The point you want to be making is not that 'god' is undefined but that 'god' has different meanings (or may be used in a way that is incoherent, literally has no meaning)..
Nonsense semantic quibbling. And please don't proclaim to know what I do or do not want to do.
It's no different. An ignostic atheist is so in regard to some use of 'god' he has in mind. But there are notions of god which are not meaningless. A bearded being that lives on Mt. Olympus and shoots firebolts out of his ass is not meaningless. That is a meaningful notion. A person who claims to be ignostic in regard to it is simply confused or misunderstands what I meant.
Read the OP.
I am 99.99% sure that god(s) do not exist.
He makes the claim. Until we know what definition of "god" he's using, you can't evaluate if this is a reasonable position or not.
Are you suggesting you CAN know before we agree on a definition that you can know? Please do it for us.
Until we know the meaning of 'god' intended. Not definition. A definition is not the meaning of a word. A definition is an attempt to convey the meaning of a word using a collection of different words. Did you actually make an attempt to understand the post I wrote to you?
How precisely do you intend to get the meaning intended by my use of the word [god], without me providing you with in laymans terms, a definition of [god]?
It's no different. An ignostic atheist is so in regard to some use of 'god' he has in mind. But there are notions of god which are not meaningless. A bearded being that lives on Mt. Olympus and shoots firebolts out of his ass is not meaningless. That is a meaningful notion. A person who claims to be ignostic in regard to it is simply confused or misunderstands what I meant.
So I take it you cannot provide this definition of [god] so that we can analyze whether or not the claim is reasonable?Just because you can't come up with a collection of words that convey the same meaning as some word doesn't mean the word has no meaning.
No.... ignostics do not define gods at all. That is the main point, that we posit that we haven't even agreed on what is being discussed. if I had a definition of a god that I used I wouldnt be ignostic.
The point is that there are thousands upon thousands of different concepts of gods that people put forward. Gods are what people want them to be. There is nothing that humans have seen that indicates anything about gods. Gods are a baseless concept invented by humans with nothing to back the claim. There isnt any continuity in the descriptions of gods. Meaning that while yes there are descriptions of gods like Zeus, other descriptions describe something entirely different. SO it makes no sense to ask if gods exist if those gods are all differently described.
Asking if one individual god exists isnt the same as asking if gods exist. With the latter you have to inquire what thy is talking about. It is like asking if X exists without ever defining what X is to start out with. So asking if undefined X exists is meaningless.
So I take it you cannot provide this definition of [god] so that we can analyze whether or not the claim is reasonable?
Then your notions on this are just as meaningless as the undefined word in question. Indistinguishable from nothing. Or silence.
Silence would advance your positions just as far as your behavior has right? (nowhere)
And how would you know if the collection of words has the same meaning, if the meaning has yet to be communicated?
Or better, in the divine case, if no such experience from which to derive meaning, ever actually occurred?
That we learn an internal/abstract language in the mind before learning the definitions is irrelevant.
The concept of gods has no value. There are people making claims about gods but none of them are doing anything more than making the crap up. There really isnt anything tangible to debate about gods.But this is a frivolous position. It's pointing out a truism; we don't know what someone means by 'god' unless we know what they mean by 'god'. Of course you can't have an opinion about 'god' (or any string of characters) until you understand what a person means by that string of characters. This goes without saying. In this sense, everybody is ignostic about everything.
It isnt broad, it is nonexistent; its make believe.But this is a different issue altogether. This is a matter of universals. Whether there is some common thread which all notions of 'god' share. Whether there is some 'god-ness' that determines whether some concept qualifies as belonging to the category of 'god' or not. And this isn't unique to 'god'. It's an issue for all kinds of concepts. Game is a classic example. There are many, many kinds of games. Monopoly, football, Fallout 4, fetch, war games. It's notoriously difficult to write an explicit definition that includes every instantiation of a game. But just because the category is very broad doesn't necessarily make it meaningless.
Regardless, this isn't what people are inquiring about when they ask "does God exist" or "is there a god". There not asking about if it's possible to nail down some common qualities that all notions of god fall into. They want to know whether any of the various instances they're interested in exist. In fact, a person could believe that some particular god - such as Zeus or the Christian God - exists and still deny there is a meaningful category of 'god-ness'.
