So "faith" could be defined in this context as: the beliefs regarding claims about the gods and related topics, which are not known with certainty to be true. [...] I have removed the term "religion" from the above definition of "faith" to avoid any circularity. — Samuel Lacrampe

I have two objections still to this revision. One is that by restricting to topic to being about "gods and related topics", it possibly excludes things that we probably want to count as religions, like Buddhism, that are not necessarily theistic, but still rely on faith in the sense that I mean, and so should still count if we are to use the "religions are belief systems that appeal to faith" definition. The second is that I think most people both religious and irreligious would say that their beliefs about such things (and most philosophers and scientists would say, most belief about most facts about the world) are not known with certainty to be true; science doesn't prove things with certainty, only math does that. So this definition turns out to be equivalent to "any beliefs about gods and related topics", which is a pretty common first-pass definition of what "religion" is, but has the problem outlined in point one at the start of this paragraph.

I should note that the definition of "faith" I'm using here is not "believing something without being absolutely certain in it", but rather "putting forth an empty 'because' as a reason to believe something". On a critical rationalist epistemology (like mine), everything is believed for insufficient reason, because there cannot be sufficient reason to believe anything, there can only be sufficient reasons to disbelieve things. So everyone is epistemically free to believe whatever they want, until someone can show that what they believe is false; and conversely, everyone is free to disagree with what you believe, until you can show that disagreement with you is categorically false. Holding such tentative beliefs is not "faith" in the sense I mean it. Rather, appealing to faith is telling someone else that what you believe is right and disagreeing with it is wrong just because (because your gut tells you so, or everyone knows it, or this infallible book or person says so). It's making an epistemic move that calls for a reason to back it up, without any reason to back it up.

But if faith is always blind faith, and you should not go on faith alone and should also use reason, then why use faith at all and not just always use reason instead? The Thomists are not that bad at logic. — Samuel Lacrampe

I'm not an expert on medieval philosophy (it's my weakest area actually) but I think the Thomist view is that faith (even blind faith), as the vehicle of revelation, is a valid source of knowledge to tell you what is true, and that is strictly speaking sufficient for purposes of salvation and such, but reason is there to deepen your understanding of why it is true, and in doing so grow closer to God and greater in spirit.

:clap: :clap: :cool:

Okay, I’ve had a read. What is the novel and valid point? If you tell me I can offer feedback.

A joke explained is a joke lost.

Okay ... no feedback then ... strange.

Well, I thought the post makes an important point. Then you say ‘I will give you feedback if you can explain the point’. Which must mean I made the point very poorly, so there’s probably no use saying it again.

the intersection of the cultural and personal frames of experience, the distance between past expressions and the needs of the present moment, involve a desire to embrace a disproportion between explanation and action. — Valentinus

Do you mean, a non-fit, an impasse? If it is a non-fit, then explanation creates a story which claims to represent the action as true. If it is an impasse, then one knows that there is no explanation other than physics.

A non-fit is the creation of religion as ideology to control masses of people. An impasse is addressed by those who reject religion: action signifies, not metaphysics: what's your next action? (Although that never stopped philosophers from writing tome upon tome...)

I should note that the definition of "faith" I'm using here is not "believing something without being absolutely certain in it", but rather "putting forth an empty 'because' as a reason to believe something". On a critical rationalist epistemology (like mine), everything is believed for insufficient reason, because there cannot be sufficient reason to believe anything, there can only be sufficient reasons to disbelieve things. So everyone is epistemically free to believe whatever they want, until someone can show that what they believe is false; and conversely, everyone is free to disagree with what you believe, until you can show that disagreement with you is categorically false. Holding such tentative beliefs is not "faith" in the sense I mean it. Rather, appealing to faith is telling someone else that what you believe is right and disagreeing with it is wrong just because (because your gut tells you so, or everyone knows it, or this infallible book or person says so). It's making an epistemic move that calls for a reason to back it up, without any reason to back it up. — Pfhorrest

Quoting myself to add an addendum: another way of describing this sense of "faith" as I mean it is believing something in a way that holds it as beyond question (precisely because it is "supported" by such an empty "reason" that nothing could possibly counter that "reason"). Faithful belief is the opposite of critical belief; unquestioning, infalliblist belief versus questioning, falliblist belief.

