No word can indicate God

As much as I endorse deep religious-philosophical discourse, isn't this thread a little out of place?

Shouldn't it be moved?

 

But the Creator, the Supreme Being certainly indicate in objective situations; as soon as they are used in a self-respecting form of recitation or chant it is these which become indeed too subjective. Thereby the christian religion is ultimately the one biasing to Objective truth.

That deserves a debate.

 

Really this is going in the direction of a discussion of what gives language its meaning - what legitimates it. This is a very interesting but also complex subject.

I don't like the idea of God as 'virtual', because that seems to suggest that God is a hyper-reality of some sort, who exists only because of language.

Money I'd have to say, is IMO, a more complex thing, because it represents something else - labour value? gold held in banks? So they say!

 

Where to?

Isn't Christianity supposed to be a religious-philosophical system?

 

Too complex for this forum? It seems to be pretty much at the heart of the original post, and yet has been more or less skirted around. Is God any more undescribable than anything else? Maybe a little, but really, not a hell of a lot more. It's startling, when you get thinking about it, that we manage to communicate at all!

Everything I learn about language seems to point to it being the basis of our thought as (I think) Lacan and Derrida suggest. We benefit from talking through problems, we talk to ourselves when we are having problems... I even find myself writing things down, a line at a time, when I need to get my head around a complex idea. Sometimes doing this takes me in other directions that I'd struggle to approach without the aid of words.

If we think in words, it seems inevitable that we'd need words for concepts. But as I understand it, the word "God" is a label for whatever God is. It therefore is no less accurate a description of God than any other word is of any other thing. We have words for a lot of things we don't fully understand, but that doesn't make the words any less useful.

Well, there's plenty of evidence that He is, and not a hell of a lot of evidence that He isn't. But hey, whatever you wanna believe, chum

It hasn't represented anything for a while. The value of labour (and gold) varies so much, and varies according to other, equally metaphysical things like demand (which in turn is dependent on why something is in demand or not...).

I believe that the gods we have stem from incredibly complex drives that we, as a species, would do well to study. We have already established, more or less, that human cultures come up with the same or similar myths and legends even if they have zero contact with one another.

This would imply one of two things:

1) that the myths and legends are all based on reality, but aren't quite accurate, since many would mutually exclude one another if taken literally (e.g. if every flood myth were 100% accurate, it wouldn't be possible for them to refer to the same flood, but it would also be impossible for there to be that many floods going on!)

2) that the myths derive from things we have in common (e.g. our physiology) which influence us psychologically/subconsciously (e.g. the flood myth referring to our association of bodies of water with the womb, and thus indicating our expulsion from the maternal body in a welter of amnion).

I dunno, to me, the second one is far more appealing than the notion that any god is real.

 

but does this thread really concern Christianity?

 

How about God as a word to describe God?


Do I win a cookie?

 

"I AM THAT I AM" is not a bad or inaccurate name for 'God'. Just thought it would be worth bringing some Christianity into this thread.

 

I'm not putting down words as such.
Agree that both Derrida and Lacan, with whom I'm less familier are both very interesting. Generally, I'm quite interested in structuralism and post-structuralism.

Thing is though that what people think of when the word 'God' is uttered can be quite different. For instance, the general characteristics ascribed to 'Allah' are quite different from those in the case of 'Krishna', or even 'Jesus'.
No doubt this is condidtioned by cultural influences, except in the case of those who say they have experienced a reality they describe as God.

How magnanamous!

I 'd have to disagree.

 

It isn't really that descriptive though is it?

No cookie just yet.

 

Well there's the ban on 'taking the Lord's name in vain', so clearly this is something Christians should think about, although I know a lot of them don't like to think very much.

 

Aren't you only saying that because you believe in God though? I mean, to me, raised by an atheist, adamantly anti-religious father and a light-Catholic mother, Allah and God don't seem that different. Certainly Islam and Christianity aren't that different; we tend to notice the tiny things that differentiate them (just like with everything else), but the significant rules aren't that different.

Would it threaten your faith to know that God and Allah and maybe even Krishna were just facets of the same, nameless entity?

 

Many Christians don't even know the name of their Lord, most will never utter it... therefore it is impossible for most to take their Lords name in vain.

 

Is it any less descriptive than any other word? I know that the question being asked was about God, but it could've been asked about anything. The only words that really describe the thing that they are are onomatopoeic ones.

 

So, are we beng shallow here? Deeply regarded, the Word as a means for decision Making or Decisions having been made is cause for Godly concerns. For such reasons the explanation of one's own course in life is one from a divine source.

But shallowly, 'oh My God' as of late it has become fashionable to remind the question of his existence and bias for easy talking feared for the moment of Experience. Similarly, the capital letter 'E' itself should be denied indication of a supreme or higher motivation in the Consciousness of the controlled event

(ya sure).

 

Well all I can say is that you'd have to look at the characteristics of Allah or Jehova and compare them with those of Krishna as depicted in the relevant scriptures and according to what their adherents believe about them and how it makes them act.
I don't think it's a question of my 'faith' being threatened. My view is that the Jehova/Allah type deity is largely a projection of quite crude minds filled with fear in the face of an unknown universe, and with their own over-riding tribal agendas.
Jesus is much better - He's much more a God of love - or I think was originally so before the Christian religion became the Roaman State religion and got politicized etc.

Anyway, the philosohy surrounding Krihshna is much better constructed amd far more comprehensive. The idea that Krishna is simply a name we attach to a nameless entity has been thought of by the philosphers of India.
I'm not sure if by 'nameless entity' you mean a kind of amorphous 'God' or just nothing...

 

Insofar as names or nouns go, yes.

You have to put adjectives to define quality. But people have a kind of description of God in their heads which conditions what they mean by the simple word God.

Christianity furnishes a good example - 'Jehova' and 'Jesus' - quite a different set of associations come into play in either case. But both are terms for 'God'.

 

Since you're obviously an intelligent person and we're getting into an interesting thing here, perhaps I should make my position as clear as pos.

Generally I'm not a Christian, but try to follow a path of yoga. This is quite different from Christianity or popular religious belief in general.
In effect, the whole thing rests on the possibility of actual spiritual experience. Various forms of yoga exist which attempt to get this through different means.
Personally I have expeirienced enough to say that the spiritual is as real to me as the material, and more real than our always limited ideas and intellectual formulations.
Not, you understand that I'm in any way 'anti-intellectual'. I do think though that the rational, discursive mind is only one side of our being, and has definite limitations.

But I'll say that yes, in the end it is because I believe in God, only not on the basis of simply words in a book or some sentimental thing or because I've been told I should believe.

 

Plato - I think - said the same about the word "dog". If you ask a roomful of people to draw a dog, and don't give them any more description of what kind of dog, they will come up with quite different drawings, but among them, you will likely have certain qualities of "dogginess" that allow us to identify each drawing as being of a dog.

In much the same way, while we may squabble over what the right/archetypal god looks/acts like, there will definitely be a point where we know that something has been varied too much from our basic subconscious definition of "godness" to be called a god any more. Clearly, there are important defining characteristics across all gods that allow us to differentiate a deity from a table-lamp.

It's possible that these things are cultural, or perhaps that they transcend, or predate, cultures.

 

Well, "nameless" was unnecessary, really. But yes, I meant some entity which, perhaps, goes by many names, takes on the forms and superficialities of any god, while still maintaining the basic "essence" - the traits and qualities associated by humans with godhood. If it turned out that Jesus and Krishna and Allah and Jehova were all heads of the same hydra, would it lessen your capacity to worship one, rather than the other? I hope it wouldn't.