Another way to say it...

Imagine trying to explain the Internet to your dog. Your dog can see the Net on your computer screen. But he can only experience it as patterns of blinking lights, as he doesn't have the equipment needed to understand the level of abstraction involved. No amount of teaching on your part can solve this because his limitations are built in to his equipment.

Like your dog, we can see reality. And like your dog we can explain it in a very limited manner which has some little degree of truth. And like your dog it's likely we simply don't have the equipment necessary to get much farther.

But like your dog, I will continue ignorantly barking as follows... :-)

We are made of thought. Thought operates by a process of division. Thus, we see division everywhere we look. God is often proposed to be something beyond division. Like for example, space, a single continuous phenomena uniting everything at every scale.

But, being made of the medium of thought which operates by division, we immediately assign a noun like God to this phenomena in an attempt to divide it conceptually from everything else. And so something proposed to be beyond division is immediately divided, throwing the entire subject in to an bottomless morass of contradictory confusion.

And so, like your dog in front of the Net, we look at the screen of reality and bark things like "blinking lights, blinking lights!"

Native peoples inhabited North America for 10,000 years or more before Europeans arrived. During that time they seem to have developed a deep reverence for the land which they somehow connected to a Great Spirit which lied beyond that which could be observed.

To the best of my limited knowledge, native peoples didn't have elaborate complex philosophies such as were common in Europe but instead their psychic connection to reality arose primarily from experience. You know, they lived directly on the land every day of their lives for 10,000 years.

Such experience is still available as it's really only dependent on time invested and a willingness to open oneself emotionally to the experience.

A philosopher will ask, "experience of what"? Such a question is a retreat from the real world back in to the symbolic realm of abstraction. To the degree one can set the symbolic aside and focus instead on the experience of reality, the experience can mature to the point where the question of "what" is no longer that interesting. This doesn't answer the question of "what" but it does resolve it.

The question "experience of what?" arises from a state of need. To the degree that need is met, the question melts away. As example, you probably don't care about any of this while you're having wild sex. :-)

Point being, this could be another way to approach the issue, by shifting focus from explanations to experience, from the symbolic realm to the real world.

If God is a transcendental being, existing outside of space and time, how do we make sense of religious language when it talks about the actions/attributes of God. — Wittgenstein

The apophatics (& poets) have it right — whenever we [try to] eff the ineffable we talk nonsense (e.g. babytalk, glossalalia, ...).

The act of demarcating a line between sense and nonsense also falls under nonsense. Logical Positivism or any other offshoot is self defeating. It's also very difficult to describe what makes something sensible and a lot of efforts in that direction have failed. Take a look at verificationism and Popper's Falsification principle (If you think empirical statements have sense only ) for example. We need to speak of sense with respect to the language game/background or context in which the language is deployed. Religious language is meaningful in that sense but we are unable to see why it is so.

Nonsense does not negate, or exclude, meaningful expression, and my previous post does not claim or imply it does so (re: "apophatics (& poets)" ...)

I don't understand what you mean by nonsense in that case. You elaborate a little more.

When l talk about God, l feel like a blind man talking about something out there in the world. Except that it transcends every sense and conception familiar to me in this world. I cannot help but resort to compare religious language with music. Why do we compose and create Musical sounds , they have no meaning in of themselves. The comparison is still faulty and not correct. Religious language cannot be meaningless but how.....

I saved this from something I was reading the other day about the poet T S Elliot. Sorry but I can’t find the source of it. But I’m interested in what you’ve said so far.

“The speaker in "Gerontion" reveals his inability to heed or 'read' the words shown to him, the revelation of the Word in words: the "word within a word" is both the "sign" which the Pharisees are unable to read, and the Word signified by that sign. That the darkness is in the hearer, not the word, is further confirmed by the allusion implicit in the phrase "Christ the tiger"; Blake's words are immediately recalled, his "tyger" not "swaddled in darkness" but "burning bright / In the forests of the night".
The failure to read the signs in "Gerontion" is symptomatic of a more general failure to comprehend the Word; a new language is required for a new spirituality, and the speaker in "Gerontion" is trying to understand the former without having acquired the latter. Watkins comments that
When Eliot [...] turned to the faith, he was faced with the need for a new theological language.