Which reminds me of a pithy definition of religion I came up with a long time ago, framing religion as belief based on such faith and also as belief in transcendental things that (being beyond all possibility of evidence for or against them) can only be believed on such faith:

"Religion: unquestionable answers to unanswerable questions".

Edit to add further: note that this isn't to say that there cannot be rational discussion about traditionally "religious" topics like God. Depending on what who means by "God", that might be something about which one could have non-religious (non-faith-based, rational) beliefs. Natural theology does not strictly count as religion on my account, as it tries not to appeal to faith.

It does make a point. I was just unsure what was ‘novel’ about it? Who’s to say the point I take away is the point you intended to make.

Don’t beat around bush, please.

It says there is a disjoint between the original framing of the term ‘soul’ and perceptions of old ideas. We know ‘psyche’ is ‘soul’ and that psychology followed by neuroscience flows that idea into the current situation.

I’m not inclined to jump on the homunculus type interpretation, or anything resembling it. I’m much more in favour of the manner in which Damasio leans toward the so-called ‘hard problem’.

Husserl is a tricky one to bring into the mix, as is Kant, because they were not really overly concerned with the ‘existing’ world directly. Kant explored limitations of knowledge in COPR and Husserl tried to construct a new ‘scientific’ discipline that had not direct concern (although it certainly had meaningful concern) for ‘objects’ other than as eidetic (immediate) phenomenon. The may conceptusl difficulty with his ideas being the application of ‘bracketing’ imo. It does all sound quite esoteric (but I believe him when he said he was attempting to bolster the natural scientific and logical grounding of human investigation rather than pull the rug out from under it - something others did under the guise of a firm of ‘phenomenology’ he dismissed.

Very much worth reposting these quotes. :cool:

I should note that the definition of "faith" I'm using here is not "believing something without being absolutely certain in it", but rather "putting forth an empty 'because' as a reason to believe something" ... Rather, appealing to faith is telling someone else that what you believe is right and disagreeing with it is wrong just because (because your gut tells you so, or everyone knows it, or this infallible book or person says so). It's making an epistemic move that calls for a reason to back it up, without any reason to back it up. — Pfhorrest

:up:

On a critical rationalist epistemology (like mine), everything is believed for insufficient reason, because there cannot be sufficient reason to believe anything, there can only be sufficient reasons to disbelieve things. So everyone is epistemically free to believe whatever they want, until someone can show that what they believe is false; and conversely, everyone is free to disagree with what you believe, until you can show that disagreement with you is categorically false. Holding such tentative beliefs is not "faith" in the sense I mean it. — Pfhorrest

:clap:

Substantive post worthy of a separate thread so it doesn't get lost in this tangle.
Will save it for a later chew over.
Currently taking time out for a quiet re-read of Marcus and life :smile:

Kant explored limitations of knowledge in COPR and Husserl tried to construct a new ‘scientific’ discipline that had not direct concern (although it certainly had meaningful concern) for ‘objects’ other than as eidetic (immediate) phenomenon — I like sushi

Thank you for your perceptive comments. I have still much more study to do in this area and will make a determined effort to do so in the next little while.

Substantive post worthy of a separate thread so it doesn't get lost in this tangle. — Amity

Thanks for your kind words.

should note that the definition of "faith" I'm using here is not "believing something without being absolutely certain in it", but rather "putting forth an empty 'because' as a reason to believe something". — Pfhorrest

But, why believe anything at all? I think it's quite impossible not to believe anything, but I also think that Christian dogmatism has engendered a 'current of unbelief', so to speak.

But you can't say that the Christian religion has an 'empty "because"'. The very thing that the Christian faith provides, is reason, in the grandest possible sense - a reason for being, a reason for striving towards understanding, and a reason for believing. And conversely, one of the casualties of Enlightenment rationalism, is reason herself - not in the scientific sense of 'instrumental reason', but the sense that we have no reason to exist, that we're the accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms, to quote Russell. Enlightenment rationalism actually brackets out 'reason' in that larger sense, in favour of 'verifiability'.

