Desert Snake
Veteran Member
O.k., but I don't think that means we should go changing what 'atheist' and 'theist' mean.
I don't understand the point of that. Like I said, if someone is an atheist, they can specify that.
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Why Debate the Existence of God with Non-believers?
- Thread starter steeltoes
- Start date
O.k., but I don't think that means we should go changing what 'atheist' and 'theist' mean.
I don't understand the point of that. Like I said, if someone is an atheist, they can specify that.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
I'm not changing what anything means. When someone calls themselves an atheist, they mean they don't believe in the most popular god-concept, the anthropomorphic personal creator god who is intimately involved in human affairs.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
P.s., I noticed your wording here. No, it isn't just "my idea" of god, I think panen-Christianity is fairly well represented, it's just that most Christians don't specify their deity concept as well as identifying themselves as Christian. I'm getting the impression that you aren't as familiar with Christianity as you seem to be implying with your statements.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
That's just innacurate, though.
Seriously, just look these terms up, you'll see that if you use the terms like that, you're causing more confusion than otherwise.
Also, I think when someone calls themselves an atheist, it means a dis-belief in all deity idea.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Dude, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. I said "familiar with", that means I can't argue that other perspective. The 'technical ' terms aren't used in everyday conversation, give me a break.
If you're saying, I disagree with some of 'mainstream' Christianity, then yes, so what. It doesn't change what's being debated.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
No, it's not just your idea of god. That wasn't the implication. I used "your" to specify a specific concept. I could have used more words to make that clear, but I didn't think it was necessary.
Also, no, panen-Christianity isn't very well represented. It might account for a few percent of the total, but not a significant portion.
I'm getting the impression you're not as familiar with religion as you think you are. After all, aren't you the one who said you weren't even familiar with the most common god-concept?
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
I'm not claiming to be some expert, either, I'm not the one arguing that some basic definitions should be changed.
theism=belief in deity
atheism=disbelief in deity
That's the extent of meaning I attach to those terms.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
Nothing inaccurate in my statements. When someone calls themselves an atheist, it doesn't mean non-belief in all deity ideas. I believe in love, and some people consider God to be love. I believe in the universe, which is what pantheists call God. This has been my whole point. Generally you'll find atheists don't have a major problem with deists. Maybe some intelligent being did kick off the universe and let it go. We also don't have much of a problem with pantheists, which is why Richard Dawkins called pantheism "sexed-up atheism". Hard atheism is really a reaction to the most common god-concept, the Yahweh type.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
Neither am I. I'm arguing for using the definitions most people use.
Except that then you have to define deity. That's all I'm doing.
Yes, of course. Just like every single thing you name is called that and you are speaking of that sign. It's not actually that, but what you call it. I refer to a tangible, actual experience by a name that is fitting to it, just like you call an apple and apple. The sign God has a referent.
Hindus referring to Brahman as God. Brahman is not the same thing as Jehovah.
Here's where my analogy in fact does work. A cloud to a child is still a cloud, even if his mind understands it in mythological terms. The cloud is still a cloud to an adult, even though his mind understands it in rational terms. Do children and adults use different words? No. Because the understanding of what a cloud is changes as we develop. Why obfuscate this the way you are?
God is a sky-parent to a child. God is the all-encompassing holistic binding reality in all things, through all things, and to all things to the mystic. Same God, different levels of understanding. Yes, the conceptions change - about the same thing, not different things altogether.
And you don't think this reflects the reality of abstract terms, like love, truth, peace, joy, happiness, compassion, etc. Love to a two year old is a fuzzy puppy. Love to an adult is self-sacrifice! Two, completely different "concepts" aren't they?
Context, baby. Context.
Yes, you do not understand the purpose of language. Language is not a static thing that means something definitive, and should always and ever remain that meaning! You completely do not understand language. Language evolves. The use of words at a higher, or deeper level, pull its rudimentary meanings forward. Common use always lags behind where words, and the depth and meaning of words applied to greater intensities of understandings gets pushed by those who are at the leading edges of human evolution - the poets, the philosophers, the mystics.
