but …

by Seeker

Posted to Utterances on 2001-09-28 03:15:00

Parent message is 35367
what do you mean when you say ‘god’?? (ha ha!) I was intending to answer you on this back on the other board, just haven’t had time yet. Felt it was an important question (easily answered by an atheist though) & wanted to do it justice, so didn’t just rattle off any old shit .. but since I’m here :

When I use that word I mean nothing. The word ‘God’ is an empty syllable.

The reason I posed the problem of evil back on the other board was to ask the theists out there to define what they meant when they used the word. And obviously they would need to take into account the problem of evil when they did so.

Your own answer back there (my apologies in advance if my memory lets me down here) seemed to take a more buddhist view of things, and you seemed to want to apply the word ‘god’ to one’s buddha nature.

This only creates confusion (in my opinion) since in the West at least, the words ‘God’ and ‘buddha nature’ are generally used to mean two different things.

George H. Smith uses ‘god’ to refer to any old deity, but ‘God’ to refer to the Xtian deity. Simply for ease of communication. If one is to communicate with theists one must use the word in some form – even if only to ask them what they mean by it.

By the way, I spoke in my original message about the firefighters and policemen and women in NY. I said they were all good people. Heroes. And not one of them needed to believe in ‘God’ for that statement to be true.

Your response – (even applied it to me, which was hilariously inappropriate) it’s their ‘godliness’ being expressed. – I don’t think so. It’s humanity. At its best. That’s all.