I think the Thomist view is that faith (even blind faith), as the vehicle of revelation, is a valid source of knowledge to tell you what is true — Pfhorrest

I think that's pretty right, but it's not so much a matter of 'telling' as of 'demonstrating'. Actually in all religious epistemologies, the question of warrant for belief is, or ought to be, of central importance. Obviously in any revealed religion, there is an acceptance that something has been revealed which would not otherwise be known; but again Enlightenment rationalism starts by saying, well let's sweep all the traditional accounts off the table, and start again with what can be demonstrated in the laboratory, that anyone can see and agree to. Then the 'burden of proof' is put on the believer, having first removed all much of what he or she would have considered evidence for their belief in the first place.

Well instead, woody, consider God is the ur-Placebo. — 180 Proof

As palliative, sure. But if in some cases a palliative happens to be curative too, then it's not just palliative, is it. A problem, yes?

I'm coming around to the view that on god matters, topics, however broadly defined, faith, belief, religion, theology, etc., that language guides most of us into a trap, in that the sign - the word as abstraction qua - becomes at the same time understood as a name for a thing.

Or, to jump to the conclusion, that there is god-for-you, god-for-me, for-us, for-them. But no God itself. And in Christendom, at least, that god-for-you/us is understood as not otherwise accessible; i.e., god-for-you is as close as you're going to get, and if you think you're getting closer than that, then it's not god you're getting closer to. Which god, of course, in Christendom, is turned into a being-in-itself which you can and should approach.

Which means that any discussion beyond the merely descriptive is category error.

Can we compile descriptions and look for similarities and differences? Sure we can - and that's already been suggested. But that means that "god(s)" be denominated a constellation - maybe a very large one - of ideas, period. Is that something we can all "splice hands" on?

Hi. Perhaps you are oversimplifying atheism here. I'm an 'atheist,' but I also think God is a concept of central importance. I'd say that an atheist thinks of God as 'only' a concept. A theist might instead separate their concept of God from God itself. — jellyfish

It was a simple dichotomy, for purposes of illustration, not argumentation. However, to complicate the issue further, let's say that, "an atheist thinks of God as 'only' a concept", while a Theist thinks of God as the 'referent' of the concept. So the question boils down to whether there is Content for the Concept.

In my view, there is no concrete humanoid person out there playing the role of God. No "teapot circling Mars". Instead, since the real material world ultimately consists of immaterial Information (e.g. mathematics), G*D is not just out-there in eternity-infinity, but in every particle of space-time. I have detailed arguments to support that assertion, but I can't claim that it is revealed Truth, merely my personal opinion. For all practical purposes, it makes me an A-Theist. But for philosophical purposes, it makes me a Deist.

Fair enough, but this looks like a philosopher's 'God.' It's a piece of sculpture. It scratches an itch that most people don't have. — jellyfish

This is indeed the abstract philosopher's God. But, as a hypothesis, it explains a lot about "entanglement" and the ubiquitous role of Information in the world. As a popular religion, it would be impractical, since it doesn't "scratch an itch" that most people of the world have always had : someone to give us unconditional love and to defend us from evil. Instead, it merely puts the ointment of theory on "itches" that philosophers have always had : ultimate "why" questions.

Russell's Teapot : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

"Scientists and Philosophers are always on the lookout for significant patterns in Nature from which they can extract specific meanings. Those extracted pieces of meaning are then labeled generically as information. But how that “information” came to be encoded in the material of nature is not often questioned by scientists. That’s not considered to be a practical project, so it’s left to impractical amateur philosophers to speculate on the origins of information: e.g. which came first, the informer or the information---the sculptor or the sculpture?" http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/page2%20Welcome.html

But, why believe anything at all? I think it's quite impossible not to believe anything — Wayfarer

You just immediately answered your question. We cannot help but believe something or another. And a critical rationalist epistemology says sure, go ahead and believe whatever, at least until it's shown to be false, and then move on to whatever else seems the next best alternative. (This is in contrast to a justificationist, classical rationalist, epistemology, which says "don't believe anything until it is conclusively proven", which critical rationalists like me think would necessarily entail believing nothing at all ever, because nothing can be conclusively proven from the ground up).

But you can't say that the Christian religion has an 'empty "because"'. — Wayfarer

FWIW I'm not talking about Christianity specifically, at all.

