Theological Non-Cognitivist Wrecks Atheist

[@Dizerner]

"There's nothing wrong with swimming in the ocean of semantics." Words to live by man.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

LOL

[@ConstantChanger1000]

This came across like Jordan Peterson level word salad. "What do you mean you? And what do you mean do? And what do you mean believe?" If someone asks that question, it means the same thing to nearly every human being on earth.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

I think you might be confused as he was trying to get a coherent definition of the god category.

[@Uryvichk]

@@realBreakfasttacos He really wasn't though. There is no definition he will ever accept, though he probably would for other words. If I were to say "God is defined as 'any person who can bench press at least 10000lbs' and I justify this definition by the fact I just made it up," he cannot claim that he doesn't know what I mean. If he wants to argue that no one uses that definition, the exact same argument he ran against that guy can be run against him. If I tell him that's my definition and then ask him "Do you think any gods exist?", the question is totally coherent: Do you think there exists a person who can bench press at least 10000lbs, or do you not think that, or do you not know? He can answer this question, and if he claims he can't, he's a liar.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

@@Uryvichk Why not ask him?

[@Uryvichk]

@@realBreakfasttacos I don't own a microphone.

[@gabenewell5932]

@@Uryvichk I proved god to him (based on his model) with my syllogism as he agreed to my definition of a god. The problem is the theist here not being able to clearely define what he's talking about

[@mg-ew2xf]

Diogenes shakes a plucked chicken at Plato.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

lol

[@RustyWalker]

You can probably justify false beliefs too. That would mean having a rational stance but being sincerely wrong. Another quirk about justified true beliefs is that it raises the question as to how you know the justification is proportionate or effective. If the justification itself turns out to be inadequate, the threshold loses its meaning. A justified true belief where the justification is inadequate is indistinguishable from an unjustified true belief.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

Correct!

[@joerocker3029]

You'd just learn from the new data set and leave the bad idea behind.

[@Uryvichk]

It also seems like you can have something that rises to the level of being knowledge without a justified true belief. There's a shorthand trick you can do to find a derivative that is easier than going through the whole process via calculus. The thing is, I've forgotten the way to do it properly, and even if I ever learned the proper way once, I couldn't possibly justify how calculus is true or how the shorthand trick gets the derivative correctly. This isn't like addition or subtraction where I can grasp the underlying quantity ratios being identified of reality and thus have justification for believing I can solve any arbitrary addition problem; this is me being totally mystified at how calculus works, yet somehow seemingly justified in saying I know THAT it works, even though my only justification is "If you do this the proper way, which I don't know, you should get the same answer." So like, am I justified in believing that I know a derivative if I arrived at it using the trick? If I'm not justified, but the trick still works, then who cares whether or not it's justified if it's useful?

[@RustyWalker]

@@Uryvichk The justification holds if you've used it sufficiently often and it has never failed even once. If you've only used it a handful of times, that's not sufficient data for the inference to hold, and if it fails, that's evidence that something is wrong in the trick somewhere.

[@ChaoThing]

I like ignosticism a lot. No need to hold the hot potato, just throw it back. Demand clarity, cogency, and referential language.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

Ignosticism is cool.

[@13shadowwolf]

Language is Descriptive not Definitive. A thing might exist, our different terms are Descriptions of the thing. Human perspective is what determines much of the terminology usage in our languages. Yes, the Majority that chooses to Describe something does have a major influence on the usage of the term. There are cultures/languages that don't have god concepts, because the people in that culture never thought up the term, because they never came up with the concept to describe the thing. We have terms for things that only "exist" within Mythology, dragons, unicorns, vampires, werewolves, fairies, wizards, and yes god/gods. We can refer to things that only exist within Mythology, and those terms still have meaning. The term of "god" does have meaning, even if it's referring to something that only exists within mythology. It's more appropriately a Category and not a Name, but if speaking with someone that has a meaning of the term, then the term has meaning. If the Majority of Christianity refers to their god, as God, then the term is both a category and a particular usage referencing their concept of God. Theism is based on a series of Linguistic Errors in Describing the Universe, but that doesn't mean their terminology is empty of value. They still are referring to the Mythology that they Believe in. Steve Rogers is a character in Mythology, but that doesn't mean he isn't a Super Soldier. The Astartes of Warhammer 40K, Master Chief of Halo, and the Doom Slayer are also all characters that fit within the broader category of Super Soldier even though none of them actually exist. I'm an anti-theist, religion is organized ignorance and arrogant assumptions, but that doesn't mean the term of "god" and/or "God" suddenly stops having use or meaning.

