yguy

I don't see how, since what I just said was essentially tautological, and really told you nothing you didn't know before.

Look: I can conceptualize a jet airliner. Not just how it looks, but how fast it can fly, how many g's it can take, its weight, the functioning of its hydraulic system, and so on. You cannot conceptualize God in that sense. Get the idea?

How does the conclusion follow from the premise, assuming it is true to begin with?

Family Man

Are you seriously suggesting that conceptualization is restricted to physical characteristics? We can't discuss abstract concepts, like love?

yguy

Obviously not, since that would leave out mathematics, among other things.

Nowhere357

Maybe. But you would need to show why. Simply stating so is not adequate.

I never claimed that reponse was the rebuttal. I could go cut and paste for you, but I've done that already, on this very point. I should not have to do all your work for you.

So unless you decide to actually address the relevant posts, I consider it sufficiently demonstrated that your worldview is self-contradictory.

Too bad, because I think your view is essentially "god as tao" which is pretty much bombproof. Leave the bible out of it, and you're rock solid, maybe.

Theli

There was nothing I knew about your god before you started describing him.
Not really. What I gather from your posts is that you have moved from stating that "it is impossible to conceptualize god" to "it is impossible to conceptualize god in a certain sense". But I never mentioned either speed nor weight as definitions off god. Anything you say about god (using words to describe what you call "god") is a conceptualization. It doesn't matter wich attributes you decide to assign the word.
And you did call him "the creator".
And to say that god cannot be conceptualized is self-contradictory, as refering to god as being impossible to conceptualize or define is a conceptualization and a definition in itself.
I'm sorry if the text above became tireing to read.

Because there is no objective line drawn between what is good and what is evil, so the term "all good" becomes meaningless.
Unless ofcourse you wich to change that claim to "god is the source of everything", where you stand with the problem of identifying and defining "everything".

yguy

You'd never heard that God was the Creator, the uncaused first cause, and the source of all good before? Really?

You are being deliberately obtuse here.

We evidently have a different idea of what it means to conceptualize.

con·cep·tu·al·ize
v. con·cep·tu·al·ized, con·cep·tu·al·iz·ing, con·cep·tu·al·iz·es
v. tr.
To form a concept or concepts of, and especially to interpret in a conceptual way: “Efforts to conceptualize the history and structure of the universe were already running into trouble because... the universe was not as uniform as had been assumed” (John Noble Wilford).

No way in the world can you equate my "conceptualization" of God to what physicists are attempting to do with the universe. The only value it has to me is in communicating on an intellectual level with those who doubt His existence.

Sure there is. We don't always know where that line is, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

Nowhere357,

Just forget it.

Theli

I've heard of the christian god, sure.
But not the impossible-to-conceptualize god you speak of. And, it doesn't matter who defined god, as long as he is defined wich is contradictory to your claim.
Does this mean that you have changed your mind about conceptualizing god, or was is a misquote on my part?
Looking back over the thread I can clearly see that the latter is incorrect. Or are you trying to be evasive?
A "creator god" is a concept, no?
An inconcievable god is a concept, an unidentifyable god is a concept, a good god is a concept, all of these - concepts.
And when you describe something you have given a name (in this case "god") you are forming a concept.
I never said I equated anything. Ofcourse there are differencies in scientific concepts and religious (even mysterious) ones, but they are still concepts, used to describe something.
Surelly words can be used in thoughts also, even though there is noone else but you to hear them.

Family Man

This is not tautological. A tautlogy is a useless repetition of a idea using different words. For example, the statement "either you believe me or you don't" is a tautology. "A rose is a rose is a rose" is a tautology. God is a) the Creator, b) the uncaused first cause and c) the source of all good is not a useless repetition of an idea and not a tautology.

Obviously, God can be conceptualized and yguy has done just that.

yguy

That God has been given a definition is not at issue. The question is whether that definition tells you anything about Him. It really doesn't.

To you it is. To me He's a reality - just as to me, your parents are a concept, but to you they are a reality. You could write pages about them, so that I'd know lots of stuff about them, but I wouldn't know them. And they are finite beings.

Again, God is not a thing. Things, including sentient beings, are His conceptulizations, and they can no more conceptualize Him than a computer can see its operator as anything more than an input device. Not a perfect analogy, but there are none in this area.

I don't see the relevance.

garthoverman

The difference, of course, is that you confuse your personal subjective experiences with objective and generally recognized facts. It is such a fact that Theli has parents, yet not such a fact that your God exists -- after all, we can repeatedly and reliably detect the presence of Theli's parents with an inanimate detection device. Can the same be said for your God?

Yours,
Garth