God is very much a part of our society today.  Even so, when the deity is examined closely, obvious flaws are discovered.  Therefore, a new perspective of the deity is needed to account for these lapses in understanding.  God has two different perspectives; the being of God, and the concept of God.  Unlike the concept of God, when the deity is understood as an object or Supreme Being, problems arise in the ability to comprehend such an object.  Ideals, on the other hand, are primarily based in philosophical thought.  For this reason, the concept or ideal of God proves to be far more effective at co-existing with our modern age of thought and reason than that of the Supreme Being God. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to use predicate calculus to simplify and hopefully clarify what was the most important point of my previous post, “‘God’, concept-object distinction”.

“What God is in himself is totally incomprehensible and unknowable.”
- John of Damascus

A philosopher of logic could reasonably call Saint John an atheist for that remark, thanks to the two words “…in himself…”.  But we’ll sit that interesting point aside for now.

My main point was that the popular notion of “God” being some kind of abstract thing, doesn’t lend well to being called “God”, and that another term should be adopted to describe the concept of “God” in religion.

To clarify some of the rules of logic mentioned or hinted to in the previous post, I’m going to break down a few of my sentences into predicate calculus.  Here goes:

“What God is in himself is totally incomprehensible and unknowable.”
- John  of Damascus

Every complete sentence contains two parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject is what (or whom) the sentence is about, while the predicate tells something about the subject.

In the quote above, this is the subject:

“What God is in himself…”

And this is the predicate:

“…is totally incomprehensible and unknowable.”

Gotlobb Frege, a mathematician and philosopher popularized the notion of separating concepts from objects present in singular propositions, in the same way that subjects and predicates are separated.  Though his method for creating this distinction is highly controversial (in those circles), the usefulness of the distinction itself is invaluable.

By Frege’s rules, the object would be:

“What God is in himself…”

and the concept would be:

“…is totally incomprehensible and unknowable.”

A concept cannot be the subject of a singular proposition, it must be the predicate, according to Frege.

With me so far?  re-read if your not, because what’s next is very important.

“What God is in himself is totally incomprehensible and unknowable.”

In the quote above, the subject is “God”.  We’ll assign the subject with the variable x.  There are two premises in the predicate: “unknowable” and “incomprehensible”.  We’ll call “unknowable” “P” and “incomprehensible” “Q”.  Therefore:

x[Px + Qx]

Translation: For x, P and Q are true

Now, to illustrate the importance of concept-object distinction, I’ll write the sentence another way:

Unknowable and totally incomprehensible is what God is in himself.

Px + Qx[x]

Translation: x is true for P and Q

Now, it appears that “unknowable” and “incomprehensible” are the object of the sentence, and “God” is the concept (whoa!).  But looking closer, you’ll notice the phrase “…in himself…” after the word “God”.  That phrase is a device of language designed specifically to describe the object or subject in its actuality, independent of perception or an observer.  So this sentence is illogical due to a concept-object distinction error.  Take the “thing in itself” phrase out, and you end up having to explain that “unknowable” and “incomprehensible” are objects, to which I say “Good luck!”.

But to prove a point, lets try anyway.  Let’s treat what would normally be a concept as an object instead.

unknowable is God.

According to the above statement, the concept of “God” is referent to the object “unknowable”.  Well, that’s an obvious falsehood; the concept of “God” is certainly knowable!

Now, outside Frege’s rules, one might interpret the above statement like so:

God = everything that cannot be known.

But to interpret it in this way will lead you down a path of infinite redundancy (because you’ll spend so much effort trying to figure out how to define “unknowable”)

because you’ll spend so much effort trying to figure out how to define “unknowable”

Can you see the futility of the “God” concept yet?

Conclusion

Three points:

1. Labeling “God” as a concept and then dismissing attempts to define that concept because “God is unknowable” (well, crap…), is not only illogical (literally) but also counterproductive to thinking.

2. Attempting to define the concept of “God”, without considering the object of “God” is an example of what psychologists call “denial of cycle” (of the existence of the object “God”).  And it also happens to be the direction religion is heading toward, which is why I suggest a change of terminology.  Changing the terminology would end the cyclic denial and turn this abstraction of “God” into “studying morality” or “observing human behavior”.

3. Attempting to define the object of “God”, without considering the concept of “God” is fundamentalist.  To define an object without the use of concepts is logically fallacious (if not impossible), but ignoring logic for a moment:  Many fundamentalists try to do this (whether they realize it or not), and they end up with a slightly more quantified version of “God”.  The problem with a quantifiable “God” is not only the lack of logic but also the lack of evidence for it.

And the definition of “god” (not capitalized) from merriam-webster.com/dictionary:

1 : a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
2 : a person or thing of supreme value
3 : a powerful ruler

I want you to look at the definition of the capitalized word “God”, outside of the context of this post.  It’s…so conceptual!

*Note: if you haven’t noticed, I don’t want a quantified or object “God” nor do I want an abstract or conceptual “God”.

In books three and four of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, he outlines his troubling path towards God’s truth and morality.  He explains the nature of suffering and how he embraced the vices in society in order to satisfy some need for fulfillment.  As Augustine explains these troubles in his life, he attempts to reach for some underlying truth that he states can only be found in God (Saint Augustine Confessions, Book 4: 24).

Unlike books one and two that mainly talked about his folly as a young man, books three and four express his basic philosophical views of the nature of goodness and truth.  He begins book three by discussing the ideal of suffering, or at least his definition of it.  Suffering is naturally a negative aspect of life, and he viewed the entire world and everything in it as some form of suffering (Confessions, 3: 3).  He goes as far as to say that even compassion is a form of suffering because it needs some sort of negative feeling to exist (Confessions, 3:4).  As he studied in Carthage, he began to explore the world of Philosophy.  In his studied he realized that there was some truth that needed to be discovered in order to obtain some special sense of fulfillment, but at this time, Augustine was still very vile in his mind and blind to what this truth was.  He compares this state of mind as eating in a dream:

“Food pictured in dreams is extremely like food received in the waking state; yet sleepers receive no nourishment, they are simply sleeping.” (Confessions, 3: 10)

Read the rest of this entry »