[@mattyd2818]

The "god" that would merely be a mental construct, an idea, would not exist, but would occur.

[@13shadowwolf]

@@mattyd2818 yea, I included that concept along with multiple other mythological based concepts. The Demon Gods of Warhammer 40K are another example of ideas that are referenced as "gods" Cthulhu is an Old One, that fits the concept of being a "god" because people worship It in the stories.

[@mattyd2818]

@@13shadowwolf 👍

[@Lucky7Wolfin]

What is/are the necessary property or properties required for something to be placed in the "god"/"God" category?

[@Lucky7Wolfin]

Well I got a notification of a reply but it ain't showing up in here.

[@Uryvichk]

If I define a "god" as "a conceptual category that contains ideas describing [whatever entities] with [whatever traits]," I feel like that's sufficient to at least be coherent as long as the entities and traits described are themselves coherent. It's not acknowledging that anything of that category exists or that I have personal knowledge that it exists or that anything in it even could exist outside of a concept. I can tell people what this category is and they know what I mean by it; to suggest they cannot know is to suggest language doesn't work, which, uh... e.g. If I define "Superman" as "a conceptual category that contains ideas describing humanoid aliens from the planet Krypton with the ability to do things like [...] who live on Earth and fly around in blue and red tights rescuing people from disasters," that reconciles issues like "You don't know Superman has those traits" (all I know is that Superman is a category for ideas that are described as having those traits), "Superman is a fictional character who doesn't actually exist" (Superman is a conceptual category so nobody said it actually exists outside of a concept or that it has to encompass "real" things) or "different print runs or authors portray Superman differently" (all such characters are members of the category Superman, whether or not they are reconciliable as identical entities with a coherent continuity). I can use this definition of Superman in a sentence and be understood by someone else who understands Superman in this broadest conceptual sense; to say that neither I nor the person I'm talking to knows what Superman actually means seems disingenuous. I clearly have justified knowledge of this conceptual category and what it descriptively contains, even if because I just made it up myself. No one gives a shit if I can't point to a single thing that actually fits the category, as the question "Do you think something exists in the category Superman?" is perfectly comprehensible and can be answered; whether the answer is itself justifiable is a separate and irrelevant issue. If Ignostic wants to argue that people can't agree on a conceptual category of "god," or that there are different categories that are being confusingly conflated because they all employ the label "god," okay fine, but that doesn't make the very notion of such a category incoherent. That we may be wrong about the category, or what's in the category, doesn't matter. I can just make one up, people can agree on it, and he can complain all he likes and it's still a coherent conceptual category. We are not "giving random names to random objects," we're recognizing similarities traits of various things and comparing them conceptually. This is why the concept of "god" could sometimes contain both Yahweh and Thor and sometimes exclude only Thor, it just depends which conceptual category we're using to compare them; if his complaint is "that's confusing," I completely agree! But confusing is not incoherent, so if someone clarifies what they mean when they use the category, he can't keep whining about not knowing what they mean because he was literally just told. It doesn't matter if they're wrong; it doesn't matter if they're unjustified; it doesn't matter if "Steves" exist in reality; it doesn't matter if the category is stupid; it matters whether we both agree on what words mean, then we can move on to questions like "does this word correspond to anything real?" He's being intentionally obtuse if he thinks words have concrete fixed meanings tied to concrete things but also that Steves don't really exist.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

You can hop in discord.gg/politics and chat with Ignostic One if you like. He told me to invite everyone commenting to chat with him lol.

[@msskaggs3911]

@Uryvichk --- I completely agree with you, and I'll admit that Superman was the first thing that popped into my mind, too. If I say that Superman jumps really high, and you insist that Superman flies, it doesn't mean that our mutual concept of Superman isn't valid; it just means that we need to add specificity when discussing Kal-El. I guess I just don't understand Ignostic's end-goal. I found his entire point to be absolutely ridiculous and pedantic. For a few minutes I thought I was just too stupid to understand the arguments (which still may be the case), but then Ignostic suggested using the word "god" to conceptually refer to the world's most popular deities was a breakdown in language, and I realized he wasn't worth listening to anymore. I also got the impression that he wasn't trying to convince people of his position, but he was just leveraging logic & linguistic traps to "win" the argument.

