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This is insufferable. Your sentence contains the word "god" -- does that make it meaningless? No, because of the use-mention distinction.

leephillips 5y ago
Your point is not intended to be serious is it? My comment also includes the word “gender”. As we both understand the use-mention distinction, what, exactly, is insufferable?
- thewakalix 5y ago
  Atheism is the negative space defined by 'belief in a god'. The position that 'god' is incoherent is in that negative space. Atheism is no more incoherent than your own comment, just for including the quoted word 'god' in its description. Wasn't Ayer an atheist, anyway? I think you might be misrepresenting him. Edit: Well, there's a subtlety here. The set of beliefs that concern god is an incoherent category (for the sake of argument), but the set of beliefs which concern 'god' is not. (I also think that theism is a fairly coherent category, one which describes people more than beliefs, but that's a different argument.)
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Because you didn’t read the book so you think I’m lying about what he said? He held various opinions about these issues through his life, as one would expect from an active thinker. But in the book I mentioned he specifically says that it is incoherent to claim to be an atheist or an agnostic, because both these descriptions implicitly refer to the “god” non-concept. And no, you can’t define a negative space by using a word that doesn’t refer to anything. EDIT: As you’ve seen fit to edit your comment while I was replying to it, I’m done.
    - thewakalix 5y ago
      "Misrepresenting" isn't quite the same as "lying". It can be done unintentionally. Edit: This is not a chat application. I had no way of knowing if and when you were replying. I don't see how I broke a norm, unless the norm here is "never use the edit mechanism".
    - implements 5y ago
      An atheist is anyone who lacks an affirmed belief in the existence of God - God being a powerful thinking entity responsible for the creation of the reality in which we exist. Sure, we can’t make sense of how reality exists, or find evidence that a god is responsible - but is that sufficient to assert incoherence? Is it less incoherent to believe that reality has a property of self-creation, as many physicists do?

leephillips 5y ago

Your point is not intended to be serious is it? My comment also includes the word “gender”. As we both understand the use-mention distinction, what, exactly, is insufferable?

thewakalix 5y ago
Atheism is the negative space defined by 'belief in a god'. The position that 'god' is incoherent is in that negative space. Atheism is no more incoherent than your own comment, just for including the quoted word 'god' in its description. Wasn't Ayer an atheist, anyway? I think you might be misrepresenting him. Edit: Well, there's a subtlety here. The set of beliefs that concern god is an incoherent category (for the sake of argument), but the set of beliefs which concern 'god' is not. (I also think that theism is a fairly coherent category, one which describes people more than beliefs, but that's a different argument.)
- leephillips 5y ago
  Because you didn’t read the book so you think I’m lying about what he said? He held various opinions about these issues through his life, as one would expect from an active thinker. But in the book I mentioned he specifically says that it is incoherent to claim to be an atheist or an agnostic, because both these descriptions implicitly refer to the “god” non-concept. And no, you can’t define a negative space by using a word that doesn’t refer to anything. EDIT: As you’ve seen fit to edit your comment while I was replying to it, I’m done.
  - thewakalix 5y ago
    "Misrepresenting" isn't quite the same as "lying". It can be done unintentionally. Edit: This is not a chat application. I had no way of knowing if and when you were replying. I don't see how I broke a norm, unless the norm here is "never use the edit mechanism".
  - implements 5y ago
    An atheist is anyone who lacks an affirmed belief in the existence of God - God being a powerful thinking entity responsible for the creation of the reality in which we exist. Sure, we can’t make sense of how reality exists, or find evidence that a god is responsible - but is that sufficient to assert incoherence? Is it less incoherent to believe that reality has a property of self-creation, as many physicists do?