If you want to understand what a word means aside from some ultra simplistic definition, you do not go to a dictionary. You go to those who specialize in these areas. If there is confusion in the masses because of this, that is because they are being asked to stretch their understanding a bit, to advance their understanding to be broadened, to expand their consciousness a bit. But to those who require the world to "make sense" in static, stationary terms, this will drive them mad! They do not want to be challenged! They pull out the dictionary as if it were the Holy Bible, the "Word of God", somehow, to try to settle the "debate" in their minds. But dictionaries do not define words. People do.
Those who push the edges, drive evolution of words. Just like love means self-sacrifice to the mature, while it remains a fuzzy puppy to the child. The child is simply developmentally unable to relate to self-sacrifice. And yet, "Love" does have meaning to him. It's a warm happy feeling. Eventually, as his consciousness expands, it will be able to take in deeper meaning. Same with God.
And..... God meant something "different" before. Rather, how God was conventionally understood for the last 2500 years, is NOT how God was understood conventionally before that. People's understanding, their consciousness evolved. As as the consciousness evolved, so did how God was conceptualized. Same word. You can see the evolution of God right within the pages of the Bible. It's "God's Blog" in that way.
Do you see it yet? Evolution is the key to understanding all these things. This is why I refer to childhood development, which mirrors on a micro-level what you see on a macro level in human evolution of stages of conscious awareness.
Now hang on to yourself, words are an integral part of that evolution. As the understanding of thing expands in this process, the word infused with that basic meaning, is taken and is pushed in its meaning wider and deeper, which will in term aide in expanding and deepening the consciousness of the hearer - in time. What I am saying here is no small thing, and why you're suggestion to change the word fails to do what language does in human evolution. Using the word repeated with deeper meaning will expand the understanding of what God is away from the antiquated mythological, tribal deity understanding to that of a mature spiritual heart and mind living in a rational society, and beyond.
Black and white? Just like that? No. God is not a puppy dog or a Big Foot. It's a much larger and open word than that, like Love is. People's experiences of Life are multidimensional, and a word like God touches into that multidimensional subtle reality. When you use a word like God in "larger" terms, it takes that subtle, sensed reality and gives it an expanded conceptual framework in order for spiritual development to evolve. Words help evolve consciousness. But it's not simply words alone.
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Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Seems like it could be confusing. I'm clearly a theist, if I, say labeled myself an 'atheist', how is that accurately describing my beliefs? It just adds uncertainty to the definitions. That's why I think the definitions as they are meant ( I assume) to be understood, are appropriate.
Perhaps the 'problem' here is that the common usage of the term atheism is being misused.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
A historical definition of 'atheist' has to be provided, imo. How was the term meant to be understood.
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
Right. You're using the label "God" for something. The most common definition of that term is a bit different from the way you're using it.
Not really. For you and some others, there is this thing you refer to as God. It is different from the sky-parent most people believe in. It's not a different level of understanding; it's a different concept.
No, they're not completely different. All of those things you mention are a single concept, even if some of them are shown in different ways. Love is a feeling of fondness for something or someone. Sometimes that manifests in self-sacrifice, sometimes it manifests in hugs.
I did address this, and it doesn't decimate my point at all.
Let me stop you right here. This is ridiculous. I majored in linguistics, and have studied many different languages. It's not I who has a misunderstanding here. The purpose of language is to communicate. To communicate we need to be clear. Using one term for many different things is not being clear, nor is it helpful for communication. We can use one word for different purposes, but it has to be understood to have the same core components. Using the term "God" to refer to anything from love to the universe to an old man who watches everything and judges us from the sky isn't helpful to communication.
The problem in this case is that you're not driving the evolution of the word.
We've only had the word "God" for several hundred years. It was other words before that. But as far back as we have sources, there was always this anthropomorphic god-concept that sparked the use of the words that have led to the term "God".
Magic Man
Reaper of Conversation
You might be close enough to a generic theist to be considered one without confusion, yes.
I don't think the common usage of "atheist" is misuse. By far the most dominant god-concept in western history is an anthropomorphic one. All the ancient myths involve this type of god: Zeus, Athena, Thor, Odin, Lugh, Shiva, Saturn, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, etc. Since that's the conception most people think of when they hear "god", "atheist" being a reaction to that particular concept seems appropriate.
