Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2019 5:29 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2019 2:53 am
Lacewing wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2019 2:37 am
A god, real or imagined in varying degrees across humankind, can become a significant symbol affecting the lives of all humans...
So your position is that it would not matter whether or not God was real; it would amount to the same problem, you think?
I.C., I've answered this many times. As I've said, this topic is not about whether or not a god exists.
I didn't ask that, actually. I asked whether or not you thought the existence or non-existence of God has any IMPLICATIONS about the topic. You seem to say it does not, but I sincerely think it really does.
Again, I give you this case, to show why it does: If I assign you a gender...say, I decide LW is a 45 year old male, who lives in his parents' basement...would that irritate you?
Why?
Because you're real. You already have a "gender," so nobody has any legitimacy in "assigning" you one that is not your own.
If God is real, then His situation is the same as yours in that: nobody has a right to "assign" God any gender.
But if God is not real, then it doesn't matter what you "assign," because there is no real referent to which to compare your "assigning."
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2019 2:53 am
I believe in the Biblical God. He chooses His own pronouns...I don't. We never had any ability to assign Him
His.
So you don't think that men have interjected their own interpretations throughout history??? Really???
You mean, "So you don't think men made God male?" Answer: No, I do not. I think God is whatever God is -- not just in regards to "gender" issues, but in regard to everything.
Wouldn't that explain why there are so many DIFFERENT interpretations of a god?
It's one POSSIBLE explanation. That does not make it the RIGHT or BEST explanation. There are many explanations that are not very good, such as that LW was put on earth by aliens. That's possible, but neither probable nor the best explanation.
The only thing that could lead one to think it was a
better explanation than others would be the assumption that all human beings have to have equal access to the knowledge of God at all times. For then, we would have to explain why the differing interpretations (all known to be equal) do, in fact, differ.
But there's no area of our experience in which equal knowledge is pre-guaranteed to all people. People have different levels of knowledge, in regard to any question you could choose. And that's an empirically obvious statement. So why would we think that equal knowledge of the nature of God was pre-guaranteed to all cultures and people, always at the same time?
We would not. There would be no reason to suppose that. So the simple explanation for differing interpretations of God is differing levels of knowledge about God.
All of these men...interpreting their idea of a god, as a male like themselves. A male god who sees females as inferior. How convenient for human males! You cannot see this?
It might turn out to be "convenient": but if it is, the "convenience" is incidental, if God does exist. If He does not, then the "convenience" might not be incidental, but it's also neither morally wrong (since there would be no objective wrong, then) nor would it be "better" for the fictive god concept to be assigned another gender. It would be equally "convenient" for any other arrangement to pertain, then.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2019 2:53 amI'm not the Creator. He assigned me
my gender, and you yours...
You don't get to apply your god to me. That's very arrogant. Imagine me applying MY GOD (if I had one) to you. It's absurd.
I'm sorry to offend you, but if God exists (as I believe He does) then your ire does not count against Him having assigned you your gender. That's just how it would be, whether you choose to believe it or not. "Arrogance" is not involved. It's just how it is, rationally speaking.
Regardless of WHO identifies god as a "he"...why would a god be a gender?
This is backward. In order to predicate something of a noun, the predication has to exist before the noun does.
For example, "redness" has to exist before you can say, "The apple is red," and have that saying mean anything. "Gender" did not exist before God, so it cannot be that humankind merely predicated it of God. In predicating "gender" of God, we are working backward, trying to attribute the features of the creation to the Creator. Thus, only what He says
about Himself is rightly informative. Our human predications are backward. We're trying to understand the nature of the painter by reference merely to one of his paintings.
Wouldn't a god be beyond gender?
In a sense, yes -- this is the issue. God is not "a human male." But all we know are "human males," (and, of course, "maleness" in lower animals -- but that's even less useful as an analogy to the Creator). God is, so to speak, a "super-male" -- He is beyond mere "maleness" as we know it, but not by way of being neuter. He is what all "maleness" ought to have come to, what it ought to have been, but never is, among human beings
Wouldn't gender be something that HUMANS identify with and interpret to serve themselves???
Not even close. There are two sexes. And we all know that because every molecule of human DNA identifies exactly which one we are.
We didn't "invent" gender. It is what it is. The Postmodernists have that dead wrong -- scientifically wrong, objectively wrong and morally wrong. And one can't get much more "wrong" than that.