The very thing that the Christian faith provides, is reason, in the grandest possible sense - a reason for being, a reason for striving towards understanding, and a reason for believing. And conversely, one of the casualties of Enlightenment rationalism, is reason herself - not in the scientific sense of 'instrumental reason', but the sense that we have no reason to exist, that we're the accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms, to quote Russell. Enlightenment rationalism actually brackets out 'reason' in that larger sense, in favour of 'verifiability'. — Wayfarer

You seem to be using "reason" here in a sense meaning "purpose". I disagree that rationalism deprives life of purpose, but that's besides the point, because we're not talking about reason as in purpose, we're talking about reason as in evidence.

In other words, you're saying Christianity gives a cause or goal or aim toward which believing (and striving toward understanding, and being) serves as a means, but we're talking about what gives an explanation of why something is or isn't true.

I think that's pretty right, but it's not so much a matter of 'telling' as of 'demonstrating'. Actually in all religious epistemologies, the question of warrant for belief is, or ought to be, of central importance. Obviously in any revealed religion, there is an acceptance that something has been revealed which would not otherwise be known; but again Enlightenment rationalism starts by saying, well let's sweep all the traditional accounts off the table, and start again with what can be demonstrated in the laboratory, that anyone can see and agree to. Then the 'burden of proof' is put on the believer, having first removed all much of what he or she would have considered evidence for their belief in the first place. — Wayfarer

When it comes to public knowledge, public claims asserted to other people as though everyone should agree with them, then the reasons (see above for disambiguation of that word) we give to those other people should be reasons available to them, which is why we appeal to what "anyone can see and agree to". Otherwise, we'd just be demanding that others take our word for it, on faith -- which is, I'm claiming, the defining characteristic of religion, and what distinguishes it from other forms of belief. But when it comes to people's private beliefs, they're free to hold them for whatever private reasons they want (not just politically free as in they shouldn't be punished, but epistemically free as in they're not committing an error of reason), so long as they don't contradict other reasons that are available to them -- which is precisely why the public claims of science have to appeal to things "anyone can see and agree to", otherwise it would be telling people who disagreed to disregard their private reasons for thinking as they do, without giving them any better reason to do that.

So the question boils down to whether there is Content for the Concept. — Gnomon

I agree.

In my view, there is no concrete humanoid person out there playing the role of God. No "teapot circling Mars". Instead, since the real material world ultimately consists of immaterial Information (e.g. mathematics), G*D is not just out-there in eternity-infinity, but in every particle of space-time. — Gnomon

Right. That's how I've understood you. 'God' is something like the form or logic of matter. I don't object to this as superstitious. Maybe I find the choice of 'G*D' as a name for it sub-optimal. Maybe I think it doesn't really answer the question. (Is there a question?)

I've read quite a few of your posts, btw. I like seeing sincere meta-physicians around.

This is indeed the abstract philosopher's God. But, as a hypothesis, it explains a lot about "entanglement" and the ubiquitous role of Information in the world. As a popular religion, it would be impractical, since it doesn't "scratch an itch" that most people of the world have always had : someone to give us unconditional love and to defend us from evil. Instead, it merely puts the ointment of theory on "itches" that philosophers have always had : ultimate "why" questions. — Gnomon

Exactly. So we agree. We naturally secrete theory to make sense of things, so I really can't complain. Personally I think that theorizing leads us to an aporia or blank spot. The ground 'must' remain obscure. The metalanguage cannot be formalized. At the same time, we still have our grand theories. As I see it, they give us better mousetraps, spiritual-social comfort, and/or some blend of these things.

When people complain of 'woo,' I think it's a distaste for spiritual-social comfort being associated with better-mousetrap thinking. To me it's more complicated than that. While I am somewhat allergic to 'woo,' I'm also less than dazzled by the religion of prediction and control. 'Fitter, happier, more productive.' To what end? A life without 'magical thinking'? But that image itself gleams as a goal with no rational justification.

Well instead, woody, consider God is the ur-Placebo.
— 180 Proof

As palliative, sure. But if in some cases a palliative happens to be curative too, then it's not just palliative, is it. A problem, yes? — tim wood

No problem! And no oxymorons allowed either. A placebo that's "curative" is not a placebo, it's medicine. Anyway, how about fetish instead? God is the ur-Fetish ... works for me, how's it for you?

If we define "religion" merely as "a response to the holy", then I suppose it is indeed only man-made. But this would omit religious acts and rituals, which I believe is essential, for a man is religious insofar that he acts according to the religious doctrine.

