rainbow walking

rw: Another good point and one well made.

HelenM

Thanks, rw

Apart from the obvious difference of me being a Christian and you being an atheist we do seem to have certain things in common .

love
Helen

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: HelenSL ]</p>

Philosoft

I must disagree. Any actual concept can be described in perceptual terms even if the referent of that concept is not physically real.

<strong> Not applicable, I think.

<strong> This is the one. Consider: If a common simple answer to, "What is God?" is "a being," then that being should exist as a mental image (thought or notion, if you will) inside one's head. Anything that you might call a 'being' is spatially conceivable, even if it doesn't exist.

For instance, if I said to you, "gray alien," you can have a mental picture of a small, thin, bug-eyed guy with an almond-shaped head. Further, you can describe this concept to me so that I can have the mental picture as well.

I maintain that God is the only alleged being-concept that has no accompanying mental picture. In this sense, it is meaningless to think of God as a being at all.

<strong> Indeed.

<strong> No, God is nothing like this. God is a word to which is attributed specific actions (universe creation) and specific attributes (omnipotence) without an attendant concept.

<strong> I suspect many Christians picture Michelangelo's God or a Zeus-like figure when they hold the concept in their heads. But I say with confidence that none of those Christians actually believes God looks like that. That is a false-concept, an attempt to overlook the fact that they have no actual God-concept.

<strong> No. I imagine one who has just experienced deja vu can describe quite well what she just saw.

<strong> Nonsense, I know this can be an extremely esoteric discourse but I really appreciate your being such a good sport. Also, I'm much clearer about your position now, thanks.

Koiyotnik

Helen,

I'm apologize if this is pretty much the same point that RW has made (gimme a break, I'm at work. ), but what about individuals who do "radical things," but don't believe?

One may act on their sense of ethics or morals as opposed to belief. Are you any less impressed by these people?

Feel free to ignore this if it's already been discussed.

-Justine

Tristan Scott

Rainbow walking,

I agree. It is like trying to explain to a blind person what red looks like.

rainbow walking

Philosoft: I maintain that God is the only alleged being-concept that has no accompanying mental picture. In this sense, it is meaningless to think of God as a being at all.


Philosoft: No, God is nothing like this. God is a word to which is attributed specific actions (universe creation) and specific attributes (omnipotence) without an attendant concept.

Rw: Not to belabor the issue but you’ve just described the god concept by his alleged actions and attributes. Both of which produce that mental imagery you declare to be crucial to the formation of a concept. It isn’t necessary for a person to visualize an anthropomorphic creature when the concept “god” is used. A person can just as easily envision the universe springing into existence or an image of their own father in association with god’s attribute of benevolence. That is why I stated earlier that the term must be defined to be critically examined.

Philosoft: No. I imagine one who has just experienced deja vu can describe quite well what she just saw.

Rw: Yes, but describing what she just saw doesn’t explain why she felt as if she had seen it all before when she knows she’s never been there in her life. Déjà vu is a term used to conceptualize this “feeling”, not the actual circumstances that created it. Can you honestly say that feelings are perceptual in nature?


Philosoft: Nonsense, I know this can be an extremely esoteric discourse but I really appreciate your being such a good sport. Also, I'm much clearer about your position now, thanks.


Rw: Aw shucks…see what you’ve done? You’ve gone and made me think about all this more carefully. Now I guess we’ll have to be friends. Thank you too.

HelenM

Hi Justine

I think if you look back at this thread you'll see that I'm impressed by people who have courage to act on their convictions - as long as those actions aren't at the expense of other people.

And as you can see I didn't limit that either to people who do believe or who don't believe in God

I don't need to agree with every facet of someone else's belief system to admire them

I hope that answers your question!

love
Helen

E_muse

Greetings Rainbow Walking!

Before I attempt to respond to your opening post, may I thank you for an interesting and stimulating topic!

Firstly I would like to summarize the definitions that you presented. I am only interested in BEING and EXISTENCE as it is the relationship between these two terms that you seem to be discussing - at least initially.

Apologies for cutting this short but at present I am not too concerned with the nature of God's being (omnipresent, etc) or whether he actually exists but simply the defenition of the terms and the relationship that you describe between the two terms.

So firstly we learn that God is a being. Simply, he is thought of as one who is!

Before considering point 3 (Exist), I shall move on to 4 as this defines being for us.

Again, cut short, but here we see that being is defined as having existence. So... on to the defintion of exist.

So here we have a defintion of exist.. which is to have being.. and it is definitions that I am primarily concerned about here. I'm happy to leave God out of the equation for the moment.

We have the following:

1. Being - to have existence.
2. Exist - to have actual being.

Therefore the two terms appear synominous.

This seems to make sense to me. If something exists then it is and if something is then it exists. I hope that makes some kind of sense!

But exist is defined as having actual being and being is defined as having existence (in basic terms) which seems to take us around in a circle. They both seem to be saying that same thing.

Agreed.

And the qualification for EXISTENCE is ACTUALLY BEING.

Leaving God out of it for the moment, how can EXISTENCE be without anything that IS? How can EXISTENCE be a necessary cause of being before anything is?

But how is existence a meaningful concept without anything that is? Let me give a silly example to try and convey what I am thinking.

Imagine nothing. Nothing exists. What would be required in order for something to exist? Wouldn't it require the presence of something that is?

O.K, in our imaginary scenario, a pink unicorn suddenly appears. We can confidently say that in our imaginary scenario the pink unicorn is, in other words it has being, but also it can be said to exist. The two seem one and the same to me - forgive me if I'm missing something.

