Who is the bigger blasphemer?

Originally posted by Agerg
Ah yes ... my bad. He didn't estimate the universe was a few thousand years old - God told him so[hidden]Your words, essentially, in a different thread[/hidden]!

That's even worse, I mean ... if he'd signed off on an estimate we could just say wasn't giving it his full attention. But to actually say he uttered this himself - wow, how embarrassing for him!!! ...[text shortened]... s God there'd be a bout of smallpox and a bolt of lightning or two coming your way pretty soon!!

As Suzianne has said, Moses did not estimate the age of the earth. He recorded the exact figures including the evenings and the mornings to make it clear. It was in 6 days that the heavens, the earth, the seas and all that were in them were made. It is we and theologians that must estimate how long ago that was. I know that is probably not clear to your pea brain, but perhaps someone else might get it. 😏

Originally posted by vistesd
Here is one rabbi’s response:

“The infinite transcends every particular content of faith.”

—Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, quoted in Daniel Matt The Essential Kabbalah.

It seems to me that the Rabbi himself was creating a definition and thus violating his own principle.

Originally posted by Agerg
Can't say I can find much fault with that to be honest. Indeed, the moment you start applying definitions, attributes, and traits to some god you are merely shackling it to the walls of your own imagination.

Only if those definitions, attributes, and traits come solely from your imagination. If we cannot in any way define anything about God, or gods, then the word is meaningless or incoherent.
Of course the question of whether or not what you have defined exists, is another matter.
The spaghetti monster may not exist, but noodly appendages is most certainly part of his definition

Originally posted by vistesd
Here is one rabbi’s response:

“Every definition of God leads to heresy; definition is spiritual idolatry. Even attributing mind and will to God, even attributing divinity itself, and the name ‘God’—these, too, are definitions. Were it not for the subtle awareness that all these are just sparkling flashes of that which transcends definition—these, too, wou ...[text shortened]... of faith.”


—Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, quoted in Daniel Matt The Essential Kabbalah.

Interesting you should quote Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook as an authority on defining God, or not.

God defines Himself. Our conception of God is the result of God's own revelation of Himself to us. How else can we know anything about God except that He reveals it to us?

It is not heresy to know God! It is heresy to say God can't be known.

Hello again vistesd. 🙂

Originally posted by twhitehead
It seems to me that the Rabbi himself was creating a definition and thus violating his own principle.

I think Rav Kook carved out the exception. He put it poetically (which seems to be an illustrative use of language), but I would say that language in such cases—rather than being descriptive or definitional or propositional—is being used allusively or elicitively. Rather like Zen koans: using words to “point to” what cannot be properly described. In other words, words in that sense are used like a musical composition, or perhaps non-representational art. We’ve talked about these different usages of language before (and they form part of my critique against scriptural literalism).

But the bottom line, I think, is in Rav Kook’s second paragraph. I would put it this way (a bit metaphorically): a god-concept that is “graven” in the mind (that is firmly fixed, immutable) is as much an idol as any “graven image”—e.g. the “golden calf”. It is insistence on such firmly-fixed god-concepts (e.g., G*d as male, G*d as omnipotent, G*d as a supernatural “anthromorph” ) that support (if not lead to) religious dogmatism. Marc Alain-Ouaknin argued that the radical polysemy of the Hebrew language (that is, classical or biblical Hebrew) itself militates against “the idolatry of the one right meaning”.

As a nondualist, what I call G*d is not likely what josephw, say, means. But I have argued at length before that the word—in other languages—has been used going back to ancient times to mean other things than the conventional god of supernaturalist dualism. I am once again in that nondualist stream of Judaism, partly because of the aesthetics of how it is expressed there.

Hope you are well, tw!

_________________________________________________________

Jews have no central doctrinal authority. And the word “Judaism” covers at least a broad a mix as the word “Christianity”. But theological nondualism is a broad stream in Judaism, and the idea that all beliefs should be questioned—and questioned continually, and the questions questioned, in the process of the oral Torah—is, in my studies and experience, pretty mainstream. Not to say that there aren’t exceptions.

Originally posted by josephw
Interesting you should quote Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook as an authority on defining God, or not.

God defines Himself. Our conception of God is the result of God's own revelation of Himself to us. How else can we know anything about God except that He reveals it to us?

It is not heresy to know God! It is heresy to say God can't be known.

Hello again vistesd. 🙂

I don’t believe that.

But even if the revelation were directly from G*d, in words chosen by G*d—and even ignoring issues of translation, and metaphorical language and such—it is, I believe, self-deceptive to think that one does not interpret (and choose particular meanings from those available in the given words and phrases) as one reads. Even if the words were G*d-given, they can refer to a variety of concepts—and this is especially true in the original Hebrew—and the reader must choose. Or, the reader must rely on someone else who has chosen for them. Translation just exacerbates all that.

Hi, Joe. Hope you are well.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Only if those definitions, attributes, and traits come solely from your imagination. If we cannot in any way define anything about God, or gods, then the word is meaningless or incoherent.
Of course the question of whether or not what you have defined exists, is another matter.
The spaghetti monster may not exist, but noodly appendages is most certainly part of his definition

If we cannot in any way define anything about God, or gods, then the word is meaningless or incoherent.

