David,
Sorry if you first receive an incomplete version of this response. Machine
froze up, was clicking the mouse around to see whether it was alive, and
happened to hit "send."
>Okay. But then why use the same term to refer to
>whatever-it-is-we're-talking-about-here?
For the same reason physicists chose the terms energy, work, momentum,
force...
It evokes something of the right gestalt, which gets you a good part of the
way to communication.
>> But can you back up your statement that this is "God as defined in
>> public discourse?"
>>
>
>Sure. The simple fact that you evidently know what I'm talking about is
>prima facie proof.
OK, I agree, this is ONE of the meanings of "God as defined in public
discourse." But I was trying to make it abundantly clear that this was not
my meaning. I received several "private" emails expressing gratitude for
doing such a good job of articulating something close to the respondents'
philosophical positions. THEY knew what I was talking about. They'd
rather have something like what I was articulating be the public discourse
prototype. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't any thinking person?
>> The God of the Hebrew Bible explicitly forbids anthropomorphizing...
>
>Er, "his" name? Isn't that an anthropomorphization?
Only if you take it literally. I was using it metaphorically, to evoke an
image. That is the way in which the Hebrew Bible ought to be experienced,
in my view. Explicit instructions to that effect are littered throughout
the document. Most people just haven't understood.
>> >("There's this thing I call 'glosboss' that I think exists,
>>
>> >and is very important to me personally, but no, I can't tell you what
>> I
>>
>> >mean by the term. Isn't this profound? Shouldn't we talk about it at
>>
>> >length?")
>>
>>
>> Oh, but I CAN tell you what I mean by the term.
>>
>
>I was referring here to the quote that prefaced my email, in which 'God'
>was defined, in essence, as that which is undefinable. (A nice trick, by
>the way, for those discomfited by how vulnerable all their successive
>definitions have turned out to be.)
But that IS what I mean by the term!
Why did Godel surprise mathematicians? How could they possibly have
thought they could capture everything in formalism? My ninth grade
daughter who does OK in math but is by no means a true talent doesn't
understand the proof, but she groks the concept and the basic structure of
the proof. It doesn't surprise her at all because we've been working the
concepts since she could talk. She wonders how anyone could have imagined
otherwise.
You can think of God as that still, small voice in your conscience
reminding you to be intellectually honest and acknowledge that you don't
have everything in your model.
Godel, by the way, thought he had a proof that God exists.
>See how much trouble we run into when we aren't precise about which
>meaning we assign to the term "God"? :-)
Isn't that the the kind of trouble we became scientists in order to get
into? Let's dialogue and work toward a metaphysic we can not only stomach,
but celebrate. Let's work on it together. And then let's try to get it in
Newsweek.
Would you like what would happen to the world if we could put it in a
Newsweek article and people could get it? If my ninth grade daughter can
get it (granted, she has me for a mom, but she is in ninth grade), we could
give it to the population of Newsweek readers.
>Rather the burden is on the believer in
>God to point out which part of those calculations they treat differently
>when considering God and when considering astrology (for example).
>
>And then justify that difference.
That's exactly what I've been trying to do in this exchange.
Sometimes I like to think of myself as doing psychotherapy on the
dysfunctional children of the nasty divorce between science and religion
who have been badly scarred by having to choose which parent to love. (My
first patient was myself.) But you have to be very careful in psychotherapy
not to push the patient too far too fast, and to let the patient discover
for himself what you are doing, at the point where he becomes glad you are
doing it.
Kathy