Desert Snake
Veteran Member
Now you're backtracking. I'm a panentheist, so there is no similarity according to you. You're making less sense now..
Hmm o.k.
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
Christians were labeled atheist in ancient Rome, if I remember correctly. Which, if true, puts a twist on things.
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Here's the source of your problem. No, it is not a different referent. I said this before. In fact, you entirely skipped that section of my post where I said its referent is an experience of the transcendent, and I asked you whether or not you have ever experienced that and how you might choose to describe it.
Even if all someone has is a concept, those concepts can and do expand in their understanding, without referring to something else. This is why I brought up the cloud referent. How a child understands a cloud is not the same as an adult. A child does not think in rationalistic terms. His conceptualization of that cloud is not the same conceptualization that an adult has, but it is still the same cloud.
In fact, no one truly understanding what a cloud is except through their linguistic representations of that cloud. And how words are taken and interpreted is done through their level of consciousness development. So when little Billy hears his parent ask, "See the cloud up there?," what he sees in his mind represented by the word cloud is not the same as his parent.
His mental framework interprets the word cloud in mythological terms. His parent's mental framework interprets the word cloud in rationalistic terms. And that's key, it's the mental framework, the lens through which words are interpreted that makes them different "concepts" of the same objects.
These are the views of developmental psychology you are missing in here in your arguments that words have strict interpretive meaning, that somehow, magically, everyone who hears them thinks exactly identically, that their concepts are right close to center about 99% the same with only "slight variations". I reject that non-reality. I believe the variations are considerably wider than that because of the entire mode of worldview is shifted, their entire mental structures of consciousness are operating at a different plane of reality. Same words, different hearers.
It's a different conceptualization of the same thing. I repeat. I also speak from personal experience. What I called God as a child, is the same "God" I speak of today, just understood from a different altitude, so to speak. I once imagined God as the sky-parent model, I know understand that model within a certain interpretive framework. I don't use that overall framework anymore, for anything I interpret, including God.
I hear your argument, but I disagree love is "a feeling". It is also a philosophical principle, an ideal of action that one lives by whether or not they feel some emotion people associate with "love". Now, please tell me how a child of three is capable of philosophical thought?
But even if I accept your "definition" of love, you fail by saying that God is understood as the mythological face of a sky-deity. That is not the core "concept" of the word God. That too, like in your example her, is a "manifestation" of what God is understood as in the minds of its distinctly different hearers. God, like love, is manifest in many ways to those who use the word. You are making my point in this argument.
Where you fail is that saying that one interpretive view of the word God, defines what God is. I don't believe it does, even to those who use it that way. In fact, most say God is beyond comprehension, that God is undefinable. So where does that leave your argument?
God is a poetic word, not a scientific term.
By speaking of context, I am referring to understanding the interpretive frameworks, the tools, the set of lenses someone understands everything that hits their mind through, which alters its understanding to fit within that context. And so, if you understand those frameworks, you as the hearer of them using the word are able to understand how they understand it by the way they use it. You understand the mental context in which they interpret words. I think I failed to make that distinction clear.
That's great, and it helps to perhaps understand where you are blocked here. I respect your education in this area, but I am speaking of the mental ways in which words are interpreted. That goes into the areas of psychology and consciousness studies. Are you accounting for those in your understanding of how words are interpreted? What's your baseline group you're referring to? Those who think at the level you do?
I do believe the same processes are at work, by the way. I just believe that the structural framework changes how a thing is interpreted.
And it does! It communicates an particular image to the minds of those who hear it depending on the structures of their interpretive framework. My whole point is that through the "higher" use of a word, which is entirely valid in using God because its core is not "sky-man" (that's an interpretive model in a mythological framework), and that to use the word in a larger, more inclusive framework has an effect of influencing growth out of an earlier stage into a higher stages of interpretive frameworks. That's how it works through all our stages of development we go through.
Does the study of linguists ever look at things like this?
