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whpearson comments on Atheist or Agnostic? - Less Wrong
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We need some social agreement on what the word God means in order to have any sort of sensible discussions about our beliefs in it or otherwise.
I think there are multiple obstacles in doing that.
As it is, "God" is a loose word and simply means what it means. If you need a specific definition I think it is simply best to define the term before using it. All of this comes back to the original point by simply stating that there is no definition that can be used with complete acceptance. I really see no problem with that as long as we know this is the case.
Rather than argue with you, I am inclined to agree, but I'm not sure what to do next. When I read a statement such as, "This isn't groupthink; we really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false." I'm not sure how to interpret it. Do you (I mean, should I) read it and assign some kind of "fuzzy" meaning?
The "theistic" in that sense is probably a wider definition intentionally. If someone came forward and said, "Well, what about this? This is not technically theism; it is X," my hunch is the community will say, "Well, we reject that, too."
So, yeah, fuzzy.
Beyond the problem of complete acceptance, I have yet to find a definition of God that is not:
Most definitions of god involve a lot of hand-waving, to the point at which you don't actually know what you mean when you say "I believe in God."
This is the main reason I do not associate atheism with an affirmative belief in non-existence. "I do not believe bleggs exist" is not a reasonable statement unless you can reasonably define bleggs.
"Any agent with supernatural powers who is responsible for the creation of the universe and/or mankind, who is ontologically superior to mankind" seems like a fairly catch-all definition of God (as opposed to god(s), which could be somewhat different). Admittedly, there's some hand-waving in "ontologically superior," but I think this definition is pretty effective. Admittedly I know little about Eastern religion, so I may be missing something big. I'm not attached to that definition at all and would love to see a better one if someone has one.
Just to make sure I'm up to date, is the evidence against (1) largely (roughly) that there is evil?
Basically. If you had a god that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good/benevolent, and has absolutely no other characteristics governing his behaviour, you'd expect to live in a much, much nicer world than you actually do.
Most of the responses to this problem postulate that god has some other set of goals in addition to these four, i.e. he wants to reward the faithful, or he wants to ensure free will, or something like that. These responses generally succeed only by making the concept of god so muddy that you don't know what you believe in, i.e. He's all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, except for whenever he's not. More explicit point here.
I feel fairly comfortable describing myself as an atheist without having a catch-all definition of God. What I mean when I describe myself as an atheist is that I believe in the non-existence of God according to the (differing) definitions used by 95%+ of people who claim to believe in God. In a discussion with an individual theist, if they ask me what I mean when I say God doesn't exist, I can ask them what they believe about God and then tell them why I believe that God doesn't exist.
In the rare case of a theist who believes in a God who created the universe and has had no further involvement, I will explain to them why I think that the God they believe in is a meaningless concept and not something to which the word belief can be usefully attached.