That is not the problem. The problem is that a word can have multiple meanings or usages—including, unless you want to argue that all lyrical poetry is incoherent, an array of metaphorical possibilities. Meaning is generally not defined against a ground of emptiness, but against a ground of multiple possibilities (in some cases many, many possibilities). Definition—“the word means this”—is then an act of foreclosure. Dictionaries, in citing definitions of conventional use foreclose meaning—but then the usage changes, the dictionaries must expand (and some people object to the new meanings). Contextualization can expand the possibilities, not just tighten the foreclosure.

I mentioned poetry. Take this simple metaphor from e.e. cummings:

what if
the moon’s a balloon?

Do you think that such a question is incoherent? Or do you think that it’s only coherent if cummings is actually entertaining the possibility that the moon is, in fact, a great balloon in the sky? In which case, cummings is just nuts? Or might the metaphor point to all sorts of possibilities? Or might it's intention be to evoke or elicit a kind of childlike playfulness, or to actually elicit the imaginative function in the reader? Once the imagination is engaged, can "moon" as well as "balloon" be open to metaphorical possibilities?

But I think that the underlying point is that I, like Rav Kook (and if I’m wrong about him, it doesn’t matter: I cite him as an example of the point), am arguing, not only from the fact of a highly polysemous language, but also from recognition of different linguistic usages—especially the aesthetic or artful. But I also don’t think that our linguistic capabilities necessarily exhaust the realities of the universe—whether one is a theist or not; and I think that language can be used, and in fact has been used, to allude to that which is beyond its capability to describe.

You and I have both agreed before on the limits of dictionary definitions. So I’m not going to bother to look up the dictionary definition of “definition”. But I will say, what I have often said, in different words, that I believe that religion is best understood in terms of artistic expression (e.g., poetry, story/myth) than propositional or factual-descriptive expression. So I am quite willing to admit imagination—in fact, I think it would be as much a mistake to exclude it from scientific inquiry as from religious or philosophical inquiry.

Originally posted by vistesd
I don’t believe that.

But even if the revelation were directly from G*d, in words chosen by G*d—and even ignoring issues of translation, and metaphorical language and such—it is, I believe, self-deceptive to think that one does not interpret (and choose particular meanings from those available in the given words and phrases) as one reads. Even if the wo ...[text shortened]... who has chosen for them. Translation just exacerbates all that.

Hi, Joe. Hope you are well.

Some people write god becasue they have little respect for God as being real and others write G-d thinking that it is more respecful to leave the o out. 😏

Originally posted by 667joe
You have just confirmed that you believe in fantasy! I have a bridge in Brooklyn I will sell you cheap!

No, I believe in something that YOU label as "fantasy". Big difference.

But I'm not going to judge.

So knock yourself out.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Some people write god becasue they have little respect for God as being real and others write G-d thinking that it is more respecful to leave the o out. 😏

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

Originally posted by Agerg
Ah yes ... my bad. He didn't estimate the universe was a few thousand years old - God told him so[hidden]Your words, essentially, in a different thread[/hidden]!

That's even worse, I mean ... if he'd signed off on an estimate we could just say wasn't giving it his full attention. But to actually say he uttered this himself - wow, how embarrassing for him!!! ...[text shortened]... s God there'd be a bout of smallpox and a bolt of lightning or two coming your way pretty soon!!

I didn't say he uttered it himself. What are you on about?

Originally posted by 667joe
It's a good thing, with all your wisdom, that you are not god!

"It's a good thing..."

Really? I thought you said God was a fantasy?

So which is it?

Originally posted by vistesd
Here is one rabbi’s response:

“Every definition of God leads to heresy; definition is spiritual idolatry. Even attributing mind and will to God, even attributing divinity itself, and the name ‘God’—these, too, are definitions. Were it not for the subtle awareness that all these are just sparkling flashes of that which transcends definition—these, too, wou ...[text shortened]... of faith.”


—Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, quoted in Daniel Matt The Essential Kabbalah.

He kinda has to give a mystical aspect to God, since he doesn't even believe the Son of God was made manifest and so he can't believe that God and man can be One, and so I would kind of expect him to have a misunderstanding of God.

Originally posted by Agerg
Well if I was able to speak dog, and I created the entire universe, and I wanted dogs to tell tales about how awesome I was, and worship me, and so on and so forth ... and instead they all walked around with the passionate belief that I routinely do stuff that is thicker than the least of them. Then yeah ... I'd be pretty damned p!ssed at the dog that made a l ...[text shortened]... out of me, and those perpetuating it (it'll be poodles I'll wager ... can't trust any of them!)

Dogs understand having an unconditional love, and therefore, in some respects I can see dogs having a better understanding of God than some people do.

Originally posted by josephw
Interesting you should quote Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook as an authority on defining God, or not.

God defines Himself. Our conception of God is the result of God's own revelation of Himself to us. How else can we know anything about God except that He reveals it to us?

It is not heresy to know God! It is heresy to say God can't be known.

Hello again vistesd. 🙂

Very good, Joe. I agree.