The Million Dollar Question

[downbeatplumb]

If you know what the words “supreme” and “being” mean then it certainly does help. We have lots of important definitions for intangible things.

A: “What is an integer?”
B: “One of the positive or negative numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., or zero.”
A: “That doesn’t answer my question.”
B: “Sure it does.”
A: “No, what is a number then?”
B: “A numeral or group of numerals.”
A: “That does not help!”
B: “Sure it does!”
A: “What’s a numeral?”
B: “A word, letter, symbol, or figure, etc., expressing a number.”
A: “Aha! You used the word number in your definition!”
B: “Yup, all definitions have a tautological nature to them.”
A: “Well I cannot see integers or touch them…”
B: “So?”
A: “Well then they cannot have a definition!”
B: “Why not?”
A: “I don’t know! I am just making this up as I go!”

This is just a game atheists like to try and play but it ends up shooting them in the foot because it can be played with any word and they too need a coherent definition for “god” in order to be called an atheist.

A number or integer can be representative of actual things:

I have one sheep oh look there is another sheep that makes two sheep.

We can think of the integer as a box that contains the value of the amount of sheep we have.

C. 'God' is a term which has no meaningful descriptive value.

Then you are not an atheist since you cannot define what you lack a belief in.

No that's not how it works.

Here is what you have just said in essence.

If you can't adequately describe what a god is, we should believe in it.

This is a false line of reasoning based on the assumption that non-belief has to include total knowledge of the thing you don't believe in.

Look there's a Gargle Snark! you have to believe it exists Waldorf because you don't know all of its properties.