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9/30/2021

Edwin P McCravy

11/7/2021 02:54:20 pm

I am an ignostic because I know of no way to get my brain to conjure up any mental concept of "creator of the universe". That's the only purported definition I have ever heard any theist give for "God".

Theists do not believe in any god. They think they do, and say they do, and act as though they do. But they don't. They only believe that they believe in a god.

I just purchased a copy of your book "Ignosticism - a philosophical justification for atheism" from Amazon. It just came today. I have only read about a third of it. Why do you say, as does Theodore Drange (p. 17), that "God" has many definitions? Webster only lists this one purported definition, and to my knowledge it's universal:

"(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being."

That contradicts Ted Drange's claim that there are many definitions. Incidentally I have corresponded steadily with Ted Drange since 1995, but he is still an atheist) It's straight from Genesis 1:1. I have never known of any Christian, Jew, or Muslim who would not agree that this is the one true definition of "God". I agree that one theist may say to another "God does X, not Y" followed by the other replying, "That's wrong, God does Y, not X". But they're not giving different definitions for "God". They still both agree that the dictionary definition above is the true definition of "God". So why do you say "God" has multiple definitions?

All theists I know of say "God is the creator of the universe". That says what Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created the universe".

We weren't born knowing how to use and interpret any words. I claim that we could only have learned to use and interpret words by listening to other humans speak them, or by reading where other humans have written them, and figuring out for ourselves what usage rules they seemed to be following. This is true of the verb "create". We learned the word "create" entirely from listening to other people using it. We heard people say things like this "Edison created the light bulb". But Edison was one part of the already existing universe, and the light bulb was another separate part of the already existing universe. Or we may have heard "That bird created that nest". That bird was one part of the already existing universe and the nest was another separate part of the already existing universe.

To reiterate, all cases of usage by other people which could have contributed to our learning to use and interpret the word "create" were all cases of usage of "X created Y" when it was exactly synonymous with "The part of the already existing universe labeled X created another separate part of the universe labeled Y".

So when we hear somebody say "God created the universe", we can only attempted to interpret it as:

"The part of the already existing universe labeled "God" created another separate part of the already existing universe labeled "the universe",

which is nothing but gobbledygook. But that has never occurred to most people. But we ignostics (aka theological nocognitivists or ignostics, there's no difference. as you either believe 'creator of the universe" makes sense to you or not. Theists, agnostics, and atheists all believe it does, but the only reason they do is because they were indoctrinated that way in their early youth, and it has not occurred to them that it really makes no sense.

"God" is a sound which triggers emotions in theists due to their indoctrination in childhood. The emotions they feel makes them believe that some force is causing them to feel it. It never occurs to them that language is only a coding of human thoughts. Therefore if nobody can think of anything for a purported word or name (i.e., row of alphabet letters) to refer to, then that row of letters is not part of their vocabulary. "God" and "Allah" are such rows of letters. We should not label them "words" or "names" anymore than we would label "Twinkerschwetzle" as "a word" or "a name".

You say on p. 20 "That isn't to say that most definitions of God don't make sense. To the contrary, they make perfect sense to the person who believes in that particular conceptualization of God."

May I ask "What conceptualization?" Why assert that it makes any sense to them? All you can justify saying is that they CLAIM or THINK it makes sense to them.

Thank you for listening. Now I will go read the rest of your book.

Edwin McCravy, Columbia SC

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