Salyavin posted to the quote, and Judy responded 'Sorry Salyavin...' if that is not addressing someone, I do not know what is.
It is true the atheists do not tend to deal with the more abstract conception of god that theists use, but they also tend to address the way the average person thinks of the subject, and for them 'god' is like a name for a thing or person. Y[a]HW[e]H is a name. Most people think of god as a creator, but Brahman is not a creator, and most people, off hand, would probably interpret that word as some kind of name, as it is usually in English capitalised, like a name. It is a token for a concept, a name for a concept. Vashistha, in discussing Brahman wrote,'..all this talk about who created this world and how it was created is intended only for the purpose of composing scriptures and expounding them: it is not based on truth'. Most people in the West do not think of god in the rarefied, abstract atmosphere of modern theistic discourse, and often are not familiar with Indian concepts, but think of god in very concrete terms, and probably not very clearly consider how their sense of it would play out logically. And the atheists tend to do the same, think of god as a name for a dictatorial entity or process that governs the world, both sides having a somewhat anthropomorphic colouration to the idea. After all in Genesis, we find god walking in the garden. So first of all one has to find out just how a person is interpreting that word, god. My own choice is not to use it because it has such an incredible historical and cultural baggage attached to it, that it is nearly impossible to discuss without stumbling into equivocation. Thought of abstractly enough, diluting the historical way the word god has been delineated, you could come to a conception that could have very little difference from the vision atheistic science has produced for the existence and transformation of the universe, but then what is the point of using the word god, as it then is denuded from everything that has been culturally and personally meaningful to people? Roberts does not really appear to be much of anyone. He said he coined the phrase about 1995 on one of the alt discussion groups and it caught on. That seems to be his claim to fame. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote: Exactly. Just as Brahman is not a proper name, but Brahma is (or Zeus, or Wotan, etc.). For theists, these named gods are, strictly speaking, demiurges, deities subordinate to the Ultimate Reality, the Ground of Being. The Tao is another term for the latter (which, according to Laotze, is "eternally nameless"). Nothing wrong with not being a believer, but if they're going to argue with theists, these new atheist dudes need to read, at the very least, David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss so they have some idea of what they're talking about. He really blasts them for their willful, arrogant ignorance, but they deserve it. Judy is correct. What Stephen Roberts (who he?) doesn't get is that "God" is not a proper name. The trouble with these new atheist types is that they have no sympathy for theology so completely misunderstand the language that theologians use.
