic expression. Any linguistic theory that fails to take context into account--which is where the conduit metaphor leads you--will ultimately fail to capture proper insights about how linguistic semantics works. The metaphor makes people blind to the contextual aspect of meaning.

You spoke of "misleading insights" due to dissimilarity in comparison, but it's the similarity in comparison that supplies insights, so I'm not sure where you're coming from with that.

As far as the example of the boy, the girl and the telescope, well, that's what we have commas for.

I'm not sure what you mean by this last line. Can you explain? As I understand it, a metaphor takes its meaning from context. The "conduit metaphor," that has people chosing words and narrating communication as if it is a data dump from one head to the other, is an example of this --the metaphor takes its meaning from the image supplied by an electrical conduit. Without that context of a background in understanding the image --what a conduit is and what it does --there is no metaphor.

Sorry to others for going off-topic.

Contrast natural language with a formal language like symbolic logic, a computer programming language, or a mathematical language. The ambiguity in formal languages is always "local". That is, it is contained within the "pipe". Hence, the conduit metaphor is a pretty good one (albeit not perfect) for explaining how meaning in formal languages works. The meaning of a formal expression is always going to mean the same thing, given the values that you plug into the variables. So metaphors always break down somewhere, and they can even impede correct understanding.

The conduit metaphor, itself, doesn't seem to have broken down.

Edit: Notice that the conduit metaphor is also behind the general understanding of how the interpretation of religious scripture works. The idea is that the wording of the Bible "contains" the meaning of the text. You can understand it just by knowing the meanings of the words. Similarly, the legal profession implicitly bases its interpretation of legislative language on the conduit metaphor. The conduit metaphor leads people to think that meaning depends entirely on the words that they see, whereas the meaning of the words was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the information that the original authors were trying to convey. To properly understand a text, one needs to understand the context in which it was written. It is misleading to think that meaning flows just through words alone.

Scriptural literalism is a *****. :yes:

 

[Robin Eleven]

...
I realize this is a very nontraditional conception of God, but I feel I have to right to use it since "god" has always meant different things to different people at different times in different cultures. It has even taken on more diverse meanings in our individualistic Western culture so the argument against pantheism from semantics is rather weak I think.

I think this is an essential point that many seem to overlook. Taking into account simple tribal god(s) worship up to the more organized and top-heavy religions, it's pretty obvious to me that they are extremely prone to human error and corruption.
I like Bill Maher's observation on this, which is "religion is the bureaucracy between Man and his God."
If the way you describe pantheology is accurate, it seems to be more inclusive and humble than the Abrahamic religions.
Also it seems to be more of a personal experience and interpretation of what 'God' is.
Still, your religion/belief system seems to presuppose a definite meaning and over-arching plan behind it all.
In that respect, it differs little from what I feel is the very core behind man's search for a God, which is the fear of meaningslessness and nothingness.

I suspect we as a species are forced to wait out a slow cognitive evolution to be able to grasp these concepts. We are mere infants, if that.
Or... Douglas Adams was right all along: '42'.

 

[Copernicus]

You spoke of "misleading insights" due to dissimilarity in comparison, but it's the similarity in comparison that supplies insights, so I'm not sure where you're coming from with that.

Not quite. I wrote 'misleading "insights"', with scare quotes around "insights", because metaphors and analogies invite inappropriate comparisons along with the appropriate ones.

As far as the example of the boy, the girl and the telescope, well, that's what we have commas for.

There is no way to use a comma correctly in that sentence to resolve the ambiguity. :no:

I'm not sure what you mean by this last line. Can you explain? As I understand it, a metaphor takes its meaning from context. The "conduit metaphor," that has people chosing words and narrating communication as if it is a data dump from one head to the other, is an example of this --the metaphor takes its meaning from the image supplied by an electrical conduit. Without that context of a background in understanding the image --what a conduit is and what it does --there is no metaphor.

Actually, a "conduit" is any type of channel that is used to convey something. A wire is a conduit that conveys electricity, but it might be more helpful to think of this metaphor in terms of plumbing--as a pipe that conveys water. According to the metaphor, a linguistic expression is the conduit--the "pipe" or "wire". Meaning is the stuff conveyed--"water" or "electricity". The metaphor does not allow for the possibility that the "stuff" being conveyed can exist outside of the conduit. The conduit fully contains it. When applied to natural language, but not formal language, the metaphor can be highly misleading.

When I mentioned "meaning from context" above it was about the meaning of a linguistic act--speech or writing. You have conflated that sense of "context" with understanding the meaning of a metaphor, not a specific act of communication.

The conduit metaphor, itself, doesn't seem to have broken down.

It breaks down in the sense that the meaning conveyed by a natural language expression is not "contained" by the language used to transmit it. You must go outside of the "conduit" in order to get the full meaning intended by the speaker.