[@Mindfulskeptic-]

Agreed

[@sordidknifeparty]

Everybody who has ever lived has known the exact same amount about god. Namely, nothing. If you think you know anything about god, you are delusional.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

Everyone of sound mind knows no gods exist.

[@UnquenchableHarvest]

Aaaaamd subbed.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

Welcome!

[@ataho2000]

If I were to go with Ignostic's thought process then we cant even have knowledge, because we are going to use a logical fallacy when justifying anything. On the other hand, all we know about God's attributes and properties and Gods concepts in general are what some people that believe something are claiming to know. There is no knowledge involved when talking about God or Gods in general. It is all beliefs and personal experiences.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

I feel like this is a poor representation of what he was saying. He said justified true belief lol.

[@ataho2000]

@@realBreakfasttacos Mabey it is a poor representation. Because I'm not good with linguistic salad, I could have missed something.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

@@ataho2000 He was saying they both use JTB as knowledge and that the god concept is incoherent.

[@joerocker3029]

You would not be going with "my logic." Just your dumbass misrepresentation of what you think my argument would be.

[@ataho2000]

@@realBreakfasttacos My opinion is that the "God concept" cannot be considered as knowledge. Being coherent or not is a matter of logical errors in the properties and attributes of what we define as God. But attaching properties to an entity that we don't know if it exists or not is like throwing dry noodles on the wall and see if they stick.

[@simon2636]

Most of the time we use words and attribute them to realities based on how the majority of people use those words in a particular language. If this atheistic idealist want's to be coherent with his weird epistemology, he should stop using words ... That said, he has a point about arguing the existence of God without carefully defining what do we mean by that word. The atheist's "belief in one god less" argument is so stupid, it's equivalent to the theist's "if you don't believe in Him why do you fight Him" argument...

[@realBreakfasttacos]

He made some good points about the "god category"

[@ajhieb]

_"The atheist's "belief in one god less" argument is so stupid"_ As presented by Christian apologists... I agree. They reliably present that argument as if it is an argument against theism. And in that regard it's a terribly argument. The problem is almost no atheists ever present that as an argument against theism. It is almost universally used as a response to some variation of the question, "Why do you reject _my_ God?" And it's a perfectly reasonable response to such inquiries. It's not a matter of why I reject a particular concept, the issue is why is the theist so credulous to one and only one god concept? _That's_ the point of "one less" retort.

[@simon2636]

I guess in that context it would work... although I only seen this argument coming from atheists like Richard Dawkins even when it was in debates where the other side clearly argued for the most abstract metaphysical idea of God (as the absolute and ultimate justification of the existence and intelligibility of any other non-absolute beings i.e. the universe). I know that theists do a lousy job at not falling for the straw men gods and defending them, but it would be nice to see a debate where God is not automatically reduced to a "Sky Daddy" just because religious people practically tend to conceptualise Him that way ...

[@simon2636]

@@realBreakfasttacos It's is a really good point. I guess I just didn't understand why he insisted on treating the definition of this "god category" as "knowledge" which someone either had or didn't have. I never met an atheist with such radically traditional anti-nominalist approach to the medieval problem of universals xD

[@ajhieb]

@@simon2636 _" it would be nice to see a debate where God is not automatically reduced to a "Sky Daddy" just because religious people practically tend to conceptualise Him that way"_ I can't say that I've never used the "sky daddy" trope, but I do try to avoid it. But when dealing with theists that insist on claiming God is "personal" and desperately desires a relationship with me and everybody else, it's basically just low hanging fruit at that point.

[@Peter_Wendt]

I'm happy with the definition that gods are powerful, immortal, supernatural beings.

[@BuffyTheTheistSlayer]

too bad plenty gods have been shown to not be immortal

[@jozincarnate]

@@BuffyTheTheistSlayer Or even real!

[@LoveAllAnimals101]

So you've seen gods like you've seen homosapiens, dogs, cats and cars?

[@Peter_Wendt]

​@@BuffyTheTheistSlayerWhich ones?

[@realBreakfasttacos]

Interesting..