Gods have no coherent attached meaning. Gods can mean anything to anyone. That is because one can just imagine anything that they want about gods and it holds just as much credibility as the bible or whatever anyone else says.No, "does X exist" is meaningless here not because it hasn't been defined but because you don't mean anything by it. It's a symbol with no attached meaning.
Splendid. Any claims you'd like to make with regards to them, now that you've provided what you mean when you write that?I've provided numerous meanings of the word 'god' in this thread. Zeus, the Christian God, and so on.
Who claimed otherwise? I'm simply pointing out no one can tell what you mean, unless you provide the meaning of ambiguous words you casually throw into a debate.A definition is an attempt to convey meaning.
Nonsense. Any one of us can look up some complex science definition and write it here, without understanding exactly what it means.He doesn't. A person who doesn't yet understand the meaning of a word certainly can't write a definition of it.
I am a 100% pure godless athiest. I am redundant as well. I really don't get what is so difficult about knowing with 100% certainty that something imaginary does not exist. It comes to me as naturally as breathing.
Splendid. Any claims you'd like to make with regards to them, now that you've provided what you mean when you write that?
Who claimed otherwise?
Nonsense. Any one of us can look up some complex science definition and write it here, without understanding exactly what it means.
WTF do you think you do when you read a book and don't understand a word? Search your soul for the ****ing meaning of life?
You look up the GD definition. Good gods.
I don't see any value to what you're quibbling about, as it relates to the topic at hand.
Are you certain? Are you 100% sure? This is of course after answering no to the question "Do you think 1 or more gods exist?"
I've brought this tangent up in a few threads, I'm giving it a home here.
I am 99.99% sure that god(s) do not exist. I'm being hyperbolic, and keep in mind 97% of all statistics are made up on the spot. At any given time I'm in the 90+%, but for the sake of making a point, I will sit at 99.99% and ponder how to achieve the goal of 100%, how to get past that last .01%.
You can take the position that it doesn't matter, because practically speaking, it doesn't. Every day I assume that gods do not exist, as I go through my work day, come home and play with my kids, or surf internet forums. Being 99.99% sure, I'm comfortable making that assumption and basing decisions on it.
But when it comes down to being gnostic or agnostic, I find that being 100% certain is a lofty goal indeed when dealing with something that so little is known about. That last .01% is in fact impossible without resorting to definition twisting, defining god in a way that he can not exist. But even this will result in the same problem theists run into when they do the opposite: the gap problem (Connecting the thing you proved/disproved to some meaningful definition of god). But there is no way to assert anything about what exists in the universe when we haven't even managed to get an unmanned space exploration probe into .... something close to ..... 99.99% of it. Nevermind the existence of a being who could deceive us so thoroughly that we would be completely unaware of them standing next to us. Given 5 minutes I could come up with a handful of theories and hypothetical entities that would be impossible to disprove with certainty.
So unlikely the possibility can be ignored? Sure, in the practical sense. Impossible? 100% certainty? It turns out 99.99% is light years away from 100%.
Are there any 100%ers out there that can explain how they got past the last .01%?
You can achieve that last percentage by not believing in imaginary things.
I did not say that belief affects possible existences.Belief does not affect the possibility of existence. Nor does imagining something that there is no evidence of affect that thing's (the thing imagined) possibility of existence. The possibility of existence is the same before and after belief is formed or the thing is imagined, even if it is unknown.
I did not say that belief affects possible existences.
Can you name one god that isnt imaginary? Hint: you would need to produce evidence of (or a hypothesis for) gods to make them not imaginary.
Lacking a hypothesis.... edited for brevity/character limit
Lets simplify here, and if I skip anything you really wanted a response to, I'll be happy to answer next post if you point it out.
We can agree on the fact that we have no knowledge or evidence that shows gods to be either possible or impossible.
[sniped for space]
Second, and this is really the meaty part, is how we treat the unknown.
[sniped for space]
Lets simplify here, ... you are not 100% certain.
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