While I agree that the religious acts were created FOR humans, it is not always believed they were created BY humans. Unlike the disbelief that 2+2=4, I don't think that this religious belief constitutes a small minority. E.g. take christianity and the eucharist. The belief is that Jesus Christ is God, and that the ritual of the eucharist was instructed directly by Jesus. "Take this bread and eat, for this is my body". Similar rituals instructed by the gods are found in the other western religions as well.

A placebo that's "curative" is not a placebo, it's medicine — 180 Proof

Nonsense. If it contains only sugar, then it's not 'medicine', because the curative effects originate somewhere else altogether i.e. in the subject's mind. Really you ought to stop trying to use 'placebos' as an analogy or an argument if you don't understand the point of them, which is to plainly suggest 'mind over matter'. The fact that they work at all is inconvenient for materialism.

they definitely count as evidence for a physicalist interpretation, or model, of the human brain-CNS (which is a survival - environmental perception-behaviour coordination - engine and only tangentally (if ever) a "truth engine") in my book. :wink: — 180 Proof

Must be a damn short book, and by it's own reckoning, containing no truth :-)

Pay attention, Wayf! For tim wood's sake I've already moved on from placebo analogy to fetish analogy. Surely a rattle shaker like you has got some glossolalia to say now about me co-opting 'fetishes' as a prop for my materialist critique of (your) woo ... :roll:

point of them, ... is to plainly suggest 'mind over matter'. The fact that they work at all is inconvenient for materialism. — Wayfarer

So why don't placebos work on people with Alzheimer's Disease? Is the fact that Alzheimer's damages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (where learnt initiates of neurotransmitters like the pain-reducing endorphin are are mediated), just a coincidence?

What about the fact that Naloxene - an endorphin reduction agent - has been found to eliminate the pain reduction effect of placebos? That just coincidence too, or has Naloxene somehow made it's way over to the mysterious non-material realm where you were hoping placebo effects were coming from?

:clap: :nerd:

You seem to be using "reason" here in a sense meaning "purpose". I disagree that rationalism deprives life of purpose, but that's besides the point, because we're not talking about reason as in purpose, we're talking about reason as in evidence. — Pfhorrest

There's some equivocation associated with 'reason' here. First, the 'rationalism' you're referring to, is what I describe as scientific or Enlightenment rationalism, which has very specific characteristics mainly inherited from scientific method. 'Modern science emerged in the seventeenth century with two fundamental ideas: planned experiments (Francis Bacon) and the mathematical representation of relations among phenomena (Galileo). This basic experimental-mathematical epistemology evolved until, in the first half of the twentieth century, it took a stringent form involving (1) a mathematical theory constituting scientific knowledge, (2) a formal operational correspondence between the theory and quantitative empirical measurements, and (3) predictions of future measurements based on the theory. The “truth” (validity) of the theory is judged based on the concordance between the predictions and the observations.... Science is neither rationalism nor empiricism. It includes both in a particular way. In demanding quantitative predictions of future experience, science requires formulation of mathematical models whose relations can be tested against future observations. Prediction is a product of reason, but reason grounded in the empirical. Hans Reichenbach summarizes the connection: “Observation informs us about the past and the present, reason foretells the future.' E R Dougherty

From within that perspective, 'reason' is absent in the larger sense of there being a 'reason for existence'. This is at least in part because modern science operates within the 'horizon of the observable' so to speak, rather than inference from the observable to any purported first or super-natural cause. The only kind of inference that is regarded as acceptable is that based on mathematical abstraction of empirical data (although even that is now coming under strain from speculative cosmology, 'string theory' and so on).

And the point is, the kind of reason that is said to be absent, is any reason for existence in the sense of an intentional creation. Furthermore intention on the individual level is assigned to the subjective domain thereby preserving the purportedly 'mind-independent' nature of the observed universe, although this has also come under pressure from the 'observer problem' in quantum physics.

In another sense, the whole notion of intent, and also of telos - a reason for existence in the Aristotelian sense - was rejected along with the scholastic philosophy with which it was associated, by the early moderns, coinciding with the adoption of the mechanist paradigm. And within that paradigm, 'reason' or 'causation' is generally only understood in terms of efficient and material causes (of which physical laws are said to be paradigmatic, hence, 'physicalism'.)