Scriptural literalism is a *****. :yes:

And scriptural literalism depends on the view of language that the conduit metaphor describes--a view in which the meaning of the speech/text is fully contained by the words being used. That is a fundamental misconception of how we calculate meaning from words.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

How do you imagine this would make us behave differently than we already do? Most atheists I know believe that we are part of nature. You think that there is some benefit to be gained from belief in your claims about the nature of the universe, but it is far from clear how your belief would make anyone behave differently than they already do.


We will not "probably" die out. We will certainly die out. The only question is how soon. Of more immediate interest is how each of us chooses to spend our existence when the human race is still a viable entity.


So far, you have failed to explain the advantage of keeping your interpretation of spirituality and God around. You have only said that intelligent beings live in the universe and are a part of nature. I'm not sure how any of this justifies bashing atheists.

Agreed. A similar thread is in progress and is following along the same lines.

 

[Willamena]

Not quite. I wrote 'misleading "insights"', with scare quotes around "insights", because metaphors and analogies invite inappropriate comparisons along with the appropriate ones.

But it needn't be seen that way. A metaphor takes its meaning from particular context --if you know you're not seeing particular context, you can also know you're not seeing the metaphor.

There is no way to use a comma correctly in that sentence to resolve the ambiguity. :no:

We can use the commas different ways to make the combinations of words mean different things, but each way we use the commas would supply a particular meaning, hence eliminating any ambiguity of meaning.

Actually, a "conduit" is any type of channel that is used to convey something. A wire is a conduit that conveys electricity, but it might be more helpful to think of this metaphor in terms of plumbing--as a pipe that conveys water. According to the metaphor, a linguistic expression is the conduit--the "pipe" or "wire". Meaning is the stuff conveyed--"water" or "electricity". The metaphor does not allow for the possibility that the "stuff" being conveyed can exist outside of the conduit. The conduit fully contains it. When applied to natural language, but not formal language, the metaphor can be highly misleading.

The plumbing image does work well, yes.

This conduit metaphor, in regards to metalanguage, doesn't allow "stuff" being conveyed outside "the conduit" --but the metaphor itself is "stuff being conveyed outside the conduit." That's a significant difference.

When I mentioned "meaning from context" above it was about the meaning of a linguistic act--speech or writing. You have conflated that sense of "context" with understanding the meaning of a metaphor, not a specific act of communication.

It breaks down in the sense that the meaning conveyed by a natural language expression is not "contained" by the language used to transmit it. You must go outside of the "conduit" in order to get the full meaning intended by the speaker.

And scriptural literalism depends on the view of language that the conduit metaphor describes--a view in which the meaning of the speech/text is fully contained by the words being used. That is a fundamental misconception of how we calculate meaning from words.

I'm sorry I misunderstood "meaning from context," there.

I'm still not sure what "break down" means, in terms of your example (what "breaks down" about it). Are you implying that all metaphor need be subject to the conduit metaphor?

 

[Copernicus]

We can use the commas different ways to make the combinations of words mean different things, but each way we use the commas would supply a particular meaning, hence eliminating any ambiguity of meaning.

I cannot stress this more forcefully--No. Any use of commas in this sentence--"The boy saw the girl on the hill with a telescope"--would violate the rules of English punctuation. Grammar teachers all over the English-speaking world would go into convulsions. But don't worry about them. We grow new ones all the time, no matter how little we pay them.

I'm sorry I misunderstood "meaning from context," there.

Comma usage! Bad! :slap:

I'm still not sure what "break down" means, in terms of your example (what "breaks down" about it). Are you implying that all metaphor need be subject to the conduit metaphor?

I'm not sure why you don't understand my point. Metaphors are analogies. All analogies fail if you take them too literally. I was only using the conduit metaphor as an example of how a metaphor can cause a breakdown in the nature of what it is being used to "explain". In the case of the conduit metaphor, it invites people to ignore the role of context in the act of understanding a linguistic expression.

 

[Willamena]

I cannot stress this more forcefully--No. Any use of commas in this sentence--"The boy saw the girl on the hill with a telescope"--would violate the rules of English punctuation. Grammar teachers all over the English-speaking world would go into convulsions. But don't worry about them. We grow new ones all the time, no matter how little we pay them.

Comma usage! Bad! :slap:

Sowwy.

I'm not sure why you don't understand my point. Metaphors are analogies. All analogies fail if you take them too literally. I was only using the conduit metaphor as an example of how a metaphor can cause a breakdown in the nature of what it is being used to "explain". In the case of the conduit metaphor, it invites people to ignore the role of context in the act of understanding a linguistic expression.

That a metaphor that makes a nonliteral analogy fails when taken literally I agree with wholeheartedly. But how that translates into "all metaphors fail" I don't see.

That it "invites" a literal translation I can see; that the invitation is accepted is ignorance of what a metaphor is.

Go us! (humanity)