Is Belief In God A Delusion? (mystic)

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by MidnightBlue

I think Duns Scotus would agree.

So would Baruch de Spinoza, Paul Tillich and J.S. Spong.

[Fluffy]

Originally Posted by doppelganger

"Existing" is a property of things.

Why do you believe that, Dopp?

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Fluffy

Why do you believe that, Dopp?

Because to exist is to be identifiable. Existence is a function of grammar.

[Fluffy]

Originally Posted by doppelganger

Because to exist is to be identifiable. Existence is a function of grammar.

I agree with both of those things but don't see how that leads to the conclusion that "existence is a property of things". Existence could be a property of some things and not other things.

Imagine a rose. Imagine its smell, its colour, the detail of every independent petal. Now take that same image but now also imagine an additional property: existence. Put the two alongside each other and explain what the identifiable difference is between the two.

Existence only makes sense with reference to something else. We can talk of existing in the mind, existing in reality, hypothetical existence etc. Existence means something very different in each case because we are talking about a different set of elements.

In mathematics, the natural numbers and the real numbers are two differently sized infinite sets of elements. They can also be thought of as elements of the set of sets of numbers (which would also include the complex, the integers and many other infinite and non infinite sets).

When we say "root 2 does not exist in the natural numbers", we are making a comment on the absence of this element from this set. When we say "root 2 exists in the reals", we are saying that this set contains that element. What does it mean to say "root 2 does not exist"? Perhaps we mean "root 2 does not exist in any set, anywhere". However, we still must reference the set when talking of its non-existence. Similarly, when we say "root 2 exists" then this has very little meaning unless we know in which set it exists. It could exist in all sets in which case the meaning would be very different from it only existing in a single set.

Second-order predicates, like "exist", "rare", "common" etc. don't describe elements, they describe sets of elements or sets of sets. It is, therefore, not a property of elements and God is an element, not a set of elements or a set of sets.

A further illustration of this is the rabbit example. If I have a rabbit, I can describe it as warm, fluffy or cuddly. These are all valid properties of that rabbit. However, if I describe a rabbit as rare then whilst this makes grammatical sense, what I actually mean is that the set of rabbits of this type contains few elements. I am not describing this rabbit because my claim reflects upon every element of the set and, as such, the set itself.

To relate this back to the question of the thread, I feel that this is an important distinction because I think that it can then be shown that whilst attributing properties to the elements within the set of divine beings is irrational and delusional, any statement about the set itself, including whether it is equivalent to the empty set (atheism), has a single element (monotheism) or has many elements (polytheism), is rational and non-delusional.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Fluffy

Existence could be a property of some things and not other things.

Imagine a rose. Imagine its smell, its colour, the detail of every independent petal. Now take that same image but now also imagine an additional property: existence. Put the two alongside each other and explain what the identifiable difference is between the two.

The smell, color and detail are the means by which it comes into existence as a rose (or rather the giving of significance and relationship in thought to its smell, color and detail, brings the rose into existence). "Existence" is not an additional attribute of each individual thing as you propose in your rose example. It is the defining attribute of thing-ness itself, which is expressed as to any particular thing by those attributes that define it as that particular thing.

A thing exists because it has attributes that define it as that thing. For "God" to exist would require one to imagine attributes for "God" that define "God" as a thing. Put another way, to exist, a thing must be carved out of the void of non-existence and given some defining essence - it must be given some significance and some attributes that put it into relationship with other things.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

I would include that in the list of delusions. "Existing" is a property of things.

"The map is not the territory."

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by Fluffy

A further illustration of this is the rabbit example. If I have a rabbit, I can describe it as warm, fluffy or cuddly. These are all valid properties of that rabbit. However, if I describe a rabbit as rare then whilst this makes grammatical sense, what I actually mean is that the set of rabbits of this type contains few elements. I am not describing this rabbit because my claim reflects upon every element of the set and, as such, the set itself.

I can't wait to tell my rare book dealer that there is no such thing as a rare book.