Looking again at Bertrand Russell's essay, A Free Man's Worship, he writes:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms... -all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

Bolds added. But this point has itself been called into question by the 'fine-tuning' or 'naturalness' problem, which suggests that there are a small number of fundamental yet apparently unnatural constraints (unnatural in the sense of seeming to vary widely from what might naturally be expected) which no underlying or more fundamental theory can explain, and which, had they varied in the most minute of degrees, would not have culminated in a Universe characterised by complex matter. Regardless of arguments over the interpretation of this observation, it undermines Russell's notion of the primacy of the 'accidental collocation of atoms'; were there not an order, there could be no accidents. And as various scientists have felt obliged to admit, there seems a sense in which 'the universe knew we were coming' (as Freeman Dyson put it.) I don't to try and leap from there to a metaphysical conclusion, although I do contend that the way in which the 'multiverse conjecture' is used to defray the appeal of this argument strikes me as highly disingenuous.

It's also been called into question by the discoveries of quantum physics, philosophy of science, and phenomenology, all of which recognise the inextricable role of the observer in the formulation of scientific theories. Accordingly I feel that the kind of materialism of which Russell's essay is such an impassioned testament has had it's day.

When it comes to public knowledge, public claims asserted to other people as though everyone should agree with them, then the reasons (see above for disambiguation of that word) we give to those other people should be reasons available to them, which is why we appeal to what "anyone can see and agree to". Otherwise, we'd just be demanding that others take our word for it, on faith -- which is, I'm claiming, the defining characteristic of religion, and what distinguishes it from other forms of belief. — Pfhorrest

I generally agree, with the caveat that this attitude, while completely understandable in the framework of the secular state, cannot differentiate the subjective from the transcendent; in other words, what really is a private matter, and the kinds of truths that transcend individual conscience, but are still not strictly speaking simply objective. In other words, the kinds of truths which orientate the moral compass, which in some sense surpass objective judgement but which are ethically normative.

So why don't placebos work on people with Alzheimer's Disease? — Isaac

Don't know, but it's also not relevant to the point; it's the fact that they work at all which undermines the model of 'bottom-up' causality.

Don't know, but it's also not relevant to the point; it's the fact that they work at all which undermines the model of 'bottom-up' causality. — Wayfarer

How? How would the chemical in the drug causing a release of endorphin be 'bottom-up' yet the learnt response from the venrtomedial pre frontal cortex to the visual stimuli of pill-taking causing a release of endorphin is somehow not? They seem like exactly the same type of causal relationship to me.

Pay attention, Wayf! For tim wood's sake I've already moved on from placebo analogy to fetish analogy. Surely a rattle shaker like you has got some glossolalia to say now about me co-opting 'fetishes' as a prop for my materialist critique of (your) woo ... — 180 Proof

I actually agree with you, 180, but you're in the wrong place. You're dismissive on the basis of function, overlooking efficacy as (imo) the substance of the thing. The question is, what is it? Your answer is in terms of what it does/how it does it. In this you crossed the line into a slight incoherence. I said palliative and (maybe) curative. You said palliative or curative, meaning not both. Why not both?

And why not say what the thing is? It's as if, being asked what a hammer is, you, having no need to drive any nails, dismissed it as just a nail-driver.

Or shall we just list you among those for whom "god" is one of many names for a class of ideas for which there is no referent.

God: Is that which nothing greater can exist; where "greater" means the most "powerful" in the sense of abilities. — Samuel Lacrampe

Ridding Anselm's notion of inconsistency is a work of ages... — Banno

I interpret your comment as saying that it is not a proper definition of god; is that right? Would you have a counterexample, in which the term "god" in the common language does not fit this definition? I would imagine that even for pantheistic religions, which belief is that all that exists is god, still fits under this definition.

in the meantime I can at least relax in my favourite armchair (or God, as I call it). The armchair than which no greater armchair can exist. — Isaac

Supposing your armchair is indeed the perfect armchair, it still does not fit the definition of god I have given, because it is not perfect in every way. "4" is the perfect answer to the question "what is 2+2?". This does not make it god either.

Just because Tom Aquinas says it doesn't make it so. All of these arguments are easily deconstructed these days: probability and reason cannot prove the contents of faith. — uncanni

Right back at you I'm afraid. Merely saying this doesn't make it so. There are many arguments that defend the objects of faith (I'm thinking particularly of the christian faith). The people doing so are called "apologetics", and they are still kicking to this day.