Cart Before The Horse: The Incoherency of the God Concept

A slightly more barbed edge to my original response to veritas48's part in the 'Presumption of atheism' project. Seek and ye shall find, Noah. ;]

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[j42002]

the concept of meaning is not physical. a concept in not physical. i don't understand this argument. i hope to hear from you.

[ScepticalAgnostic]

@j42002

I'm not sure whether I understand your comment, either.

Would you mind sending me a PM or video response? It'll help me in explaining myself if you've got something confused or I've got something wrong. (:

[DeaconVerter]

Astronauts returned from space. "We found intelligent alien life" they say. "What are the aliens like?" people asked. The astronauts replied, "they are wise, kind, gracious and technologically advanced." The people were unsatisfied with this answer.

[ScepticalAgnostic]

You're exposing these things largely because I haven't had the chance to make a video on analytical physicalism - which is a large mistake on my part.

Concepts are causally inert; calling God immaterial and non-causal would be calling it/him a concept. That's fine, but then we still need to define what God is, and how it/he can be ostensively verified. If it/he can't, we're back at step one with incoherency.

[ScepticalAgnostic]

A neat parallel to Searle's biological naturalism is digestion - digestion is a function of, realised in, but not reducible to, the digestive system from start to finish.

[ScepticalAgnostic]

I added in the 'ontologically' to try and stop you misunderstanding. The mind is emphatically not the brain, in the same way that my idea of a green stapler is not green and can't stick pieces of paper together.

The mind is causally reducible to the brain - which is what Searle meant by things like 'thirst is in the hyperthalamus'. Talking about ideas without reference to the physical is senseless, but so is denying the mind - you have to assume the mind to do it.

[listen2meokidoki]

If mind is not reducible to the brain, it is nevertheless located within the space occupied by the organism. Most discount to bowels, rectum and spleen and skin from their musings. Any metaphysical untestable postulate of the mind will remain mere imagining. Such as stating the mind can permiate space. And god is everywhere all at once and is all things to all men&women. To me, such musings are the same as achemy. We needed testable information before we could actually turn lead to gold.

[wilbert127]

I love John Searle.

[wilbert127]

Ok, so you allow for concepts to be immaterial but what if God was immaterial AND non-causal, say like a pantheistic God. Would that then make for a coherant God? I agree that without a postive immaterial ontology, God talk is meaningless. Im just trying to look for any holes in your argument.

[ScepticalAgnostic]

"Mind is a function of, realised in, but not [ontologically] reducible to, the brain."

-John Searle