Though I can’t help but wonder at your (feigned?) concern about “turning into an atheist” – what do you mean by “atheist”?

I revised the conclusion on the post. Please tell me what you think, so I don’t think I’m going crazy… or turning into an atheist.

http://www.ohthethinksyoucanthink.blogspot.com

There you go.

The secret of happiness:
Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

I didn’t even see this post until now.

I completely understand your point about God. Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject lately and have been writing about it, but could not come up with anything that really illustrated my thoughts. But you’ve inspired me here. So let me try it out over at my old blog. *cringe*

Gerhard, you’re explaining what we’re fighting about. Much of this blog is precisely about digging past the words, messing up the words, mixing up the words, in order to start thinking about the meanings of those words. And the meanings of those words for different people. And the subjective or even subconscious or emotional “meanings” of those words — i.e. subconscious or emotional definitions are not what you’d get when you ask them for their conscious rational “definition” of the word.

How does that sound?

I suppose something like this explanation should go into the “About” page. The “The Problem with Diversity” post is a longer-winded way of trying to say something similar. Not particularly concise…

My understanding of the contemporary definition of “God” is a “logos-based” understanding, whereas I believe I’m going with an older “mythos-based” understanding. And I know I may be wrong, but this is how I see it.

words have different meanings to different people even with in the same context… It does this by ensuring that experiences, and their interpretations, align with our expectations and understanding of the world [confirmation bias, pattern recognition]. However, due to the natural limitations of the brain (for example, only being able to think in three dimensions), we are not able to perfectly interpret reality in its entirety. To get around this issue, we build simplistic models of reality and hold these internally as valid. We add to and build upon these models from the beginning of our days until we die (and we each have our own model). Such frameworks are referred to as schemas by psychologists and cognitive scientists. To paraphrase Wikipedia, a schema is a mental structure that represents some aspect of the world and collectively these structures represent one’s understanding of the world.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)

everyones understanding of the world is different so the words descibing these ‘models’ as different … i guess the question that remains is .. how nihilistic are these words ….

I go with Mammon as this: “a metaphoric personification for the materialist spirit of the nineteenth century.” See the Wikipedia page on Mammon for more context, if interested.

I believe most people these days see Mammon as a personification of greed. A personification of an idea, rather than a particular entity. But still refer to mammon as a “false god”. And I could also see Thor in the same way then, a personification of thunder.

According to Bible scholars, Satan, in Job, at the time of writing, was not the Satan of today. I mentioned this in “Abusing the Story of Job”. But I suppose that isn’t too relevant either. Many of the more progressive Christian denominations considers Satan a personification of evil, rather than an entity that actually exists. A personified “god” then, is typically a personification, with a number of progressives full-well aware of that. Personification helps “relating” to a concept, as we as humans know about “relating” with other humans.

I’m also a subscriber to the idea that Karen Armstrong expresses as such (this comes from an old version of her Wikipedia page):

Central to her reading of history is the notion that premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos was concerned with meaning; it “provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal”.[1] Logos, on the other hand, dealt with practical matters. It forged ahead, elaborating on old insights, mastering the environment, and creating fresh and new things. Armstrong argues that modern Western society has lost the sense of mythos and enshrined logos as its foundation. Mythical narratives and the rituals and meanings attached to them have ceded authority to that which is rational, pragmatic and scientific – but which does not assuage human pain or sorrow, and cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. However, far from embarking on a wholesale rejection of the modern emphasis in favour of the old balance, the author contends, religious fundamentalists unwittingly turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalism is a child of modernity, and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern.

1: Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. New York: Ballantine, 2000. p. xv

That is my take on all of this. My understanding of the contemporary definition of “God” is a “logos-based” understanding, whereas I believe I’m going with an older “mythos-based” understanding. And I know I may be wrong, but this is how I see it.

All in all, this comment is a little bit of an attempt to explain how I came to my views, in an attempt to justify them, in an attempt to be (personally) understood. But that doesn’t really matter, I realise it doesn’t really matter if everyone were to think I’m completely off my rocker, or making things up as I go. I’m not: I have my reasons for my conclusions, even if I find it hard to explain — however, if everyone understands that I have different conclusions and somewhat different understandings of certain words, then even though it remains “unsoothing” to me as a person, it is adequate for practical purposes and for the future of this blog.

A god appropriated and demonised from a more ancient religious tradition?

