Tuesday, June 7, 2022

There Is Nothing Particularly Ambiguous About The Word God

All words could be used in a vague way.  Indeed, language itself is inherently vague except for when one understands one's own words and what one means by them with utter clarity.  There is not a single word from others that a non-telepath can know the exact meaning of, other than knowing what it seems like they mean or what one's own self would mean or not mean by them.  We are left with our most precise communication system of language always tied to varying degrees of uncertainty and ambiguity the moment two people try to communicate.  Some words are used more loosely or inconsistently than others, but someone could always use words in a misleading, imprecise, or exceptionally arbitrary way.  One might come across someone who claims that theism is untrue because most people are so vague about what they mean by the word God or have differing concepts in mind.

Some people might even pretend like this lack of a consistent definition from person to person, which is going to be the case with many other words as well, actually "proves" the nonexistence of all logically possible deities.  This only amounts to a blatant non sequitur based on a reaction to the stupidity of other people.  In other words, it does not logically follow at all from the general thoughtlessness, linguistic and conceptual (though trouble communicating a concept with words does not automatically mean someone does not understand it), of the typical non-rationalist that no deity exists.  This idiocy is analogous to the epistemological belief that alien life does not metaphysically exist because people, often because of mere assumptions, give conflicting definitions or predict different forms of alien life.

It is true that many people might use the word God or deity without even knowing what precisely they mean by it.  As a result, the word God or gods can get used so loosely that people refer to everything from an uncaused cause to superhuman aliens to almost any type of being that does not have at least some human limitations.  In the true theistic sense, a deity is an uncaused cause that might or might not have other attributes beyond those necessary to exist without a beginning and to bring other things that are logically possible into existence.  Various philosophies and religions might ascribe further traits to the uncaused cause, but in no case is a being that came into existence purely divine.  If Zeus and Athena exist and have the natures and backstories assigned to them by Greek tales, then they are not gods, but powerful, somewhat supernatural entities that are neither an uncaused cause nor humans.  A deity does not have to be omniscient, caring, or any other such thing to be an uncaused cause.

The concept of an uncaused cause is not impossible to understand, but to single out the word God and treat it especially vague is asinine.  God is not the only word that can be used with exact clarity (as far as personal definitions go) despite being used in contrary, inescapably vague, useless ways by many people.  Logic, love, science, knowledge, and truth are all words that, though the respective concepts of necessary truths, affection, empirical observation, certainty, and fact can be understood by literally anyone through rationalistic reflection, are used in extremely unhelpful and conflicting ways by the vast majority of people one could talk to.  There is nothing especially unclear about how typical people use words like God than there is about how they use words like reason or certainty, with the concepts behind the latter words being even more foundational and all-encompassing, and thus more crucial, than even the concept behind the word God.

Of course, words do not ultimately reveal or prove truths about reality; reason and direct introspective experiences do.  No one learns anything from mere words beyond words themselves, and even then, reason and introspection are relied on, knowingly or unwittingly, by everyone to understand anything about words at all.  This is true of the concept of theism no more or less than it is true of anything else.  Concepts are not true or false or knowable or unknowable because certain words have become associated with them by custom.  The concept of an uncaused cause and the sole logical proof that at least one such entity exists are not grounded in words.  Even if the concept was vague, though the idea of an uncaused cause is very distinct, it would still not logically follow that no deity exists.  Only inherent conceptual/metaphysical contradiction, otherwise called logical contradiction, disproves the existence or very possibility of something.  To be demonstrably false or nonexistent, something must contradict itself, logical axioms and what follows from them, or some other truth.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

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