Timeline for Is there anything to call "the idea or concept of God"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
38 events
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| Jan 28, 2018 at 1:49 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhilosophy/status/957430386388295681 | ||
| Dec 9, 2017 at 1:55 | comment | added | user9166 | @user8159 That is what the car analogy meant. There are levels of 'conceived' more like enclosing something, more like holding onto it and more like pointing at it, and a few more in between. I think PeterJ is using one of the the more stringent definitions and you are using one of the the broader ones, and so although you are using the same word, you are not talking about statements with similar meaning. | |
| Dec 9, 2017 at 1:50 | comment | added | user9166 | @user8159 'Conceived' has a range of different degrees of strength, as should be made obvious by the silliness of Berkeley's argument that everything conceivable is already in some mind because there is a concept of what 'everything conceivable' should mean (and he decides therefore this anonymous mind that has conceived of everything conceivable, is God). | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 20:41 | comment | added | user8159 | Thanks user8159, I'm still confused as to how this forum works, but I'll keep reading and maybe eventually I can figure it out. I get an email that says "5 new items in your Stack Exchange inbox". I've been clicking on them and thinking they are addressed to me, and answering them as if they were. Am I doing that wrong? They have all seemed to be addressed to me. | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 17:58 | comment | added | user8159 | user8159 says: "they refer to what cannot be conceived". Now wait. If nobody can possibly conceive of anything those rows of letters can refer to, then nobody can possibly know that they refer to anything at all. So you can't possibly know that they refer to anything at all. So why say that they do? | |
| Dec 7, 2017 at 13:30 | comment | added | user20253 | @user8159 - You might like to examine how the word 'Tao' or 'Nibbana' is used. They are never positively defined, the reason being that they refer to what cannot be conceived. 'God' is regularly used in the same way. It is only ever 'exoteric' theists who insist that God is an object with a positive definition. The idea that God (the Real) cannot be conceived is not incoherent and it is NOT the view that praying is useless. It is the classical Christian idea of God. Check out Evagrios the Solitary 'On Prayer'. There IS a way to beat death and there is a way to know this. | |
| Dec 6, 2017 at 23:11 | answer | added | Lex Podgorny | timeline score: -2 | |
| Dec 6, 2017 at 19:28 | comment | added | user9166 | @user8159 Looking again, PeterJ did literally say what I quoted him as saying -- the given objection was not pointed at you, but at him. You are clearly confused by the way we are pointing at one another. I hope just pointing that out clears up what many of us meant | |
| Dec 6, 2017 at 19:20 | comment | added | user9166 | @user8159 I didn't say that, I said that ineffability is an immediate side effect of being the only supreme being. You cannot have a God that can be both single, supreme, and fully comprehended by the human mind, because the human mind itself has limits. That does not mean there is no concept there. We cannot fully comprehend infinite space or the beginning of time, but those remain concepts. You are doing something analogous to saying 'I cannot fully enclose this car within myself therefore I cannot hold onto this car, and I find it difficult even to point at it". | |
| Dec 6, 2017 at 14:23 | comment | added | user8159 | BTW, I am not happy that I am not able to believe that "God" is conceptually coherent. This realization hit me one day about a year ago. I am an 80-year-old church member. I still attend church regularly. I was a Christian for many years. But I can no longer claim that. But I never tell anyone in person. At my advanced age, as you would suspect, I would dearly love to believe there is a way to beat death, and to be able see my beloved wife (who died 11/16/17) again. But alas, what can I do? I can go through the motions of praying, but I can't do it seriously anymore. It's tough. | |
| Dec 5, 2017 at 14:01 | comment | added | user8159 | Joberman says "...the inconceivability of the God of, say, de Cusa and Eckhart is a crucial part of the definition." But if nothing can be conceived of for the row of three letters "God" to refer to, then how does that make the row of three letters "God" any different from the row of three letters "Vaf" or "Xob"? The only difference I can see other than the letters used is that "Vaf" and "Xob" do not trigger emotions in people indoctrinated in youth so as to cause them to believe that the row of letters must refer to something. What else? | |
| Dec 5, 2017 at 12:09 | comment | added | user20253 | @Jobermark - The issue is too difficult for the comments section. But the inconceivability of the God of, say, de Cusa and Eckhart is a crucial part of the definition. This is not at all a new or unusual idea and it can be explained coherently - but only at some length. | |
| Dec 5, 2017 at 4:31 | comment | added | user8159 | Peter Rollins says "I can conceive of something beyond conception" at about 12:24 in that Youtube video. How can you get any sense out of "conceiving of something beyond conception"? I can't. | |
| Dec 5, 2017 at 3:59 | comment | added | user8159 | PeterJ said "You literally said "the whole notion of God is that He cannot be conceptualised.". No I didn't say that, I said that I know of no notion to label "a notion of God" and furthermore I know of no reason to believe that there is anything labeled "a notion of God". Why should I believe that you can have a notion that I can't have, and that you can't tell me how to have it? | |
| Dec 4, 2017 at 21:39 | comment | added | user9166 | @PeterJ You literally said "the whole notion of God is that He cannot be conceptualised." If that is the whole notion and there are not more requirements, you have not adequately identified God. How is that the least bit ambiguous? | |
| Dec 4, 2017 at 5:18 | comment | added | MattClarke | I suggest looking at a description by Peter Rollins about 4 different ways of conceptualising "god". For instance, his talk at youtube.com/watch?v=iv6NStG0ojI. There is a written summary of another Rollins talk at benschnell.com/4-views-of-god. | |
