Agnostics

[Angrboda]

We know enough about the definition of the word god to intuitively know that such definitions are playing fast and loose.  We have to know what something is to know what it is not.  It's this kernel of belief about the 'real' meaning of the word which seems to give the lie to benny's ignosticism/agnosticism.

The definition of God depends on the purpose for holding it.  If you care about cosmogony, God will be whatever created the Universe.  if you care about family, God may be Sky Daddy.  If you care about what it means to be human, God might be a kind of archetypal Man.  If you're a bad parent, God may be the the threat of hell or an excuse for the rod.  If you're me, and you are most interested in mind and the nature of experience, God might be the sum total of a pan-psychic universe.  A jealous God idea, like the Christian one, will try to be all these things, with great hilarity to ensue.

But can we find the common element among these?

Congratulations. You found a common thread linking all these ancillary descriptions together. And I'll bet you didn't have to do any research; you just spun them out of the general meaning of the word 'god' as delivered up by your subconscious. Your very protest simply underscores my point. You didn't have to do any work linking these together because they were already linked in your mind. You may not be able to clearly elucidate the common elements that brought this list together, but that's not the same thing as not having a meaning in mind.

 How would we here define God, you and me?

I'm not a fan of private languages. Instead, why don't you go to a university philosophy department and try to persuade the professors that because there are differing definitions for philosophy that you don't know whether you believe philosophy does or doesn't exist. You see, pointing out divergent ancillary usages of a word does nothing to undermine the point that there is a common, often unspoken, core to the meaning of a word. We can argue about how cat, or chair, or milk, might be defined by an obstructionist, but these words have a common usage which underscores their usefulness as words. Just as philosophy and god may not have exacting definitions, they both have a common core which is, albeit sometimes vaguely, understood by your average English speaker. Your arguing that the word can have different subsidiary meanings does not eliminate the point that they have common meanings as well.