The fact that Watkins goes on to argue that Eliot never convincingly achieved that language, or at least never managed to fuse that language with successful poetry, suggests that words are in themselves somehow inadequate for expressing the Word:
Ultimate meanings in poetry are unutterable just as in theology words cannot describe the Word of God.

Human language has fallen from the unity of sign and signified which can be found in the "word within a word", the signified Word within the signifying word: it has lost the ability to make a fitting response to the Word through words. The poet must therefore strive to make the necessary response through a language which is fundamentally inadequate; the 'religious poem' expresses the poet's response to revelation in terms of his own inability to make that response.”

When l talk about God, l feel like a blind man talking about something our there in the world. Except that it transcends every sense and conception familiar to me in this world. — Wittgenstein

As a barking dog myself I doubt I can fix this, but here's a try anyway.

In the age of science I find it interesting to compare the God concept to space. Space is real, and yet invisible, and having none of the properties we typically use to define existence. Real, but non-existent. Space is not a "thing" because the concept of things implies a division which doesn't seem an appropriate way to describe something which is a single continuous unbroken phenomena present at every scale. And yet, not being a thing itself, space defines all things. This secular analysis is hopefully somewhat sensible and intelligible, and yet at the same time seems rich with the kind of baffling contradictions we often encounter in religious language. A thing which is not a thing which defines all things etc = headache. :-)

In recent years I've become ever less confident that this "God is like space" idea is just an analogy. Perhaps what religious people have been sensing and attempting to define is actually space itself? We in the age of science tend to assume space is just a container, a realm of dead nothing with no life or intelligence of it's own, but such assumptions are very far from proven.

The following excellent documentary explores the nature of nothing in considerable detail from a science perspective. Interesting!

Another problem afflicting such discussions is that many religious authorities, and philosophers too, tend to gravitate towards complex fancy talk language because the more elusive and mysterious they can frame the subject the more they brand themselves as the rare experts who have unlocked the secrets etc. You know, as example, lawyers get elected to political office and then craft laws in complex language, which conveniently requires us to hire lawyers to understand the law.

I admire TS Elliot for realizing the importance of religion in the modern age. He didn't go with the flow around him, he was swimming against the tide. It's easy to relate with the despair he felt given the deterioration of culture and tradition around us.

We don't really understand religious language as well as it operates in the community. One of the reason it doesn't appear to be paradoxical or nonsensical is due to the transformation it undergoes after communal acceptance. You need a community in order for a language to be useful/meaningful. The religious community takes away the leap of faith ( as in Kierkegaard ) from individuals. They don't have to develop a personal relation with God in a strong sense. The realization of the fact that God is beyond our understanding or we cannot express a lot of meaningful statements regarding him cannot even be articulated by an individual. The only medium left is music/art/poetry etc. You have to corrupt what you had originally in your mind though. Otherwise, it would not be understood at all by the public.

If God is a transcendental being, existing outside of space and time, how do we make sense of religious language when it talks about the actions/attributes of God. For example, "God created the universe( along with time) " is not a usual statement. The word "create" in its usual/universal use implies a time before creation and a time after creation. — Wittgenstein

But even though the word "create" is incoherent in that context, bringing into play the fact that he/she exists outside of time makes sense of it; it seems to me that god's atemporal actions can be understood as a function of his/her attributes, namely being outside time and space - in this example. Whether or not it is possible for things to exist outside time and space is open ended I think; I am agnostic with respect to such a possibility.

The essence of God is beyond our mind, we cannot comprehend it. The attributes we give to God are unlike our attributes. Our understanding of personal attributes rests on the idea of having a conscious/mind etc but we are not capable of understanding what consciousness means with respect to God. It isn't like ours. As a whole, we don't really understand what we mean by God. — Wittgenstein

I think that people assign plenty of human attributes to god, such as a loving nature. And yes, omnibenevolence, for example, is unlike anything we possess, but it can still be understood and defined.

We should not take a representational account of religious language but try to see its appropriate use in a religious life in form of metaphor, paradox, expectation, commands etc. — Wittgenstein

That robs it of any normative weight. Revelation makes explicit statements that can only be understood in representational terms, such as: "But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you." (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21)

If you rob religious language of its explicit, representational meanings religion is no longer religion in the commonly understood sense; it becomes less about a set of norms established by a divine creator and more about preserving a collection of backwards values by packing them into a loosely defined, metaphorical structuration.

