Are all discussions of God speculative nonsense?

RedRabbit said:
So we could fuck every church ever and fuck every God ever then too.

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The real church of God is faith, and its temple is my mind. Be the fool who doubts me, fine, but, to be the fool who works to undo faith..
 
Reading through this thread, I feel like I'm eavesdropping on the table next to me at a college dorm cafeteria where a gaggle of sophomores are eating lunch.

Methinks both the believers and the non-believers are out of their league here.
 
Hesperado said:
Reading through this thread, I feel like I'm eavesdropping on the table next to me at a college dorm cafeteria where a gaggle of sophomores are eating lunch.

Methinks both the believers and the non-believers are out of their league here.
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We have a winner.
 
Perhaps Good minus an o attention to the vastness the simplicity, the ethics and play of being human(earthling) O,....in a Word in a creation--- God--Good interesting words.
:)
 
Hesperado said:
Reading through this thread, I feel like I'm eavesdropping on the table next to me at a college dorm cafeteria where a gaggle of sophomores are eating lunch.

Methinks both the believers and the non-believers are out of their league here.
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That never stopped us before.
 
Greatest I am said:
Wise blind fait!
Quite the miss-use of language.
Faith has little to do with wisdom.
It has more to do with a wish list and delusion.

Regards
DL
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My wisdom lead me to faith. 4000+ years and we still have no idea, whats that say about the wise? Nothing, just that we CAN NOT understand.
 
Greatest I am said:
Are all discussions of God speculative nonsense?
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What's "God"?

I don't personally believe that the English word 'God' refers to anything that actually exists. I'm not sure that the word has a clear and distinct meaning at all.

But to the extent that the word 'God' refers to anything, it seems to refer to a grandiose and blustering supernatural character derived from ancient Middle Eastern mythology. Variants on that mythological character feature prominently in ancient religious scriptures like the Bible and Quran. Subsequently, the philosophical theologians of late antiquity identified this mythological cosmic person from the stories with a whole group of Greek philosophical ideas, such as first-cause and final-cause, ground-of-being and the source of the Platonic forms. The medievals revived that conception, the scholastics systematized it, the protestants rebelled against it in their 'back-to-the-Bible' movement, the deists were skeptical about the Bible and emphasized the philosophical functions, and modern atheists simply doubted the whole thing.

So to answer your question, I'll definitely and definitively say... 'Yes and No'.

I don't think that it's speculative nonsense to discuss the history of the God-concept in Western and other societies. I don't think that it's speculative nonsense to inquire into what various historical figures were trying to express when they used the word 'God'.

But if we go beyond that and start assuming that there's really some supernatural being out there that corresponds to the word, something that we can actually learn about and come to know, then I'm a lot more skeptical. That idea may very well be speculative nonsense.

We can talk all day about Sherlock Holmes. We can discuss the subtleties of the character and about how he was portrayed in various stories. But if we start talking about how we can learn more about the real Sherlock Holmes, independent and apart from the stories told about him, then we might be making what philosophers call a category mistake. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. He doesn't possess any existence outside the stories for us to find.
 
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Knowledge91 said:
My wisdom lead me to faith. 4000+ years and we still have no idea, whats that say about the wise? Nothing, just that we CAN NOT understand.
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Quite the wisdom that says you are to have faith in a genocidal maniac.
Enjoy the feeling and be ready for slavery.

Regards
DL
 
Yazata said:
What's "God"?

I don't personally believe that the English word 'God' refers to anything that actually exists. I'm not sure that the word has a clear and distinct meaning at all.

But to the extent that the word 'God' refers to anything, it seems to refer to a grandiose and blustering supernatural character derived from ancient Middle Eastern mythology. Variants on that mythological character feature prominently in ancient religious scriptures like the Bible and Quran. Subsequently, the philosophical theologians of late antiquity identified this mythological cosmic person from the stories with a whole group of Greek philosophical ideas, such as first-cause and final-cause, ground-of-being and the source of the Platonic forms. The medievals revived that conception, the scholastics systematized it, the protestants rebelled against it in their 'back-to-the-Bible' movement, the deists were skeptical about the Bible and emphasized the philosophical functions, and modern atheists simply doubted the whole thing.

So to answer your question, I'll definitely and definitively say... 'Yes and No'.

I don't think that it's speculative nonsense to discuss the history of the God-concept in Western and other societies. I don't think that it's speculative nonsense to inquire into what various historical figures were trying to express when they used the word 'God'.

But if we go beyond that and start assuming that there's really some supernatural being out there that corresponds to the word, something that we can actually learn about and come to know, then I'm a lot more skeptical. That idea may very well be speculative nonsense.

We can talk all day about Sherlock Holmes. We can discuss the subtleties of the character and about how he was portrayed in various stories. But if we start talking about how we can learn more about the real Sherlock Holmes, independent and apart from the stories told about him, then we might be making what philosophers call a category mistake. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. He doesn't possess any existence outside the stories for us to find.
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Well said and I agree that the speculation of the concept of God is rewarding, but to discuss a real God is not.

Regards
DL
 
Good post, Yazata.

Somewhere in the Sherlock stories it may say that a good logician could infer from a drop of water the existence of the Atlantic Ocean and Niagara Falls. Such is the usefulness of using something tangible rather than intangible wishes.
 
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