In a lot of cases, new religions have stolen aspects of more ancient belief systems, the most obvious example being the Roman gods. But Christianity has more than its fair share of such incidents…

So something like Mammon would have been the perfectly ordinary god of harvests, or virgins, or somesuch in a pre-Christian era, which was then adopted and equated with certain aspects of the Christian mythos, such as Satan, or the seven deadly sins, or suchlike.

So, I think Mammon is as much a god as any other. No less than Zeus, or Kali, or any of the other usual supernatural suspects. Or Yahweh. The general dictionary definition of god applies.

Considering the Bible as source and ancient culture as context, please explain to me how you define “god” in a way that “mammon” is an example of a “god”? (A definition of god in the sense that a “false god” is a kind of god…)

I do not need atheists to “have a god”. This recurring theme is not born out of a “need” in that sense. What I did do, was look at in what sense could atheists be considered to “have a god”. The difference is significant, is it unclear what I mean in this paragraph?

For the rest, this recurring theme is one written/thought in “theistic language”, i.e. it is mostly addressed towards the theists. It is mostly an attempt to have them understand the atheistic perspective. The continued “poking and prodding” at atheists is then largely an attempt to find a way of expressing the ideas I want to express, in theistic language, speaking to theists, that atheists would find satisfactory.

Take Kenneth’s input here:

Although I don’t agree with your usage of the word god when other words are better suited, I think I understand your reasoning. So these days when you use the word god, I mostly find I agree with you when I use your definition.

That is sweet. We know where we disagree, and he points out that I’ve explained it, and its context, and its definition, in a way that could get Kenneth to a place that he mostly agrees.

Thus: mission accomplished.

Keeping in mind “I don’t agree with your usage of the word”, of course.

explain how creating a common ground based on god helps when the matter in contention is exactly that.. god?

I’m basically creating common ground, or sketching out the common ground rather, around the word “god”, as by understanding the common ground, and thinking about the common ground, from both sides, it becomes easier to understand what exactly the differences are.

A big gripe of atheists is that theists think “having no god” means “having no source of morality or meaning”. The atheists equate “no god” with “nihilism”. Now clearly you would disagree with this. But there are different angles to explaining why it is wrong. [Edit: why those theists are wrong, why we disagree with this.] One is to continue hammering at the same thing, “not having god doesn’t make my life meaningless or immoral”, the other is to try a different angle, and focus on the commonality. That is what I’m up to in posts like these then. Says the atheist to the theist:

OK, so your idea of ‘no god’ is living meaningless or immoral. If we go by that definition then, if we take ‘having a god’ as meaning I have a source of meaning or morality, then okay, I do have a god. I do have something by which I direct my life, and I have something by which I find it worthwhile to live. [...continues sketching out the common ground, then:...] That said, the properties of this ‘god’ of mine, is such that I don’t think it worthwhile to call it ‘god’ by any traditional definition, because it has nothing to do with the supernatural.

Except, of course, if you consider the human subjective experience “supernatural”, which is another of my favourite redefinitions. It just makes sense of what people claim: the experience of “love” is something subjective, the objective reality would be dopamine or whatever. The subjective experience is something “beyond natural”, something “apart from the natural”. But let me not bite off another hard-to-chew argument here.

Gerhard, does this help explain it? I hope it does, to some degree at least?

But why can’t atheists be more like that fictitious atheist? Gerhard, why do you have to attack me personally? By which I mean something like this:

why do you need atheists to have a god?

Did you mean “why do theists need atheists to have a god?” Or did you really mean me? Can you understand that you are still jumping to conclusions, in a way that is bad for communication?

I meant both you and theists i used ‘you’ because its a reacurring theme here.(poking and prodding)

It’s not ‘jumping to conclusion’ to point out and question the obvious, you need the similarity between the two for the common ground. YOU NEED atheists to have A GOD by whatever definition you can manage a similarity.
How do you not see that and how does that make this become a personal type of offence?(i must be one of those really stupid people) In the end , the argument you are trying to create , in my opinion , is as shaky as the ‘hitler was a darwinist’ argument. So does that really help create ‘common’ ground? no. (again, this is a opinion and you need to learn to deal people having them even if they are very different to what you imagine..)

now, to make easier for me to understand, explain how creating a common ground based on god helps when the matter in contention is exactly that.. god?

or don’t waste your time on me

So these days when you use the word god, I mostly find I agree with you when I use your definition. It takes a bit more “translation”, but I think it is a worthwhile exercise.