Indeed, I'm not arguing this. I am saying that EXISTENCE requires SOMETHING.

I think that it may be helpful (for me anyway ), to leave God out of it for a second.

I cannot see how the term 'existence' has any power over anything because it is meaningless in the absence of something that IS.

Whatever is has power of existence because it's presence gives meaning to the term existence.

This seems a little over complicated.

You can't have anything outside of existence because the breadth of what exists is defined by what is.

Nothing exists outside of existence surely?! The moment that something IS anywhere, something can then be said to EXIST there. It is no longer nothing.

Are you saying that God must be contingent?

This seems a little clearer.

In terms of our ability to perceive.. yes. But perceptual verification is governed by the limitations of human perception. Consider the size of the universe and how much of it we can actually examine close up.

Do you mean, considered concrete within the confines of human perception or are you speaking of actual being in an objective sense.

Do you accept that, in such an enormous universe, things actually exist that we may never be able to perceive?

God only exists as a thought?

Possibly. However, I'm anxious to come to a common understanding on the relationship between being and existence first.

This would entail a debate concerning the nature of the first cause - the necessary something that is the ground for all being.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: E_muse ]</p>

rainbow walking

Now that I’ve had some time to think about this more carefully an idea/theory has surfaced in my mind that may actually strengthen your position, but that doesn’t matter to me because I’m interested in truth above and beyond just formulating a convincing argument.

You said earlier: “Any actual concept can be described in perceptual terms even if the referent of that concept is not physically real.”

To which I responded with what I thought was a convincing example (déjà vu) of a concept that wasn’t describable in perceptual terms. It is, in fact a convincing argument but it may not be a true argument for one very simple reason: What if our FEELINGS, such as those I used to describe déjà vu, are actually an as yet undeveloped sixth sense? What if we are evolutionarily being ever so slowly endowed with an additional sense; that sense being our feelings/emotions?

Now I know this may sound as if I’m losing my marbles but just think about it a moment. We know evolution is a verifiable theory. We also suspect it to be the author of our origins as a species. We also know that it can’t have come to an end just because we’ve become the dominant species in the food chain. We also know that many of the evolutionary changes take place over such a long period of time as to be virtually undetectable by those caught up in the process.

What we don’t know, haven’t a clue, is in what direction that process is going to take us as a species over the next hundred thousand years.

What if that process is busily working behind the scenes slowly endowing us with another sense…the sense of feeling our environmental challenges as they materialize in real time. We already can do that to a degree. What is the one most prominent environmental attribute of our species? Our COMMUNITY. Community comprised of a multitude of our own species. This is the most prominent feature of our environment, is it not? And couldn’t this environmental feature produce evolutionary changes due to the mental pressures we endure as a result of it?

So…what if we already have this SENSE but have not developed it because we are un-aware of it as such?

I ask myself, what if we weren’t aware that we could hear? Our sense of hearing would still be functioning but, because we weren’t aware of its value would we be able to rely on it or develop our lives around its faculties? I submit that we wouldn’t; that we would be aware that something was there; that we might even occasionally derive some use from it, but we wouldn’t actually focus our internal brain activity on the input it was providing. Know what I mean.

O’kay let’s do a for instance. We can often easily tell when someone is angry just by their facial expressions and the tone of their voices. But what about the person who is being deceptive and successfully masking his emotions? Do we not often FEEL that something is wrong even if we can’t quite put our finger on it. What if this FEELING is that sixth sense that is conveying to us that someone is being duplicitous but, because we haven’t yet comprehended the value of this sense to a degree of trusting our feeling we shrug it off, only to later discover that this person has stabbed us in the back.

Now I’m really going to go off the deep end here and take a step back in time…say…two thousand years give or take. What if a man was born who learned, recognized, trusted and developed this sense? Wouldn’t he be able to read every person by their emotions immediately and have just the right words to respond to their condition?

Wouldn’t this make him the most unusual specimen of humankind ever to walk this planet? Now, what if this sixth sense, this feeling sense, fully developed also endowed him with the ability not only to empathize and read his fellow community members to a high degree of accurarcy, but also, in certain circumstances, also allowed him to detect their physical condition and to address that condition through their emotions in such a radical way as to actually relieve them of the condition. See where I’m going with this?

According to evolutionary theory many, if not all, genetic improvements began as defects in the standard gene which enabled replication to a higher degree than the current existing norm. Defects that later became the norm and replaced the older version as the dominant gene.

Now, what if we could project ourselves a hundred thousand years into the future and discovered that I am right, that this was indeed the next evolutionary step for the human species. What if we found humans who trusted their sense of feeling as easily as we trust our sense of sight? How would this affect their world and community? An entire species endowed with the ability to automatically determine the emotional and mental…maybe even the physical, condition of every other member of their world. No more deceptiveness, bad timing, politics a thing of the past, every emotion open and raw and in full view of everyone around you.

So, o’kay, go ahead and berate me for having an over-active imagination…but I still think it’s possible. If it’s true that would mean that your position on cognitive concepts is accurate because FEELING would also be a perceptual sense albeit an undeveloped one.

Autonemesis

Since the definition of Odin refers to god, and the definition of god encompasses the state of being, then Odin also has being, and therefore Odin must also exist.

Man, thanks for pointing out that Dictionary thing! If more people know how to use it this way, we can solve lots of sticky ontological problems, I bet.