God, Religion and Semantics

by Onager 2 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Onager

  There is a slight possibility of one of my JW relatives coming to have a read of this forum, which has made me really excited and endlessly hopeful, but also worried that they might read some of my angry comments from back in the day and throw their hands up in horror. I've also been thinking about the book by Christopher Hitchens "God is not Great" recently and I think there are similar defences to be made for both.

  There is a topic that I started called Jehovah God is not Real and there are also comments that I have made where I have said that Jehovah God is cruel, stupid or even evil. I appreciate that this sounds like a personal attack on God, just as Hitchens' book "God is not Great", sounds like an attack on God, but the truth is that they're not.

  The title of Hitchen's book: "God is not Great" is (deliberately) a negation of the Islamic phrase Allahu Akbar "God is Greatest" and my topic on this forum called "Jehovah God is not Real", was in direct response to another poster's topic "Jehovah God is Real". In both cases it is not the God which is being attacked, but the claim about God.

  Likewise, when I say something like "Jehovah God is stupid", I am not actually saying anything about God. After all, as an atheist, it would be weird for me to attribute any quality to a deity. What I am saying is that the believer's claim, if true, would mean that the God they are proposing is dumb.

  This might sound like hair splitting semantics, but it's an important distinction. All Gods, and all information about their qualities and actions, are claims made by people. There is not one single God, Thor, Vishnu, Jehovah or whomever, for which there is a single piece of evidence which does not come second hand from a human being.

  I don't know if God exists, I'd really rather like it if they did and there was some kind of purpose to this whole business, but I do know that every story of a personified deity is disproved either by internal inconsistencies in the claims, a lack of evidence or both.
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  Sea Breeze

  there is a single piece of evidence which does not come second hand from a human being.

  I'd just like to point out that most of the things we accept as true, comes second hand from other humans
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  Onager

  I'd just like to point out that most of the things we accept as true, comes second hand from other humans

  That's absolutely true. None of us have anything even remotely resembling a true and accurate model of the world around us. Almost everything we hold true is an approximation or an anecdote. You accept as a fact that Polar bears live at the north pole and Penguins live at the South pole, But you only believe that because someone told you. Or, do you think you know what an oak tree is? You only have the vaguest idea! You could study oak trees for decades and not understand them entirely.

  What we have, all anyone has, is a working model. The crucial difference is how people build those models. Simplistically you can split peoples model building approaches into Credulous and Sceptical, but there is a world of shading in both.

  A Sceptic's model will have approximations and errors, but it's aim is to be robust yet adaptable. The model works, but if any part of it is shown to be wrong, it is taken out and replaced.

  The Credulous model also works and is also full of approximations and errors, but the aim of the Credulous model is to preserve the model. New information that contradicts the model is rejected automatically.

  The problem with the Credulous model is that it can come into conflict with reality. The beauty of the Sceptical model is that reality always wins.