Your wiki quote speaks to my point, though.

Wikipedia done Wrote:Anything that partakes in being is also called a "being", though often this usage is limited to entities that have subjectivity (as in the expression "human being").

It's -that- usage that helps to make a universe seem more godlike. How would the "it exists" usage achieve that work?

Gods are all grouped together as gods for their similarities. The universe is not like them..and there's two bits of nonsense going on when we resort to a semantic god better described as the universe, full stop. It excludes -all- of those other gods as gods..as they're nothing like the universe. If the meaning of the term "god" is best expressed as "the universe"...what should we call all of those other newly un-goded gods?

I’m a 7.

I’ve even joked that I’m an 8.

(September 27, 2018 at 12:53 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: If nature has no other qualities beyond being nature then nature is not God.

I'll get back to you on the knowledge question, VL, and I acknowledge that it was a tall order.  You don't necessarily have to defend what you think knowledge is in order to describe it.  It would seem elementary that in order to say that you don't have knowledge concerning a proposition, you would have to know what does qualify as knowledge.  It would seem some definition of knowledge is necessary in order to make the claim in negativo.  But more to the point, you seemed to suggest that knowledge is absent if certain questions of probability are answered in the negative.  I would have to ask you two questions on that basis.  One, how is probability related to knowledge, and two, if knowledge is related to probably, as you seem to be suggesting, can we ever satisfy that condition?

I've been called out on this before. My epistemology is not as developed as I'd like. But it's workable, and I can explain myself enough to answer your questions.

I speak of "certainties" as probabilities due to my penchant for questioning things others take for granted. Right now, I see a desk in front of me. Is the desk there? Yes. Do I know it's there? Well, yes... pretty much. I am not certain. I see a 99.99999% chance that the desk is there. That's where probability comes in. Maybe the desk is not there. Maybe I am hallucinating. Maybe, in a few seconds, I will wake up in a pod filled with goo while Morpheus detaches the jack affixed to my spine. Are these "non-desk" scenarios probable? No. But they are (very remote) possibilities. You see why I speak of certainties in terms of probabilities. In all that, you might also suss out why I will never be a 7 or 1 on any scale, theistic or otherwise.

To answer your second question, I don't think we will ever be able to get to 100% certainty concerning anything (if that is what you meant by "satisfy the condition"). But why bother? 99% is good enough to proceed to the next item. I "round up" when I get to 99% and proceed as if it were 100%. To me 99% certainty "satisfies the condition" of knowing something.

I'm at 7 inches category.

(September 28, 2018 at 9:03 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(September 27, 2018 at 12:53 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: If nature has no other qualities beyond being nature then nature is not God.

I'll get back to you on the knowledge question, VL, and I acknowledge that it was a tall order.  You don't necessarily have to defend what you think knowledge is in order to describe it.  It would seem elementary that in order to say that you don't have knowledge concerning a proposition, you would have to know what does qualify as knowledge.  It would seem some definition of knowledge is necessary in order to make the claim in negativo.  But more to the point, you seemed to suggest that knowledge is absent if certain questions of probability are answered in the negative.  I would have to ask you two questions on that basis.  One, how is probability related to knowledge, and two, if knowledge is related to probably, as you seem to be suggesting, can we ever satisfy that condition?

I've been called out on this before. My epistemology is not as developed as I'd like. But it's workable, and I can explain myself enough to answer your questions.

I speak of "certainties" as probabilities due to my penchant for questioning things others take for granted. Right now, I see a desk in front of me. Is the desk there? Yes. Do I know it's there? Well, yes... pretty much. I am not certain. I see a 99.99999% chance that the desk is there. That's where probability comes in. Maybe the desk is not there. Maybe I am hallucinating. Maybe, in a few seconds, I will wake up in a pod filled with goo while Morpheus detaches the jack affixed to my spine. Are these "non-desk" scenarios probable? No. But they are (very remote) possibilities. You see why I speak of certainties in terms of probabilities. In all that, you might also suss out why I will never be a 7 or 1 on any scale, theistic or otherwise.