Yes, and people who see reality through the same types of interpretive frameworks as I do, have no problem understanding what I mean when I say God. My use of God includes how others have used it, in mythological terms, but simply negates those "models" as the dominant feature, or "manifestation" of the meaning of the word God. I am clear what I mean. You simply interpret it at the mythological understanding. You have no other frame of reference to understand the meaning more clearly in from what it looks like from my point of view. In other words, you can't see what I see. That God doesn't exist to you in your experience. The only God that exists in your experience is the mythological interpretation of God communicated to you conceptually only. So it boils down to this. I am using a word that does communicate, in context. But how I use it has no referent yet to those who haven't moved to that way of understanding the world.
I'll just add here, "reality" is not a single thing out there that if we get smart enough and use the right tools we can "figure out". That is what is known as the myth of the pre-given world. It is always and ever a matter of interfacing with it through our interpretive frameworks. And those frameworks evolve and shift and change over time.
God to you, is only the mythological framework's interpretive concept of the Divine, and since you can't fit that into a rational framework, you reject it. But because I have experience of God that can work within a rational framework and beyond, I have no problem using the word God because it doesn't violate it, and it communicates with others who likewise do. Again, this is why I asked if you have ever experienced the transcendent. Without that, you have no referent beyond the mythological God. I do have a referent beyond that interpretation, as do many others.
(continued....)
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I repeat, it's not many different things. It's the same thing understood differently at different stages of development. I get the feeling you don't understand the reality of this.
All of those are interpretation of the same thing. All of those are how the mind puts a "Face" on God. Do you see this yet?
"God" is the face we put upon the Infinite, and it takes many forms. The key to it is what it evokes from within - that is God. So even the big guy-in-the-sky face of God, can and does evoke that same thing from within! It's all still God, even though it takes on many faces. The core isn't the concept of God. The core is the experience of the Infinite in ourselves and in the world. God is more than a deity form. But a deity form represented God on a symbolic level.
So words, when used a symbols, have a transforming effect. Jung called them "symbols of transformation". They have a vertical dimension to them, that transforms consciousness itself! When they are used horizontally, they are used to "translate" the world. At which points, they are not symbols, but signs. Are you familiar with this distinction? Are you familiar with what archetypes are and how they function? This would be helpful if you did. That's how I am speaking.
It's failing to work horizontally because it exceeds that mythological interpretive structure. It does however work symbolically to lead to an emergence from the lower structure to the one above it (developmental model here, so forgive the use of hierarchies which are appropriate in growth models). So yes, as a symbol of transformation, it does in fact lead evolution. That's how these things work.
That's stretching a bit. It doesn't matter what language its in. It still means the same thing. Did you address my question about the use of Brahman? That means God too. But it doesn't look like sky-parent, does it?
No, that is false. The mythological God was a later development. Prior to this was a magical reality, a dream like state, not where there was a single overarching principle that governed everything. And after that magical stage, that magical interpretive framework, came earlier deity forms, the various gods ruling over these previous magical concerns, and so forth. There is a lack of understand you are drawing from in this.
I recommend you familiarize yourself with the Structures of Consciousness of Jean Gebser. You can get an overview of it in this link scrolling down and beginning at the Archaic structure, up through the rational and integral stages. http://www.gaiamind.org/Gebser.html A mythological God isn't possible yet at the earlier structures.
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FWIW, I disagree with Magic Man's definition. IMO, if a person could truthfully say "I believe in God/a god/gods", then they're not an atheist.
It doesn't matter whether the god in question is a "personal god" or not; if the person holds it to be a god, then it's a god for the purposes of figuring out whether he's a theist or an atheist.
It doesn't matter whether the god in question is a "personal god" or not; if the person holds it to be a god, then it's a god for the purposes of figuring out whether he's a theist or an atheist.
Gordian Knot
Being Deviant IS My Art.
a·the·ist [ey-thee-ist]
noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Our ability to communicate effectively is crippled enough with the limitations of language. One cannot just decide to use a word when it's definition means the opposite of how you are using it. Sheesh!
noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Our ability to communicate effectively is crippled enough with the limitations of language. One cannot just decide to use a word when it's definition means the opposite of how you are using it. Sheesh!