[@ajhieb]

While I actually agree with Ignositic One on several things (for instance I don't acknowledge the category of "gods" rather I evaluate them individually on a PRN basis) I think he's basically just being an uncharitable dick. That there are a bunch of nebulous definitions of what a "god" is and that everyone hasn't agreed upon a singular definition doesn't mean that there isn't any coherent definitions of "gods" rather he's just choosing to ignore those. And while he initially appeared to be arguing in good faith, he lost the benefit of the doubt when he started with the "I've deleted that from my brain" BS. That's not how the mind works and he damn well knows it. Ironically the definition that Darth Dawkins incorrectly uses for his God is actually a perfectly coherent definition for the category of Gods. "The unconditionally non-dependent ground of all being, that is/has a mind" is perfectly coherent and includes most of the monotheistic god concepts.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

Darth's definition doesn't account for a ton of god concepts actually. Zeus, Horus, etc.

[@ajhieb]

@@realBreakfasttacos _"...is perfectly coherent and includes most of the _*_monotheistic_*_ god concepts."_ Do we have to lump monotheism and polytheism together now just because Ignostic One says so? Is the term unicycle incoherent because it doesn't include bicycles or tricycles? This is not a case of Ignostic One having a great argument, it's like most presup encounters where he's just confident against someone utterly unfamiliar with, and unprepared to respond to his position. And again this is from someone that broadly agrees with his overall sentiment that it makes no sense to evaluate god-conepts as a group, rather than individually.

[@CrowManyClouds]

Darth Dawkins uses that definition as the bait part of his bait and switch. DD's actual definition is "The unconditionally non-dependent ground of all being, that is/has a mind . . . and is named in the Old Testament and also is know as Jesus and _whatever other conditions DD includes to exclude other Christianities because only DD's Christianity is the correct Christianity_ ". If you think otherwise try to have a cordial chat with DD where you accept his "UN-DGoaB" but refuse to call it Jesus. DD uses that nebulous definition because he can not provide an argument for what he's actually, and in the end only, arguing for.

[@ajhieb]

@@CrowManyClouds _"Ironically the definition that Darth Dawkins incorrectly uses for his God..."_ Yes, you've identified the irony of which I spoke.

[@sordidknifeparty]

God is an infinite being, right? That means no matter how much you know about God it is mathematically zero compared to the Infiniti of God. No one knows anything about God, no matter how much they think they know about God, if God is in fact infinite

[@realBreakfasttacos]

The greatest thing is that everyone knows no gods exist!

[@Weirdaman]

I do not know if there is any god. I am not aware of any god's activity. Maybe a god does not care to share their presence with humanity. By a god I mean a powerful, supernatural being with activity potential beyond human comprehension. The universe could exist on its own and a god could not care less about it. The thing is since a god could be (?) beyond human comprehension... Thinking of one is a (fun?) waste of time.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

He was saying god is an incoherent category.

[@jozincarnate]

So an interesting thought, God's are a concept, it's just the concept exists as a shared framework that they will apply their personal concept too. So your ideas go into the godbox (framework) where it get re-shaped to become a cohesive shared concept! That framework for christians as an example, would be the Bible. The personal individual being (personal concept) is still in the person's head, but it had to get shaped by the godbox to be cohesive with the religion they are aligning themselves to. That's kinda of how I see It, I do have a lot more to say about this as I am writing an argument specifically about "The God Concept" so if I ever get it done I will be sure to add more to the discussion! I don't believe in Goblinsand Ghosts👻 (Al Dillon, Predator (1987), although It's really from 'Predator The Musical' by Jon & Al Kaplan here on the @legolambs channel, enjoy)

[@mattyd2818]

@jozincarnate The concept would not exist, but rather would occur...as a thought or idea. Much like pain and hunger do not exist, but occur.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

He was saying the god concept is not a coherent concept.

[@jozincarnate]

@@realBreakfasttacos Yes, I agree it isn't a coherent one at the personal level. They try to make it coherent at the religious level. Does it work? It's better, but I don't believe in gods so to me it still sounds like a bag of poop. It's why I think there is a good argument against theism hear. Thx Taco

[@algramic195]

Ignosticism is a funny bit, but it's just semantic masturbation to me, it's hard to take serious.

[@nagranoth_]

Hilarious.

[@realBreakfasttacos]

I thought it was a fun one!