Re: MD Self-Evident MoQ Truths (theism)

From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Thu Aug 11 2005 - 08:55:03 BST

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    Hi Ian, Scott,

    Scott - that was quick! I would add a couple of things to what Scott said:

    1. A useful rule of thumb about God-language is to ask 'does this make God
    into a member of a class'? (eg the class of beings; the class of purposeful
    entities, the class of intelligences etc). If the answer is yes, then the
    language fails and is no longer talking about God. (Standard Christian
    doctrine)

    2. In the struggle with bad God language, the rejection of _all_ God
    language will never succeed, purely in terms of social realities. The word
    God is used in too many meaningul ways to be abandoned (in our culture, in
    the foreseeable future). So if the struggle is, eg, over stem cell research,
    the way forward is to point out how some of the crazies are violating the
    rule above, not to start saying "you're all raving lunatics and illogical".
    That plays into their hands. (This is an exact parallel with the <Islamists
    and Qutbists, of course, but we can look at that elsewhere.)

    Sam

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