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If there is, I wish someone would explain it to me so I could have it too. I have no idea or concept of anything that could be labeled "a concept of God". I have searched my head for an idea or a concept that I could honestly label that. However, all the alleged definitions for "God" seem to amount to "God is that which created (or caused) everything but God", which is circular. If one can have no concept or idea of anything that a sequence of alphabet letters or sound such as "God" could refer to, then what has he/she other than -- that sequence or sound?

user8159
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  • What if GOD itself a lie .. – Amruth A Nov 30 '17 at 13:09
  • Concepts usually start small and build as we learn. So you might start with something specific such as: God created the Earth. Then with prayer, repentance a regular Bible reading, your concept can be built up to something much fuller in meaning. –  Nov 30 '17 at 13:14
  • God is a human creation. It raises from our rational minds (there are no scientific proof of his existence), whether it is logical or not. The idea of God raised on primitive human groups to explain phenomenon that has no other explanations, like an eclipse, death or just the existence of the sun. It has persisted as such. Most religions follow this approach of God. I would simplify the definition of God as an explanation to irrational facts. – RodolfoAP Nov 30 '17 at 13:59
  • I would think this is the definition of "theism" –  Nov 30 '17 at 15:44
  • Some hold that God is "wholly other", and we can't have any concept of him because he is wholly other, other than the fact that he is wholly other. But it is good that he is wholly other other because he is not brought under concepts. This gives me a headache. If someone wants to believe, let them have simple faith. – Gordon Nov 30 '17 at 19:42
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    Have you searched online dictionaries or Wikipedia? Questions about definitions of terms are off-topic here because people are expected to google them first. And having a "concept" amounts to little more than properly using the word in sentences, which you do not seem to have trouble with. – Conifold Nov 30 '17 at 20:13
  • @Conifold Completely agreed under such a situation, but I think the OP is asking for a substance to the concept of God. Not necessarily a definition to be used in the English language, but an understandable "thing" to which the word can be tied. That's just my understanding. – Dallas Crenshaw Dec 01 '17 at 00:40
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    @DallasCrenshaw. I believe you're referring to ontology, and the most we can say in that regard is that God is spirit. Granted, it's hard to grasp what exactly a spirit is, but the fact is that the question of ontology is problematic with a lot of things. What is a force?, for example. We know what it does, but we can't say what it is. Even the ontology of matter is much more mysterious than most people realize. However, we get through life without needing to know much about ontology. It's usually enough to know how things affect us rather than what they are. –  Dec 01 '17 at 12:21
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    For may people the whole notion of God is that He cannot be conceptualised. He would be prior to the intellect, and transcend the categories of thought. You probably share Eckhart's view of God. He points out that people who prattle on about God have no idea what they're talking about. They cannot, for God is not a concept. –  Dec 01 '17 at 13:29
  • @PeterJ Yes, I think you are definitely onto something important here. – Gordon Dec 01 '17 at 19:52
  • @PeterJ Square circles can also not be conceptualized. And God is not a square circle. So that cannot be anyone's whole notion of God. You are sweeping some important part of the concept under the rug. Ineffability is certainly a side effect of being the only god, not a main part of the concept. Nor does it even apply to 'aspected Trinitarianism' like the logical dodge in medieval Catholicism that bury all the ineffability into one internally self-contradictory fact. Nor to more essentially polytheistic gods, who many folks consider God in a different form. –  Dec 01 '17 at 20:46
  • @Jobermark - I'm not sure I'm understanding you. Square circles are inconceivable but not all that is inconceivable is so because it is oxymoronic. The God of Eckhart and de Cusa is inconceivable for the same reason as Kant's 'thing in itself'. It would lie beyond the 'coincidence of contradictories'. This would be the Tao that 'cannot be spoken' and the justification for the 'via negativa'. –  Dec 02 '17 at 15:13
  • I don't understand anything that could be labeled or called "What if God is a lie?" To me it's the same as if you had said "What if zxcvbnm is a lie?". All I can do is say "I get nothing from that because I get no more from hearing or reading "God" than I get from hearing or reading "zxcvbnm". To me, "God" is just three alphabet letters in a row that people make into sentence-like structures, but I am unable to conjure up any ideas or concepts of anything they could be referring to. They all say I am doing something called "rejecting God", but I don't know of anything that I reject. – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 17:57
  • Somebody said "God is not a square circle". I agree. I get understanding both "square" and "circle" (although not the two together) but I get no understanding at all from "God". – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 22:22
  • I suggest looking at a description by Peter Rollins about 4 different ways of conceptualising "god". For instance, his talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv6NStG0ojI. There is a written summary of another Rollins talk at https://benschnell.com/4-views-of-god/. – MattClarke Dec 04 '17 at 05:18
