(July 27, 2010 at 6:17 pm)theVOID Wrote: That would mean you are only disproving one definition of God... You just moved the goalposts forward like 200m. Ultimately god is defined by the person making the claim and backing up the claim that all gods are logical impossibilities is in my opinion an impossible task, the general definitions in Websters and oxford are only intended as summaries and generalizations, oxford and webster's are not an authoritative source on this subject.I'm not going to narrow it down to just one of the definitions, or even to only definitions of personal gods or monotheisms. However, I am going to exclude made up new definitions, such as the atomic bomb one, since the bomb is just being renamed and called god. I am not going to tackle disproving bombs or cucumber sandwiches that someone worships, just all the dictionaries' definitions of gods. I'm not a subscriber to the whole 'god can be anything you want' mindset, since people do not only worship gods. No 'the universe is god' or 'all the unknowns in life are god' stuff. The same with 'god is all goodness' crap, since all they are really saying is that they worship and feel profound about things they think of as 'good'. The worship emotion gets applieds to all sorts of shit, anything a person feels profound about is a possibility there. I am only tackling the belief in gods as entities defined in the various dictionaries. Every def has something that totally kills it's possibility for me logically, and that's what I'll present, showing for each one why I'm a strong atheist.
As far as disproving a single definition of God, I'm pretty sure you will be able to do it.
Also, I'll be doing this not to disprove anyone's agnostic beliefs or to prove my own gnostic ones, or to tell anyone that they couldn't or shouldn't be whatever they are, but simply to counter the many people who keep telling that I can not possibly be a strong atheist, when in fact I am. It's also not really too much about whether my position is one others agree with since obviously they don't, but more a response motivated by wanting to tell everyone that they cannot possibly determine for me what I do or don't believe - only I can determine that. Too many have tried to tell me that I should call myself a soft agnostic atheist when I actually do fully fit into all the definitions for positive, 7 out of 7 atheism. I will also counter the argument that a few people have had, where they say that since I am always open to the possibility of having my mind changed about pretty much anything in life at a future point (being open to new evidence), that technically I must be agnostic right now.
(July 27, 2010 at 6:17 pm)Tiberius Wrote: In my experience, Dictionary.com is a better resource than Merriam-Webster. I've found several flaws in their definitions which make me wonder how they ever became a proper dictionary...I used to go there until I saw a youtube recently by a professor or something (insert total appeal to authority here!) where he talked about MW being the most official or accepted or authoritative or something like that, followed by Oxford, so I just added Wiki to the end of that to make it feel more complete to me. Maybe I'll tack on dictionary.com too for this. Couldn't hurt.
I'm really shitty at giving kudos and rep. That's because I would be inconsistent in remembering to do them, and also I don't really want it to show if any favouritism is happening. Even worse would be inconsistencies causing false favouritisms to show. So, fuck it. Just assume that I've given you some good rep and a number of kudos, and everyone should be happy...
