yes! very far indeed. no wonder you wish to make him a primary subject of a story... very cool.

I don't atheists have less of an understanding of what is meant by the word "God" than religious people do. I think most atheists understand perfectly well what is meant by it, they just don't believe it.

He is absolutely right. We cannot conceive of any awareness beyond our own. The concept of God is like infinity or eternity, they mean nothing, and we have no way to understand them.

To me he is saying the same thing the Buddha is supposed to have said--the question of God does not edify; it has no meaning we can understand. We do not even know what another of our own species thinks, how can we know anything like God?

He has expressed the core of my disbelief. He is so totally NOT agnostic. He does not question the existence of God, he states clearly the question is ridiculous and has no meaning.

I'm most intrigued with the way he phrases his disbelief: "I am without idea of god; the word god is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation". A signifier without signifieds, in other words; an empty signifier. Removes it entirely from the realm of emotion (faith, belief) and puts it squarely in the domain of language. And thus it matters not whether he is atheist or agnostic. Does it?

The concept of God is like infinity or eternity, they mean nothing, and we have no way to understand them.
What are you talking about? We have no way to understand the concept of infinity? Of course we do. Most people understand the concept of infinity perfectly fine. (Oh, and what about the concept of nothing? I assume "we" have a way to understand it, since you use it.)

Seems to me he squarely removes it from the domain of language or any symbolic definer.

The more we talk about things that have no meaning the less we talk about things that do (Like a good cup of coffee on a Sunday morning listening to the birds waking.)

The word God, the Icon of Icons, represents the empty hole we fill with superstition. God represents the prohibition on the questioning of spirituality. God has no meaning other than to be beyond meaning, beyond the touch of perception and rationality.

God is the lie-->what we perceive is real.

Infinity and eternity are defined by being indefinable. If you understand these concepts than you do not understand me. And if you cannot understand me, how could you possibly have a full understanding of God (or infinity)?

If you understand infinity, what is infinity divided by infinity? The answer is there is no answer. What kind of understanding is that?

"Infinity and eternity are defined by being indefinable."

No.

"If you understand infinity, what is infinity divided by infinity? The answer is there is no answer."

The answer is undefined in most contexts. And what is nothing divided by nothing? Also undefined. Is nothing therefore also a concept you don't (cannot) understand? What does division have to do with anything? For a long time there was no answer to the equation x²=-1. Was -1 therefore somehow an incomprehencible abstract concept?

All thoughts are abstract. And, yes, nothing is a concept that is as slippery as a greesed quark.
Is 0 nothing or an integer between -1 and 1?
Nothin from nothin leaves nothin
And too much of nothin will drive a man insane.

The point here is that it is irrational to believe that we could conceive of anything that would fill the specs for God. That is the nothing here. A being defined by being undefinable.

You understand the concept of God? Tell me about it, don't leave anything out.

"All thoughts are abstract."

Right. And infinity as an abstract concept is perfectly understandable to most people. Your idea that it isn't has no basis in reality. It's another example of ideas that we humans have the ability to make up, but which aren't actually true, like the idea of God. Open your eyes to the real world.

"You understand the concept of God?"

I understand the words coming out of the religious people's mouth when they talk about God, so I think I understand it as well as religious people do, as well as one can understand any idea that is made up and not actually real and true. I'm sure you've heard pretty much the same words I have, so there's no point in reiterating.

Your ability to understand a speaker's meaning (the words coming out of someone else's mouth) is an illusion. Concepts do not have meaning. You give them meaning not the other way around.

Show me an idea that is not made up but is real and true.

"Your ability to understand a speaker's meaning (the words coming out of someone else's mouth) is an illusion. Concepts do not have meaning. You give them meaning not the other way around."

If so, then there's nothing particularly incomprehencible about the concepts of infinity, eternity and nothing, which is what we started at. You might as well argue that "twenty", "blue" and "bicycle" are incomprehencible, and "defined by being indefinable" or similar nonsense.

"Show me an idea that is not made up but is real and true."

Well, I happen to believe in an objective reality outside my own conciousness. Call it my religion if you will. While I can't argue that Descartes makes a good point on that subject, I find it pointless to doubt the existence of an external reality in practice. While all ideas about the real world are abstract by their nature, they are more or less closely emulating, or providing information about, an actual concrete reality, which is why I think it makes sense to give a value of more or less "real" to these abstract ideas.

My understanding to you is nonsense. And, like you said, your absolute belief in an objective world we all share is, to me, very much a leap of faith.

And the question goes way beyond whether there is an objective reality; the question is, how can we know how much of that reality we are unaware of?

Astrophysicists tell us that more than half of the Universe is "dark matter", which isn't dark at all; it is rather undetectable with any of our instruments.

So with most of the assumed universe missing and each of us in total isolation about what the universe around us appears to be, this conversation we are having shows quite well the pathetic weakness of symbolic communication. And symbols are all we have to start with.

"Turned towards the lost or impossible presence of the absent origin, this ... thematic of broken immediacy is therefore the saddened, *negative*, nostalgic, guilty, Rousseauistic side of the thinking of play, whose other side would be the Nietzschean *affirmation*, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation. *This affirmation then determines the noncenter otherwise than as loss of the center.* ...

"There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign, of play. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which escapes play and the order of the sign, and which lives the necessity of interpretation as an exile. The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name of man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics or of ontotheology -- in other words, throughout his entire history -- has dreamed of full presence, the reassuruing foundation, the origin and the end of play. The second interpretation of interpretation, to which Nietzsche pointed the way, does not seek in ethnography, as Levi-Strauss does, the 'inspiration of a new humanism...'" -- Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play," _Writing and Difference_, 292.

Both of you, JayS and KristianZ, need to think this through a little more, in my view. Words are more complex than 'symbols'--though you're right JayS that they are all we have--they are signs, in which the word (signifier) and the 'meaning' (signified) are completely arbitrary to each other, never established or concrete ... which I guess is one reason that blogs can be interesting, baffling, and frustrating. And why "actual concrete reality" doesn't make any sense, esp not as something "outside" consciousness since discourse is the only way we have of establishing any connection between thought and experience...

Words are nothing but symbols. Symbols made of symbols. Maybe you need to think with me in the shallow end.

Hmm, a tempting offer. But i've spent my life diving into the wreck in the deep end!

Seriously: if the insights that (post)/structuralist linguistics and philosophy have contributed mean anything (they mean a lot to me, at least) then we need to think through the implications of what it means that language is all we have, yet language's very structure consists of *arbitrary relations between signs and the concepts that register on our brain when we see those signs*. If we're talking about the way in which religion has saturated western thinking, and language, the above gives us a way of deconstructing or 'unhinging' how certain meanings have naturalized (or sedimented) themselves. If these are arbitrary relationships, it means there's a way to 'un-do' them, however difficult a task.

This, at least, is what thinking in the deep end can do...that you may not find it worth the effort is entirely possible, I'll grant. But try thinking w/ me in the deep end, for kicks?

Blub, gurgle, blub, blub.....!!! Gasp!!!
This sucks!
And there is a party going on in the shallow end!
So much fun to have, so few brain cells left!

i'm over my head, but it sure feels nice :)