Speaking English, But Not Really

To be honest all theistic propositions ought to being with this disclaimer:

Warning: what I'm about to say will sound like English, but I won't really be speaking English. When I use words like exist, intelligence, design, being, good, and the like, they should not be mistaken for the homonyms that you know. Human beings form concepts ultimately from their sensory material (guided by the principles implicit in that experience, namely, the law of identity and its corollaries). Those concepts are then used to build wider and more abstract concepts based on shared characteristics. Concepts therefore cannot simply be ripped from this hierarchical context and applied to a realm that is said to be in principle beyond anyone's sensory experience, indeed beyond reality itself. Therefore, our normal concepts cannot be the same as the homonyms used to describe the "supernormal" or God. You've been cautioned. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 9, 2020 at 9:42 AM

    I like the way you have laid it out. My takeaway from what you have said here is that since God is beyond my sensory experience that there is no way for me to know that God exists. Even if God revealed Himself to me, there would be no way for me to know that it was God revealing Himself.

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    1. Sheldon RichmanJune 9, 2020 at 10:33 AM

      No, I'm making a much more basic point. We cannot think or talk about something that "exists" outside of or beyond existence, that is, the natural world. What would the word "exist" even mean here? It would be like saying that we can't know if square circles exist. The term "square circle" has no content; it is literal nonsense. The same is true for "God." By the theists' own terms, it has no coherent content. We can't even say, "There is no way for me to know that God exists." "God" is just noise, gibberish. So it's not that there is no way for us to know that God exists. It's that there's nothing to know because nothing has been said. See my posts "What If ...? Is Not an Argument" and "The Problem with God Talk."

      Thanks for the comment!

      Delete

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