  • @PeterJ You literally said "the whole notion of God is that He cannot be conceptualised." If that is the whole notion and there are not more requirements, you have not adequately identified God. How is that the least bit ambiguous? –  Dec 04 '17 at 21:39
  • PeterJ said "You literally said "the whole notion of God is that He cannot be conceptualised.". No I didn't say that, I said that I know of no notion to label "a notion of God" and furthermore I know of no reason to believe that there is anything labeled "a notion of God". Why should I believe that you can have a notion that I can't have, and that you can't tell me how to have it? – user8159 Dec 05 '17 at 03:59
  • Peter Rollins says "I can conceive of something beyond conception" at about 12:24 in that Youtube video. How can you get any sense out of "conceiving of something beyond conception"? I can't. – user8159 Dec 05 '17 at 04:31
  • @Jobermark - The issue is too difficult for the comments section. But the inconceivability of the God of, say, de Cusa and Eckhart is a crucial part of the definition. This is not at all a new or unusual idea and it can be explained coherently - but only at some length. –  Dec 05 '17 at 12:09
  • Joberman says "...the inconceivability of the God of, say, de Cusa and Eckhart is a crucial part of the definition." But if nothing can be conceived of for the row of three letters "God" to refer to, then how does that make the row of three letters "God" any different from the row of three letters "Vaf" or "Xob"? The only difference I can see other than the letters used is that "Vaf" and "Xob" do not trigger emotions in people indoctrinated in youth so as to cause them to believe that the row of letters must refer to something. What else? – user8159 Dec 05 '17 at 14:01
  • BTW, I am not happy that I am not able to believe that "God" is conceptually coherent. This realization hit me one day about a year ago. I am an 80-year-old church member. I still attend church regularly. I was a Christian for many years. But I can no longer claim that. But I never tell anyone in person. At my advanced age, as you would suspect, I would dearly love to believe there is a way to beat death, and to be able see my beloved wife (who died 11/16/17) again. But alas, what can I do? I can go through the motions of praying, but I can't do it seriously anymore. It's tough. – user8159 Dec 06 '17 at 14:23
  • @user8159 I didn't say that, I said that ineffability is an immediate side effect of being the only supreme being. You cannot have a God that can be both single, supreme, and fully comprehended by the human mind, because the human mind itself has limits. That does not mean there is no concept there. We cannot fully comprehend infinite space or the beginning of time, but those remain concepts. You are doing something analogous to saying 'I cannot fully enclose this car within myself therefore I cannot hold onto this car, and I find it difficult even to point at it". –  Dec 06 '17 at 19:20
  • @user8159 Looking again, PeterJ did literally say what I quoted him as saying -- the given objection was not pointed at you, but at him. You are clearly confused by the way we are pointing at one another. I hope just pointing that out clears up what many of us meant –  Dec 06 '17 at 19:28
  • @user8159 - You might like to examine how the word 'Tao' or 'Nibbana' is used. They are never positively defined, the reason being that they refer to what cannot be conceived. 'God' is regularly used in the same way. It is only ever 'exoteric' theists who insist that God is an object with a positive definition. The idea that God (the Real) cannot be conceived is not incoherent and it is NOT the view that praying is useless. It is the classical Christian idea of God. Check out Evagrios the Solitary 'On Prayer'. There IS a way to beat death and there is a way to know this. –  Dec 07 '17 at 13:30
  • user8159 says: "they refer to what cannot be conceived". Now wait. If nobody can possibly conceive of anything those rows of letters can refer to, then nobody can possibly know that they refer to anything at all. So you can't possibly know that they refer to anything at all. So why say that they do? – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 17:58
  • Thanks user8159, I'm still confused as to how this forum works, but I'll keep reading and maybe eventually I can figure it out. I get an email that says "5 new items in your Stack Exchange inbox". I've been clicking on them and thinking they are addressed to me, and answering them as if they were. Am I doing that wrong? They have all seemed to be addressed to me. – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 20:41
  • @user8159 'Conceived' has a range of different degrees of strength, as should be made obvious by the silliness of Berkeley's argument that everything conceivable is already in some mind because there is a concept of what 'everything conceivable' should mean (and he decides therefore this anonymous mind that has conceived of everything conceivable, is God). –  Dec 09 '17 at 01:50
  • @user8159 That is what the car analogy meant. There are levels of 'conceived' more like enclosing something, more like holding onto it and more like pointing at it, and a few more in between. I think PeterJ is using one of the the more stringent definitions and you are using one of the the broader ones, and so although you are using the same word, you are not talking about statements with similar meaning. –  Dec 09 '17 at 01:55

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As mentioned in one of the comments, you should first search for 'different' Gods on different websites and select each God and verify whether there is anything irrational in all those Gods. After that, you could choose one 'Rational God' and ask this question. Otherwise it'd become a beat around the bush.