| Dec 3, 2017 at 22:22 | comment | added | user8159 | Somebody said "God is not a square circle". I agree. I get understanding both "square" and "circle" (although not the two together) but I get no understanding at all from "God". | |
| Dec 3, 2017 at 22:07 | answer | added | user8159 | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 3, 2017 at 17:57 | comment | added | user8159 | I don't understand anything that could be labeled or called "What if God is a lie?" To me it's the same as if you had said "What if zxcvbnm is a lie?". All I can do is say "I get nothing from that because I get no more from hearing or reading "God" than I get from hearing or reading "zxcvbnm". To me, "God" is just three alphabet letters in a row that people make into sentence-like structures, but I am unable to conjure up any ideas or concepts of anything they could be referring to. They all say I am doing something called "rejecting God", but I don't know of anything that I reject. | |
| Dec 2, 2017 at 15:13 | comment | added | user20253 | @Jobermark - I'm not sure I'm understanding you. Square circles are inconceivable but not all that is inconceivable is so because it is oxymoronic. The God of Eckhart and de Cusa is inconceivable for the same reason as Kant's 'thing in itself'. It would lie beyond the 'coincidence of contradictories'. This would be the Tao that 'cannot be spoken' and the justification for the 'via negativa'. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 22:32 | answer | added | Allen More | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 20:46 | comment | added | user9166 | @PeterJ Square circles can also not be conceptualized. And God is not a square circle. So that cannot be anyone's whole notion of God. You are sweeping some important part of the concept under the rug. Ineffability is certainly a side effect of being the only god, not a main part of the concept. Nor does it even apply to 'aspected Trinitarianism' like the logical dodge in medieval Catholicism that bury all the ineffability into one internally self-contradictory fact. Nor to more essentially polytheistic gods, who many folks consider God in a different form. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 20:22 | answer | added | Bryan Aneux | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 19:52 | comment | added | Gordon | @PeterJ Yes, I think you are definitely onto something important here. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 19:04 | answer | added | user9166 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 13:29 | comment | added | user20253 | For may people the whole notion of God is that He cannot be conceptualised. He would be prior to the intellect, and transcend the categories of thought. You probably share Eckhart's view of God. He points out that people who prattle on about God have no idea what they're talking about. They cannot, for God is not a concept. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 12:21 | comment | added | user3017 | @DallasCrenshaw. I believe you're referring to ontology, and the most we can say in that regard is that God is spirit. Granted, it's hard to grasp what exactly a spirit is, but the fact is that the question of ontology is problematic with a lot of things. What is a force?, for example. We know what it does, but we can't say what it is. Even the ontology of matter is much more mysterious than most people realize. However, we get through life without needing to know much about ontology. It's usually enough to know how things affect us rather than what they are. | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 8:01 | answer | added | Rexcirus | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 6:13 | answer | added | SonOfThought | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 1, 2017 at 0:40 | comment | added | Dallas Crenshaw | @Conifold Completely agreed under such a situation, but I think the OP is asking for a substance to the concept of God. Not necessarily a definition to be used in the English language, but an understandable "thing" to which the word can be tied. That's just my understanding. | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 20:13 | comment | added | Conifold | Have you searched online dictionaries or Wikipedia? Questions about definitions of terms are off-topic here because people are expected to google them first. And having a "concept" amounts to little more than properly using the word in sentences, which you do not seem to have trouble with. | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 19:42 | comment | added | Gordon | Some hold that God is "wholly other", and we can't have any concept of him because he is wholly other, other than the fact that he is wholly other. But it is good that he is wholly other other because he is not brought under concepts. This gives me a headache. If someone wants to believe, let them have simple faith. | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 15:44 | comment | added | user935 | I would think this is the definition of "theism" | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 13:59 | comment | added | RodolfoAP | God is a human creation. It raises from our rational minds (there are no scientific proof of his existence), whether it is logical or not. The idea of God raised on primitive human groups to explain phenomenon that has no other explanations, like an eclipse, death or just the existence of the sun. It has persisted as such. Most religions follow this approach of God. I would simplify the definition of God as an explanation to irrational facts. | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 13:14 | comment | added | user3017 | Concepts usually start small and build as we learn. So you might start with something specific such as: God created the Earth. Then with prayer, repentance a regular Bible reading, your concept can be built up to something much fuller in meaning. | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 13:09 | comment | added | Amruth A | What if GOD itself a lie .. | |
| Nov 30, 2017 at 12:06 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 18, 2017 at 3:04 | |||||
| Nov 30, 2017 at 11:45 | history | asked | user8159 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |