RE: Anyone here a Category 7?
September 29, 2018 at 3:26 pm
(This post was last modified: September 29, 2018 at 3:49 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
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.
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.
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