If you choose one or more things as the idea or concept of God, you will have to regard all the other things as the idea or concept of another God. [We can't rule out the possibility of another God or gods (since there are many similar creations or concepts in this world)]. Which God would you choose then for this question?

If you choose one particular idea, concept, category or religion only as the concept of God, that would also become a folly....since the supplement for that concept and the complement of that concept must be of another God's. Then also there must be another God or gods.

So, when we think of an (external) creator of ideas or concepts (God), some contradictions pop up.

We perceive this world through our senses. Knowingly or unknowingly we admit only the things perceived through our 5 sense organs (Some forms of lights, sounds, smells etc that we can't perceive with our sense organs are amplified or transformed in another form. But they also are for helping these senses only.)

The senses, brain etc create a feeling that there is creation here. Five is a small number. What about the situation if the number of our sense organs were below or above five? Then, would our understanding be like this...? Actually, we can't even imagine such a situation.

If you can imagine these senses, brain etc as somebody's creations, ideas or concepts, you will have to search their bases also. This is not possible with your senses.

The things, ideas and concepts that we understand with our mortal sense organs and brain are never the Ultimate Truth.

So, if you believe (this logic) or not, you will have to assume that there is no creation. When you realize yourself you will understand whether there is any real creation here. Then you wouldn't need to ask this question.

The notion that mAyA has no reality in itself, and that brahman is the only real, allows the sRshTi-dRshTi vAdin to "graduate", so to speak, to ajAtivAda, the view that no creation really occurred ever.

http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/creation.html

If the aforementioned is difficult to digest, the following mantra would be useful in our daily life.

Isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat

SonOfThought
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  • Your reasoning only applies to little gods, i.e. the complement of a little god might be another little god, but the complement of the one true God would be no god at all. People want to believe they measure up to God in some respect, either by imagining they can partake in His divinity or by dreaming up little gods that are easily impressed by good works. However, God is no respecter of persons, and His love is boundless, so by grace alone may we know His blessings. –  Dec 01 '17 at 12:17
  • I didn't mean so. I just mentioned the contradiction that we may arrive at if our assumption was wrong. From your last statement I understand that what you are talking about is an external God. But I had already invalidated its possibility in my answer. The possibility of a little god comes only when God is external. That means there is space or boundary in between God and me. Thank you. – SonOfThought Dec 01 '17 at 13:51
  • But you didn't demonstrate a contradiction. I don't imagine that reality is limited to what I experience by the 5 senses, so your premise is false. The possibility of a little god also comes when we identify with its minuteness, thinking that there is no greater standard than our finite inclinations by which we may be judged. –  Dec 01 '17 at 14:28
  • I was about to delete the word-- 'only' when I saw your comment. But your comment came first. The word-- 'only' is certainly wrong. I meant what we regard as reality changes when we try to understand it through our senses. You can find a verse-- " Anoraneeyan mahato maheeyan Atma/srujantor nihitoguhayam" in Kathopanishad when mentioning the Supreme. – SonOfThought Dec 01 '17 at 14:37
  • http://kathopanishad.blogspot.in/2007/12/aum-eye-of-essential-knowledge.html – SonOfThought Dec 01 '17 at 14:43
  • Instead of a matter of reasoning, it's a matter of not having anything to reason about. Words like "God created the universe" and "Something had to create everything but itself and the thing that created everything but itself had to have always existed" don't put any concept or idea of anything labeled "God" in my head. I don't know how to believe that anybody has any idea or concept of anything to label "God". I know that it triggers their emotions and they believe they are thinking about something, but it seems to me that they are just letting their emotions overpower their reasoning. – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 18:31
  • You say "I don't imagine that reality is limited to what I experience by the 5 senses". I don't say that. I modify it to this: I don't imagine that reality is limited to what MAN HAS experienced YET by the 5 senses, however I say that reality is limited to what MAN COULD THINK OF OR EXPERIENCE BUT HAS NOT YET THOUGHT OF OR EXPERIENCED by the 5 senses. – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 18:35
  • Somebody said: "So, if you believe (this logic) or not, you will have to assume that there is no creation". I know what you're talking about. I know about creating, like Edison creating the light bulb. But Edison is part of the universe, and the light bulb is another part of the universe. So I can understand 'one part of the universe creating another part of the universe'. But when I try that with "God" I get "The part of the universe called 'God' created another part of the universe called 'the universe'". And that makes no sense to me. It's seem like a word trick. – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 19:16
  • Please understand this: There are different levels of understanding. You may say that the sun rises in the east. You may say that it is wrong...the sun does not rise, the earth is rotating. But both are true when viewing from certain levels. Similarly some people have 'experienced' the reality when they transcended their sense organs. Until you taste sugar , 'sweetness of sugar' is only a word trick. Actually the meaning you adopted for the word--'God' is the cause of your confusion. – SonOfThought Dec 08 '17 at 12:36
  • To the sun there is no shadow...or the sun can't see any shadow. Similarly when one 'reach'/'unite with' the supreme, they realize that there was/is no creation at all. Summery: When a 'person' realizes that the Pure Consciousness is everywhere, he can't find any creation. There the delusion ends. (But this answer is not necessary here.) – SonOfThought Dec 09 '17 at 16:54
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The idea of god is not necessarily as the creator. The Greeks worshiped a set of idealized personalities that they removed by a couple layers of creation from the ultimate creator of the universe, considering those earlier layers of creators to have been overthrown or destroyed. (This probably just represented a succession of religious that had been tried out and lost currency, only in mythical terms.) That means their pantheon had no meaningful 'God the Creator', leading Plato to invent one in the Timaeus as a philosophical exercise. But they still believed that some sort of supernatural beings had to inherit or co-opt the status of godhood and do the job of being gods.

The idea of God, for Jungians, is the idea that there is something that keeps the world in order, that without some force of ordering the natural state must be chaos. In this theory, the archetype of God is conferred to us by the fact that we are raised by adults into some sort of ordered social structure, and we see that our own natural behavior as children without rearing would be much more chaotic.

Whitehead argues that this notion of God as the ordering force is stronger in Middle Eastern monotheisms than in a lot of other cultures, and bases the faith in natural order that allowed the West to become more demanding of our sciences after we Christianized.

We had had the experience of chaotic paganism prior to Roman occupation, the experience of brutal constraint by Rome, and then by the time we were free again, Rome had made us Christians. We appreciated the fact of order with less brutality, and a faith in ultimate order became our basic natural image of life, even though it fit our actual situation quite poorly.

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There are lots of different ways people talk about a Creator or creative intelligence behind existence or try to define the concept. I'm not sure how helpful these descriptions are. If there is a Creator, perhaps if you go somewhere beautiful in nature by yourself, and ask It. If It exists, perhaps it could tell you in some way that you might find more satisfying than anything someone might tell you to believe. If there is a Creator you probably would not even need to go anywhere special to find it. One interpretation might be to say that the deities, angels, demons, devils, and so forth are elements of our psyches, perhaps other ego states or elements of part of what we might call our "unconscious minds," although it does not necessarily mean they are not conscious or powerless; it just means that you are not usually conscious of them in your mind/body/world. The words and myths could be describing processes in our brains. Prayer can also be thought of as a form of self-hypnosis. You are going into a quiet peaceful state of mind and communicating with other levels of consciousness within your mind. There can be powerful healing and insight gained from that activity. However, it does not seem necessary to me to give it a bunch of labels and words or a religion. Just appreciating music and babies, and beautiful scenery is much more meaningful for some than wordy descriptions, although -what- it means might not be clear. It seems to always remain somewhat elusive if you try to pin it down. It could be something beyond our capacity to fully grasp in our normal states of consciousness or any state of consciousness. You don't even have to call it God. It could just be a felt sense of connection with the universe and your awe and appreciation for it. That is one way of thinking of it. It seems that the character(s) and personalities ascribed to it can take as many forms as there are people.

Bryan Aneux
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    "Consciousness" is the abstract noun form of the adjective "conscious". I think a lot of people are tricked by abstract noun forms of verbs and adjectives. Since abstract nouns are used grammatically the same way as concrete nouns, this makes people think that they have referents too, but they don't. When you say "consciousness", just think of conscious people and animals. – user8159 Dec 02 '17 at 17:43
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Here I will focus on a generic vision of God as "superior entity", without particular reference to any specific religion or property (for instance the fact that it has created everything, that is ageless, and so on).

The tricky part with the concept of God is that is something lying beyond what we can perceive, by definition. If you could completely understand him, you would be on the same level as him (or her, or its!).

A strategy could be the one of thinking something concrete as a reference and comparing where God is on this scale, and repeat this process many times. For instance I might not be able to understand how "smart" God is, but I might take as a reference the smartest person that I know and say: God is smarter than that.

This situation is similar to the trouble in understanding the concept of infinity in mathematics. How big is infinity? You cannot really understand it, since you are a finite being, but you think about a very huge number and point out that infinity is bigger than that.

Rexcirus
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  • I have heard and read the words "creator and ruler of the universe". I've heard and read the words "That than which nothing greater can be conceived". I've heard and read the words "The great I am". I've heard the words "the infinite incorporeal invisible spirit that created everything but itself". I've read all the words above. But I stiil have no thought of anything "God" could mean. So I still have nothing but words. If you have only words with no thought of anything for them to refer to, then all you have is a bunch of alphabet letters in a row. What else is there? – user8159 Dec 02 '17 at 06:04
  • Then how do you figure out what an atom is, or what DNA is? Chances are that you never been in an experiment lab and you only know about atoms, molecules, DNA thanks to words and explanations. But still you are able to figurate out what these words means. – Rexcirus Dec 02 '17 at 07:53
  • I have mental images, i.e., concepts of atoms. I took chemistry in high school and college. I performed the experiments. I saw that everything worked according to the chemical equations. There were concepts. But that's irrelevant to the fact I have no mental image of anything to label "God". What is there to "God" besides those three alphabet letter in a row? – user8159 Dec 02 '17 at 17:09
  • I haven't quite got the gist of this forum. I'm working on it. I hope I don't get kicked out by inadvertently breaking the rules. – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 18:47
  • Somebody said "This situation is similar to the trouble in understanding the concept of infinity in mathematics. How big is infinity?" There's only the concept of something getting bigger and bigger. We shouldn't let words trick us just because they can go into an infinite regression. Our brains get to whiriing around trying to think of greater and greater things, till we think we have thought of something greater than everything, but all we have done is made a fool of ourselves. :) – user8159 Dec 03 '17 at 19:01
  • The extended real number ∞ is actually fairly simple to understand. It's all the huge integers less ∞ that are complicated. –  Dec 10 '17 at 23:06
  • In fact ∞ is not a number and having a finite mind you can only really understand it by analogy or with some trick. – Rexcirus Dec 11 '17 at 10:40
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There is nothing ambiguous or formally incorrect about the definition of God you described: "God is that which created (or caused) everything but [itself]." I can look at a celery stalk, ask, "did this celery stalk create everything except for itself? No. How about this lobster? No." and proceed this way until I have iterated over every object that exists. If I answered yes with regard to any object, there is a God, if not there isn't. This procedure is practically impossible, but that it is theoretically possible makes for a distinct and intelligible concept.

Allen More
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  • You have only mentioned very conceptual things, such as a celery stalk,a lobster. I have vivid concepts for the rows of letters "celery stalks" and "lobsters". But I have no concept of anything for the row of letters "God". I don't believe you do either. You haven't shown that you do. You've only shown that you believe that you do. I say over and over that if you have some words or rows or alphabet letters but no concept of anything for them to refer to, then what do you have other than a bunch of alphabet letters? – user8159 Dec 02 '17 at 17:23
  • The conception of God I was using was the one proposed in the original post. Its pretty simple to understand, we know what it means to "create" something and we know what "everything" refers to so it is possible to determine whether something has the described properties if we know enough about it. The original claim was that there are no coherent conceptions of god; I argue that the exemplary conception of god "created (or caused) everything but [itself]" is coherent for the reasons I mentioned previously. – Allen More Dec 04 '17 at 18:00
  • I think the issue might be how you are using the word concept, or conceptual. What exactly do you think a concept is? – Allen More Dec 04 '17 at 18:00
  • Allen Moore says "What exactly do you think a concept is? " To have a concept of something for some words to refer to is to be able to imagine something for them to refer to. I cannot imagine anything for the words "creator of everything except itself" to refer to. I know of no reason to believe that you can either. Can you? – user8159 Dec 05 '17 at 04:05
  • Re: the verb "create". We learned the verb "to create" from and only from hearing and reading sentences of the form "X created Y", such as "Edison created the incandescent lamp" where X was one part of the universe and Y was another part of the universe". "That bird created that nest". But it makes no sense to say "One part of the universe named God created another part of the universe called the universe". All I see is the capitalized three letter sequence "God". All our words are learned in terms of the already existing universe. – user8159 Dec 05 '17 at 04:17
  • Ok, I think I have a better idea of what you're getting at. Despite the fact that I understand the components of the phrase "A round square", i.e. I know what it means to be round and to be square, does not mean that I can conceive of such an object. Here is a thought experiment: say that you had never seen a volcano in your life, but you knew what mountains were and you knew what lava was. If someone described a volcano to you, I think you could get a solid grasp on the concept. – Allen More Dec 05 '17 at 17:17
  • In the case of the exemplary definition of god, "Creating everything but [itself]" is not inherently contradictory like "round square" is, and similar to my volcano example, I can construct a corresponding concept of god just as I can a volcano, out of familiar substituent concepts. This concept would be limited, i.e. I might not know exactly how a volcano works or how they form, but I can talk about them and recognize one if I ever saw one, etc, so I grasp the concept of a volcano. – Allen More Dec 05 '17 at 17:17
  • The case of god is the same, if were to I find a thing that created everything but itself I could identify it as meeting the mentioned definition of God which is sufficient to have successfully utilized the concept despite the fact that I would know nothing of how god operates, came to be, etc. Another related example is unicorns. Unicorns don't exist, but I can conceptualize them because they are composed of smaller concepts like 'equine' and 'horned' which I do understand. – Allen More Dec 05 '17 at 17:17
  • It's not a matter of whether a row of words purported to make up a definition is considered as contradictory or non-contradictory. It's a matter of whether I can have a concept or idea of anything for it to refer to. As it is, I am unable to have any concept or idea of anything for "that which created or caused everything but itself" to refer to. That is, I am unable to believe that anybody can think of or imagine anything which that row of words can refer to. If you think you can, then can you tell me how to? – user8159 Dec 06 '17 at 13:38
  • Indeed it is easy to have a concept for the row of letters "volcano" to refer to. I can close my eyes and picture Mt. St. Helens spewing ash and lava like it did back in the 80's. It's the row of letters "God" or the circular definition "God is that which created everything but God" that I can get no concept for. That purportedly defines "God" in terms of "God". – user8159 Dec 06 '17 at 13:56
  • Ok, so you aren't saying that the concepts in the exemplary definition are contradictory, but that because you could not imagine how a thing could create everything but itself or what that thing would be like, the word "god" fails to refer. I would say, that if there was a god and I wanted to refer to it as "...You know, that thing that created everything but itself." the reference would succeed despite me having pretty much no other knowledge about it. – Allen More Dec 06 '17 at 16:56
  • If by "conception" you just mean "full knowledge and comprehension of", then I would agree, a human understanding of something like a god seems unlikely, but such understanding is not necessary for reference. I.e. I don't really know anything about black holes and I've never actually seen one, or a child can say they like dump trucks while having nothing close to comprehension of the complexity involved in how they operate. In less layman terms, a Fregean sense does not require every property of the indicated item be expressed in order for reference to succeed. – Allen More Dec 06 '17 at 16:56
  • "Black hole" is a misnomer. It's not a hole at all. It's a star that has collapsed down upon itself to a very small size, but it still has the same gravitational attraction that the star had before it collapsed.. Black holes can be detected. That's an easy concept. Ever watch the Science channel? – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 21:14
  • But how can you imagine anything for the words "that thing that created everything but itself" to refer to? If you can, and I surely can't, then all I have are the words "that thing that created everything but itself". – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 21:18
  • What do you mean by "imagine"? – Allen More Dec 08 '17 at 16:37
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Somebody said "The tricky part with the concept of God is that [it] is something lying beyond what we can perceive, by definition. If you could completely understand him, you would be on the same level as him (or her, or its!)."

I'm sorry, but I can't think that "beyond what we can perceive" makes any sense. I say that because it seems to me that we could have only learned how to use the word "beyond" from cases of usage of "X is beyond Y" in which both X and Y stood for things we COULD perceive. So I don't know why we should think it would automatically make any sense when we can't even perceive anything that Y could stand for.

user8159
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  • Please understand this: There are different levels of understanding. You may say that the sun rises in the east. You may say that it is wrong...the sun does not rise, the earth is rotating. But both are true when viewing from certain levels. Similarly some people have 'experienced' the reality when they transcended their sense organs. Until you taste sugar , 'sweetness' of sugar is only a word trick. Actually the meaning you adopted for the word--'God' is the cause of your confusion. – SonOfThought Dec 08 '17 at 12:40
  • SonOfThought says "Until you taste sugar , 'sweetness' of sugar is only a word trick." Actually if I had no sense of taste, and somebody else did, I could determine that they have such a sense by giving them various things to taste while blindfolded and questioning them to find out if they can distinguish them. That would show me that they could sense something I cannot. How could I test you to determine if you can imagine anything that "God" could refer to when I cannot? – user8159 Dec 13 '17 at 15:32
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GOD 101

A. Philosophy fails to define God. Let's not use it. Otherwise, this question would not be here.

B. Words fail to define God. Let's not use it. There are two ways comprehend something: by mind or by experience. Concept of God is impossible to understand by mind because mind is a limited system of dualistic values. One can allude to it by using tricks like poetry or abstract definitions, but it pushes you towards experiencing, rather than understanding in definite terms.

C. So, now that we know that we can only experience God, how do we do that?

  1. Take as a working theory the rule that your happiness is a happiness of the Universe, since we are one.

  2. Close your eyes and find the bright area of desire on your horizon. Something that you really, really want to happen.

  3. Throw away the form and focus on the feeling you have about that. Choose to believe, that this will happen. Make an order to the Universe.

  4. Click "Send". In other words, stop worrying about it. Let the Universe handle your order.

  5. Repeat 1-4 as often as possible.

  6. Cultivate unwavering Intent and utter surrender: When something goes not accordingly to your plan, believe that Universe is taking a detour to get you the best results. Take in every experience that Universe trows into your plate. Be grateful. Be patient. Be fluid.

  7. Eventually, (God knows how long) things will turn your way. You will get your confirmation if your belief was clear of doubt.

    INTERPRETATIONS:

    One can call this God, some: Universal Flow, some mechanics of Intent, some – magic. Try it if you dare and this will become your experience of God. Your way of communication. On the way, you will see signs: first occurences in the new pattern to be. Signs make no sense to those who has no direction. Only when your aim is set, you know where you are going – signs start to get into context. It's like if you encounter a road sign: "50 more miles to Sacramento" it makes no sense to you unless you know what Sacramento is and how far it is from where you are going.

Lex Podgorny
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  • If you downgrade my answer, please provide explanations hereby. Otherwise it does not look too brave. – Lex Podgorny Dec 07 '17 at 15:12
  • I read your words. But they don't bring any thoughts to my mind. Are you talking about self-hypnosis? "Choose to believe"? I don't know how to believe that "choosing to believe" is anything but wishful thinking. I can't ignore reasoning. – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 18:08
  • @DivisionbyZero Votes are anonymous and that's a good thing. You posted some stuff you think valid, but that's not how StackExchange works. Nobody's obliged to tell you why they vote the way they do. I will be open about it: It has poor quality, -1. – Philip Klöcking Dec 07 '17 at 18:18
  • BTW I'm not concerned with philosophy. I'm only concerned with having something I can think of, not just some grammatically correct words. As I keep saying, if you have some words, no matter how grammatically correct, or meaningful-sounding, but nothing to think of for them to mean, except some other words, then all you have is some 'alphabet soup'. – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 20:26
  • What's the voting process? As I said I don't understand this forum. I can't help it if people say to me "what you said is not valid". I'm just telling people what I cannot do, and that is to imagine anything that "God" refers to, nor believe that anybody can. I don't know whether to call that inability of mine "valid" or "invalid". In fact, why would anybody think it makes any sense to label that inability as "valid" or "invalid"? – user8159 Dec 07 '17 at 20:35
  • @user8159: This site is designed for objectively answerable questions with (ideally) sourced answers. What you describe is a position of metaphysical scepticism. One of the earliest writers that dealt with this was Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Actually, his framing of the problem was that since we do not have any sensual intuition corresponding to "God", it is not a concept proper, but merely an idea of reason, essentially serving a logical function. If you like discussion, our chat is a better place. – Philip Klöcking Dec 07 '17 at 21:01
  • @Division by Zero. I, too, feel it is unsatisfactory, although within the rules of Philosophy Stack, simply to downgrade an answer without explanation. If the member thinks an answer is bad (too short, too obscure, irrelevant, question-begging or whatever) it would be nice to know that this assessment is behind the negative score. I often get the sense that the negative-responder can't precisely say what is wrong with an answer but merely doesn't like or understand it. – Geoffrey Thomas Dec 14 '17 at 19:47
  • @PhilipKlöcking, first of all – thank you for openness. I knew that my answer would be downgraded from the very beginning. However, I wanted to see thought behind it. Thus the provocative prompt. Thanks all who participated. It's the very nature of answer that causes this reaction in people. Spirit, does not appear in the middle of cause-effect chain, and so, does not belong to "objective", scientifically provable bunch of things. One can only experience it, writing about it anything but poetry is a folly, please forgive me. – Lex Podgorny Dec 28 '17 at 22:02
  • @user8159, Reason operates on dualistic ranges of values only. All words we use are those of the mind. So – also dualistic. Trying to explain non-dual with dual is impossible. One can only allude, inspire the personal experience. All I wrote, therefore, is a pile of garbage unless it sparked the part of you that is not the mind. Thank you for participating. This was fun. – Lex Podgorny Dec 28 '17 at 22:09
  • @GeoffreyThomas, thank you. What you say is reasonable beyond the extremes of the mind. – Lex Podgorny Dec 28 '17 at 22:14
  • @user8159, As far as "choose to believe" goes – it alludes to hidden from dualistic mind capacity to become a cause without a cause, a creator-like quality that is often called "second birth". This is a direct use of this hidden power which appears as nothing or "wishful thinking" when attempted to be understood in terms of syntax. And since mind does not see "return on investment" in this line of behavior, it simply remains unused for the duration of life. Unless, one stumbles upon life-death situation, where tools of mind no longer work. But this is another story. – Lex Podgorny Dec 28 '17 at 22:21
  • Let me just make one point abundantly clear: Objective should never be misunderstood as scientifically provable in the context of philosophy, no more in Philosophy.SE. Objective, here, just means that it is stating something that is not phrased in a perspective, but rather in a reporting mode. Reporting the knowledge accumulated in philosophy. Philosophy here understood in philosophical arguments brought forward in books and papers accessible for everybody (theoretically, paywalls may occur). – Philip Klöcking Dec 28 '17 at 23:43
  • @PhilipKlöcking Totally, and yet, people still ask questions about God expecting answers in words. – Lex Podgorny Dec 29 '17 at 00:48
  • ...which is totally fine, as we have over 2000 years of philosophical literature on the concept of God and its limits. These are words. Even if they essentially say "duh!", they could constitute a great answer. – Philip Klöcking Dec 29 '17 at 00:52
  • As I've said, I know of the row of 3 alphabet letters "God", but I have no mental concept of anything to go with that row of 3 letters. My question is: Why is that any different from the fact that I know of the row of 3 alphabet letters "Xuj" but I have no mental concept of anything to go with that row of 3 letters? If you think my thinking is wrong somewhere, then please tell me where I'm going wrong so I can correct it. Atheists claim to know of something labeled "God" that they don't believe in. What are they claiming to know of labeled "God" that they don't believe in the existence of? – user8159 Dec 29 '17 at 23:42
  • @user8159 Sigh ... God is a word that points at our connection with the rest of the Universe. Some of it defies common logic. But so does quantum mechanics. It does not mean it does not exist – it means a set of common logic rules is incomplete. Atheists deny the part of the connection that implies the the other side of the connection is alive in some incomprehensible way. I, personally, don't like word "God", it has too much context. I prefer Intent or Spirit. – Lex Podgorny Jan 04 '18 at 17:58
  • Quantum mechanics only violates what we have learned about the world. But QM does not violate our imagination. QM says that something (a particle) can exist in more than one place at the same time. That seems strange to us and nothing like anything we have ever seen, but we can still imagine it. However the row of alphabet letters "God" does not refer to anything we can imagine, only sequences of words that, unlike things existing in more than one place at the same time, refer to nothing at all that I can imagine. The words trick us into believing we are imagining something when we're not. – user8159 Jan 05 '18 at 20:53
  • Everybody seems to get "nonexistent" mixed up with "meaningless". Mermaids are nonexistent but the word "mermaid" is meaningful because we can close our eyes and imagine mermaids swimming in the ocean. But the row of 3 letters "God" is not like the row of 7 letters "mermaid". We can't imagine anything labeled "God", so all we have are the three alphabet letters that spell it, and the words "Something had to create all this, it didn't just pop up!" which does not refer to anything that can be imagined. It sounds like it ought to be talking about something, but it's really not. – user8159 Jan 05 '18 at 20:59