Jobar

Heh. At least I'm expecting to get ragged for the way I set up my coordinate system, and the fact that I'm from Georgia!

Vylo

I believe heavily in subjectivity and ambiguity. The only way I function is through assumptions. I assume the most likely thing from experience to be true, otherwise the ambiguity of the universe would leave me without any knowledge to base of my actions upon, because I would be unable to tell definetly what was around me.

Koyaanisqatsi

I'll cut to the chase .

Fictional characters do not factually exist (i.e., are non-fictional).

If anyone would like to challenge that tautology in any specific way, then they must provide compelling evidence.

We're all still waiting.

Jayhawker Soule

How is this mantra anything other than begging the question?

ComestibleVenom

Well I think that the evidence is clear that god is indeed a memetic pool generated by various social forces and forces of the imagination. As to whether there is anything TO the theory, I think there is undoubtedly the fact that god theory is a self-deception, a communal invisible friend.

The theory itself is afflicted with the serious problem excluding substantial explanatory machinery; there thus exists no concilient way of integrating god into what must be finite and meaningfully stochastic epistemic machinery.

Thus, God is not only a theory born of our earth-human-cheuvenism it is a singularly bad theory, and one which should be rejected. Fiction.

Nowhere357

I'll call you for a witness then, at my trial for looking up the meanings of words by lifting her skirt.

CX

That's actually only partly true. My parent company, in addition to other things, publishes several different dictionaries (The best known being the American Heritage Dictionary). There are essentially two kinds of dictionaries. Dictionaries like Merriam Webster and AH are descriptive that is they describe words in terms of common usage just as you suggest. Other dictionaries (like the AH Dictionary of Indo-European roots or the unabridged OED) are prescriptive meaning that they prescribe meanings for words based on etymology and linguistic criteria. Ultimately, though, language is a mostly arbitrary system from communicating meaning. Consequently, usage is extremely important when discussing the meanings of words and no one definition can really be considered canonical except in the case of words made up by specific individuals (like Huxley coining the word agnostic) and given specific meanings.