To answer your second question, I don't think we will ever be able to get to 100% certainty concerning anything (if that is what you meant by "satisfy the condition"). But why bother? 99% is good enough to proceed to the next item. I "round up" when I get to 99% and proceed as if it were 100%. To me 99% certainty "satisfies the condition" of knowing something.

Your reply reminds me of a poem by Mark Strand which describes a woman as packing a suitcase with one hand while unpacking it with the other.

FWIW, I'm not sure I see where you're getting anything to assign probabilities to these various non-desk scenarios. But that's not my point, anyway. I thank you for your description of your epistemic standards. When you introduce probability as a standard, you introduce a standard which can be met in practice. Whether God's non-existence meets that standard for you is a factual question, him not meeting that standard does not show that he couldn't meet that standard, which seemed to be the point in your introducing the unlikely probability that Odin or Yahweh created the universe, which, by the way, doesn't sound all that different than the unlikely possibility of the non-desk scenarios. I see that as inconsistent. Am I wrong?

Yup. Pretty much.

(September 28, 2018 at 8:48 pm)Khemikal Wrote: It's -that- usage that helps to make a universe seem more godlike.  How would the "it exists" usage achieve that work?  

Gods are all grouped together as gods for their similarities.  The universe is not like them..and there's two bits of nonsense going on when we resort to a semantic god better described as the universe, full stop.  It excludes -all- of those other gods as gods..as they're nothing like the universe.  If the meaning of the term "god" is best expressed as "the universe"...what should we call all of those other newly un-goded gods?

(September 27, 2018 at 12:53 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: If nature has no other qualities beyond being nature then nature is not God.

Jor: What about nature that is self-caused? That it an important aspect of Spinoza's God... being the cause of itself. I can see all day why people reject a supernatural God. Supernatural claims are usually (if not always) bullshit! But a natural God? I think if there really was a God, he'd be natural!

Question to both of you: What are your opinions on ignosticism? Like pantheism, I really like ignosticism, and I totally see where ignostics are coming from. From an ignostic view, all god concepts lack an adequate definition. But if ignostics are right about this, then from their perspective, calling the all God can make total sense because the word "God" lacks any defining characteristics in the first place.

(I mean that's one way around the "Why call it God?" conundrum.)

Ignosticism is a rhetorical device.  Just because different people believe in different types of gods, with different attributes, doesn't mean that the term doesn't sensibly and recognizably signify.

After all, people are broadly different from each other..but what sense would it make to say that you didn't know what people meant when they used the term people? Neither term is more or less ambiguous than the term "chair". Ignosticism doesn't get around the "why call it a god" conundrum. We call things gods because they fit an expansive set..even if every single god is not identical. I can see where ignostics may be coming from, from a rhetorical standpoint...god discussions seem like playing whack-a-mole. Nevertheless, it's entirely likely that they have an opinion on every type of god a person may present...even though it may be exhaustive to deal with each type one by one and no single argument or position adequately address every god or every type of god. The entire position is destroyed the moment someone tells you which (or which type) of god they believe in, or are asking you about. If you didn't know beforehand (you did)...you know now (lol..you always did).

@supernatural gods - this one is interesting to me..because it's not the case that every god conceived of in the past was thought to be supernatural by those who conceived it..more than a few were personifications of completely natural forces, though we now know they fit the bill by sheer virtue of being personifications. Moreover, their abilities were often thought by the conceivers to be natural, not magical..and even today call some believers god magic and they'll rankle at the suggestion. The entire enterprise of the divine has always been the business of making the world around us and the forces at play in our lives (real or imagined) relatable -to- us. The semi-gods of animism had spirit, compulsion, agency. The deists gods where divine people who didn't intervene. The theists gods were divine people who did. In dreamland, even the animals speak. There is no concept of god that isn't, in some way, relatable to human beings as significantly "like us" (so that we might understand why nature does what it does..what motives the wind and the rain to feed us or starve us, to put out the fire or burn down our settlement) even if it's argued to be different in so many other ways. Like them...believers often contend that -we- are supernatural beings. After all, what is a soul? OFC, they'll tell you that it's not magic...whatever it is.

Is the Hindu Brahmin anthropomorphic to all Hindus, Khem? How come they get to call God impersonal and Spinoza can't?

edit: Okay, lemmie respond to what you edited in.