The meaninglessness of the Christian god concept

[Captain Scarlet]

Well a god is a living being that has the greatness that makes it worthy of worship.

The fallacies incumbent in the response render it impotent against the argument I presented. Unless you are going to invoke the ontological argument for god, it is a bare assertion that god is a living being of greatness, you know no such thing, you may believe it but that leaves gods metaphysical status in a wholly different situation. The term greatness is subjective (sp. relative) and has no objective meaning. Tiger Woods is great at golf, is he worthy of worship? I think we both would agree not. But why is gods supposed greatness worthy of worship? (you are then left appealing to secondary or relational attributes and therefore begging the question). Concluding that his greatness makes him worthy of worship is a non-sequitur (and would also abolish human moral autonomy but that is another matter). Finally and worse of all this does nothing to answer the problem of gods primary attribute. If god is a being worthy of worship that is at best a relational attribute to you (and other xtians I assume). It says nothing of the nature of such a being only how you wish to behave towards him.

What a god is not universal, Greeks had their more human like gods. When it comes to the "capital G', God, God is a Spirit, he is immaterial, and he is Ultimate in his attributes

Is a bare assertion and we have no grounds for assuming it is correct with respect to reality, other than your say-so (or any other theist who cares to say the same). But if god is immaterial then that may be an attempt to negatively define part of his nature but it does not qualify as a positive identification of his primary attribute. Let me help you (again I have already gone through this in earlier posts): If I was describing a car, I could say it isn’t a motorbike (ie negatively define it), but that fails to answer the problem of what it is, because the answer could equally be a bird as that is also not a motorbike.

like being wise, merciful, compassionate, and good.

All these may be fine qualities, but just what are they qualities of? What is the nature of the being possessing them? These are expressions of a personality not the nature of a being. You are stating secondary and relational attributes and saying they are primary attributes. However relevant you think it is, it is still a mistake to do that against the argument from meaninglessness (non-cognitivism).

It's very clear, and his nature has descriptions.
Sure we don't grasp everything about his nature, we can't see it, but still we know some meaningful things about his nature and we have meaningful concept

Well your contradicting your own proposition. It cannot be both be very clear and us also not be able to grasp what god is (I would argue you haven’t demonstrated anything as above). It is far very from very clear, as your responses demonstrate and the inherent misunderstandings that underpin it, even Aquinas couldn’t.

I think I already have.

You think wrongly.

[snip] his nature is meaningful to us [snip]

I’ve already supplied commentary for the snipped out bits. However isn’t that exactly the problem, if god was meaningful it would be objectively meaningful and not just ‘obvious’ to ‘us’. In other words you can’t provide a reason why you (us if broadened out to other xtians) have not just convinced yourselves of the truth of what you say. Worse still you cannot provide any reasoning why it isn’t a concept that you project from your own natures onto a placeholder (ie ‘god’). You want something to worship and he becomes that object of worship, you want something to love you and he becomes all loving.

Honestly I don't see how you have an argument at all [snip] Everything said about God is meaningful, so I don't see how it can at all be a meaningless concept.

Probably because you do not understand the argument. Your rejoinder isn’t pure incredulity in that you are saying “I just don’t understand therefore you are wrong”. You haven’t engaged the argument properly and as such it your counter points can be dismissed.

Those points again, made easy for you:
5 equivellent (A=B) statements about Gods nature:
God is one. (Deut. 6:4, Romans 3:30, Galatians 3:20, James 2:19)
God is holy. (Psalm 99:9)
God is spirit. (John 4:24)
God is light. (1 John 1:5)
God is love. (1 John 4:8, 1 John 4:16)

Well lets grapple with these individually. You seem to indicate you’ve been saying this all along, but I only remember you trying to equate gods primary attribute as a deity (when referring to the trinity, or apparently as the deity now god appears to be ‘one’), which thankfully you see to have moved away from.

God is One

What does this mean and how is it known. I have read the detail which helps define this further as “God is God, and He is this God”. OK but how do we take from this that the emergent property of god being one necessarily equates to him being omnipotent or a creator or brown or anything. Its not only meaningless but a non-sequitur, if you are going to invoke this as a primary attribute. Because whilst you are expressing an idea that idea is unthinkable. Allow me to detail via an example.

For any sentence S, S is meaningless if and only if S expresses an unthinkable proposition or S does not express a proposition. Claiming that X is a square, it is one, and it exists outside of space and time, cannot be seen or measured and it actively hates purple cylinders. Granted there could be a mystical interpretation, both with God and X, but that hardly helps us when it come to objective understanding of meaning. I really don’t mean to sound dismissive and apologise if I do. So whilst X expresses an idea, that idea is unthinkable and thus meaningless.

God is Holy

Same problem, same reasons.

God is Spirit

More interesting, and a problem for different reasons. This superficially expresses a positive attribute. But again a spirit is only defined in negative terms, ie what it isn’t, immaterial, incorporeal, non-life etc. Hence we are left with the same problem.

God is Light

The green bishpot is light, and is also therefore the creator. It is an unthinkable proposition and a non-sequitur.

God is Love

Aquinas applied such terms as “knowledge”,” “life,” “will,” “love,” “justice and mercy,” and “power” to the concept of God, and these qualities are clearly positive in nature. But we still have serious problems. These positive qualities refer to God’s personality rather than his metaphysical nature as an existent being. Love is a fine thing, but what is the nature of the being possessing it? If theists are to rescue God from the oblivion of the unknowable, must accomplish more than list secondary attributes and meaningless concepts/sentences, which appear only to make sense to those who already believe and who wish to apply mystical interpretation to them. If it cannot xtianity is, at best, useless.