The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131699 Message #2974780
Posted By: Bill D
28-Aug-10 - 05:28 PM
Thread Name: BS: The God Delusion 2010
Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
Mrrzy.. you have just enlarged on my kidding post to Joe Offer a ways back. Yes...there ARE strict, technical ways to use words like 'valid' and 'evidence', but those words are like 'folk' and 'traditional'; they are just too handy and convenient shorthand for "concepts that I like and agree with".
When words get used, as Humpy-Dumpty said to Alice, "to mean exactly what I choose them to mean..", it is an example of Equivocation.
This is SUCH a common problem when folks get to arguing past one another in a "yes it is"/"no it isn't" exercise in futility. They simply, flatly have different meanings in mind, and often, neither side figures it out.....and when the topic is about arcane, metaphysical matters, it is not always easy to even untangle enough rhetoric to show where the equivocation lies. It is even harder to get everyone to agree to **agree** on a common definition in order to continue the debate on level ground.
People say: "Well, MY God is not X" or "The 'spirit' of humanity is..." and often, even the one speaking cannot even find alternate language to explain his 'inner meaning'.
And we wonder why, after 10,000 years and variations in 10,000 languages, we fail to communicate!