If you don’t specify a particular range of meanings for “God” then it’s not well-defined. (Suppose the ancient Romans were right, so e.g. Zeus and Venus exist. Does that mean that “God exists”? Suppose the deists are right: there is a single in-some-sense-supreme being, but it doesn’t actually interact with our world in any interesting way. Does that mean that “God exists”? Suppose all the historical interventions ascribed by, say, the Christian tradition to God did in fact happen and were the doings of a super-powerful being, but that being is nothing like omnipotent and nothing like unique but is merely the only such being that happens to have taken an interest in our planet. Does that mean that “God exists”? Suppose our world is a simulation inside some tremendously powerful computer. Does that mean that “God exists”? What if the simulation is run by a team of people, not just one? What if they have no idea that intelligent life has appeared inside their universe-simulation at all? Etc.)
If you do specify a particular range of meanings for “God” then it may be well-defined. For instance, you could say that “God” means precisely what the median present-day evangelical Anglican Christian believes, or something like that. But the beliefs of typical religious believers, or whole religious traditions, aren’t necessarily very coherent. For instance, the median present-day evangelical Anglican Christian believes in “the Trinity” but (1) the m.p-d.e.A.C. quite likely couldn’t tell you very exactly what that means, and (2) it’s somewhat debatable how much sense it can be made to make. Or, many religious people believe (1) God is good, (2) God’s goodness at least somewhat resembles the best imaginable human goodness, (3) God is something like omnipotent, and in particular can easily do anything that the human race could, (4) God is intimately aware of all of us and our concerns, (5) God loves us (in, again, some sense somewhat resembling the best human love) and (6) it is bad for a human to leave someone else they love suffering horribly when they could easily do something about it; but it’s at least arguable that (1-6) are not mutually consistent given how many people are suffering how horribly at any given moment.
That’s all entirely besides the point though—shminux created the pretense out of nowhere to make fun of it. In this sense, since shminux is making fun of some unspecified “God”, I’d expect them to pick the most reasonable (or most typical) definition to battle, which makes it totally inappropriate to say the problem is underspecified (since underspecifying the opposition’s views and defeating those crippled views isn’t a good way to actually learn from the argument).
I think I disagree with most of that; I think most of “the opposition” (not that I much like that framing) have views that are poorly defined, borderline-incoherent, or both.
(Not because “the opposition” are idiots; I suspect it’s also true that most atheists have rather fuzzy notions of just what “the existence of God” entails.)
Sure, it’s possible (at least, I think it is) to formulate a precisely-defined definition of “God” and debate whether there is any such entity. But that hardly ever happens; when people argue about the topic, what usually happens is that everyone has their own idiosyncratic and tactically-varying idea of what “God” and “God exists” means.
And I don’t think shminux introduced the notion of God in order to make fun of it; I think he thought it was a useful analogy to explain how he feels about the idea of time travel. Something like “it’s a thing lots of people assume is a reasonable idea that one ought to consider the possibility of, but I think it actually doesn’t make sense, and the more closely you look at it the less sense it makes, and bringing it into a discussion usually makes that discussion less useful rather than more”.
Thanks, this (and the reply confirming this was the meaning) cleared a lot up for me. I misread the original comment pretty poorly and would probably agree with this formulation of it. Thanks for clearing this up for me, I appreciate it.
GIYF, but to borrow from a Quora answer, the concepts of eternal existence, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence taken together lead to a bunch of contradictions.
If you’re going for some general argument stuff, I have no clue what this had to do with the post above. I was curious if your elaboration would make me read your original comment as anything other than a drive-by attack on religion, but it ended up not doing that. I find the comment as off-putting as if I pointedly ended this comment by claiming something unfavorable about the rhetorical tactics of communists—what would it add besides an insult?
I did not mean to offend you or anyone else here, I was using the analogy in the way gjm explained in the other reply:
“it’s a thing lots of people assume is a reasonable idea that one ought to consider the possibility of, but I think it actually doesn’t make sense, and the more closely you look at it the less sense it makes, and bringing it into a discussion usually makes that discussion less useful rather than more”.
It’s not that the premise is false, it’s not well defined, borderline on incoherent, like existence of God.
How is the “existence of God” a “borderline on incoherent” premise?
If you don’t specify a particular range of meanings for “God” then it’s not well-defined. (Suppose the ancient Romans were right, so e.g. Zeus and Venus exist. Does that mean that “God exists”? Suppose the deists are right: there is a single in-some-sense-supreme being, but it doesn’t actually interact with our world in any interesting way. Does that mean that “God exists”? Suppose all the historical interventions ascribed by, say, the Christian tradition to God did in fact happen and were the doings of a super-powerful being, but that being is nothing like omnipotent and nothing like unique but is merely the only such being that happens to have taken an interest in our planet. Does that mean that “God exists”? Suppose our world is a simulation inside some tremendously powerful computer. Does that mean that “God exists”? What if the simulation is run by a team of people, not just one? What if they have no idea that intelligent life has appeared inside their universe-simulation at all? Etc.)
If you do specify a particular range of meanings for “God” then it may be well-defined. For instance, you could say that “God” means precisely what the median present-day evangelical Anglican Christian believes, or something like that. But the beliefs of typical religious believers, or whole religious traditions, aren’t necessarily very coherent. For instance, the median present-day evangelical Anglican Christian believes in “the Trinity” but (1) the m.p-d.e.A.C. quite likely couldn’t tell you very exactly what that means, and (2) it’s somewhat debatable how much sense it can be made to make. Or, many religious people believe (1) God is good, (2) God’s goodness at least somewhat resembles the best imaginable human goodness, (3) God is something like omnipotent, and in particular can easily do anything that the human race could, (4) God is intimately aware of all of us and our concerns, (5) God loves us (in, again, some sense somewhat resembling the best human love) and (6) it is bad for a human to leave someone else they love suffering horribly when they could easily do something about it; but it’s at least arguable that (1-6) are not mutually consistent given how many people are suffering how horribly at any given moment.
That’s all entirely besides the point though—shminux created the pretense out of nowhere to make fun of it. In this sense, since shminux is making fun of some unspecified “God”, I’d expect them to pick the most reasonable (or most typical) definition to battle, which makes it totally inappropriate to say the problem is underspecified (since underspecifying the opposition’s views and defeating those crippled views isn’t a good way to actually learn from the argument).
I think I disagree with most of that; I think most of “the opposition” (not that I much like that framing) have views that are poorly defined, borderline-incoherent, or both.
(Not because “the opposition” are idiots; I suspect it’s also true that most atheists have rather fuzzy notions of just what “the existence of God” entails.)
Sure, it’s possible (at least, I think it is) to formulate a precisely-defined definition of “God” and debate whether there is any such entity. But that hardly ever happens; when people argue about the topic, what usually happens is that everyone has their own idiosyncratic and tactically-varying idea of what “God” and “God exists” means.
And I don’t think shminux introduced the notion of God in order to make fun of it; I think he thought it was a useful analogy to explain how he feels about the idea of time travel. Something like “it’s a thing lots of people assume is a reasonable idea that one ought to consider the possibility of, but I think it actually doesn’t make sense, and the more closely you look at it the less sense it makes, and bringing it into a discussion usually makes that discussion less useful rather than more”.
That’s exactly how I meant it, a seemingly reasonable concept that doesn’t hold together upon closer examination.
Thanks, this (and the reply confirming this was the meaning) cleared a lot up for me. I misread the original comment pretty poorly and would probably agree with this formulation of it. Thanks for clearing this up for me, I appreciate it.
GIYF, but to borrow from a Quora answer, the concepts of eternal existence, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence taken together lead to a bunch of contradictions.
If you’re going for some general argument stuff, I have no clue what this had to do with the post above. I was curious if your elaboration would make me read your original comment as anything other than a drive-by attack on religion, but it ended up not doing that. I find the comment as off-putting as if I pointedly ended this comment by claiming something unfavorable about the rhetorical tactics of communists—what would it add besides an insult?
I did not mean to offend you or anyone else here, I was using the analogy in the way gjm explained in the other reply:
I’ll take your word for that. I misread you pretty thoroughly; I’m sorry for that.