Perhaps it helps to remind ourselves who it is that has created rules like "paradoxical" and "nonsensical". A single semi-suicidal species only recently living in caves on a single planet in one of billions of galaxies. That is, in comparison to anything the scale of gods, we are far less than a dog, more like an amoeba.

Given how incredibly small we are in relation to the subject of God, typically a collection of theories regarding the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere, it's perhaps nonsensical to expect that either religion or science will ever get to the bottom of this. If we don't have such an expectation, then we won't be frustrated or confused.

So what then? Forget the whole thing and go play golf?

Ok, maybe, but not necessarily. Even if we were to conclude a search for useful explanations is essentially pointless, there is still the realm of experience to explore. Experience doesn't have to be a means to the end of explanations. It can be pursued for it's own value.

While it may not be possible to answer this question, it may be possible to resolve it. My sense is that the question arises from a psychological need, and if that need can be met, the question melts away. Not answered, but resolved.

Seriously? Only jews'/muslims' ideas of god?

But even though the word "create" is incoherent in that context, bringing into play the fact that he/she exists outside of time makes sense of it; it seems to me that god's atemporal actions can be understood as a function of his/her attributes, namely being outside time and space - in this example. Whether or not it is possible for things to exist outside time and space is open ended I think; I am agnostic with respect to such a possibility.

That doesn't really resolve the issue at hand. We don't understand such functions or attributes of God anymore than the word "create" in "God created the world". I am not interested in the physical possibility but our understanding of such a possibility ( how we use religious language to describe it) .

I think that people assign plenty of human attributes to god, such as a loving nature. And yes, omnibenevolence, for example, is unlike anything we possess, but it can still be understood and defined.

I think it would be a misunderstanding to confuse our kind of love with God's love. The origin of both love is different, the "medium" if that makes sense is different. The intention behind it is of a different category. Some attributes are very difficult to reconcile in our minds. God has absolute total knowledge and also the greatest freedom possible for a being, two opposites attributes apparently. This may sound like a theological conflict but it isn't really. We find the problems with OUR descriptions of God but that doesn't imply a paradoxical nature of God. Perhaps our language is not capable of understanding God, we fail to describe him cause our language belongs to the realm of material beings existing in spacetime.

If you rob religious language of its explicit, representational meanings religion is no longer religion in the commonly understood sense; it becomes less about a set of norms established by a divine creator and more about preserving a collection of backwards values by packing them into a loosely defined, metaphorical structuration.

I think you misunderstood what l meant by representational view. Wittgenstein thinks we should not see religious language as a reflection of reality (the world out there ) and for him it is perfectly okay to view religion as a collection of commands,hope, ethical viewpoints etc. You can strip away the metaphysics around it. I obviously don't agree with Wittgenstein. Religious language is actually a representation of reality ( according to religious people ).

You can include Christians but l don't want to get in the dispute around Trinity. Christian theology isn't really monotheistic and the idea of a transcendental God is somehow lost.

That doesn't really resolve the issue at hand. We don't understand such functions or attributes of God anymore than the word "create" in "God created the world". — Wittgenstein

I suppose so, but it makes sense to me that god's actions would be atemporal if god exists outside time. This can be understood, even if it is impossible to understand what it means to exist outside of time, so I think it is possible to understand the "create" in "god created the world".

I think it would be a misunderstanding to confuse our kind of love with God's love. — Wittgenstein

A totally subjective thing - and lots of religious people I've met seem to perceive god as having a loving nature not unlike themselves, even if it is a perfectly loving nature.

I think you misunderstood what l meant by representational view. Wittgenstein thinks we should not see religious language as a reflection of reality (the world out there ) and for him it is perfectly okay to view religion as a collection of commands,hope, ethical viewpoints etc. You can strip away the metaphysics around it. I obviously don't agree with Wittgenstein. Religious language is actually a representation of reality ( according to religious people ). — Wittgenstein

I'm saying that if you strip the language of its representativeness, its claim on reality, then you also deny revelation's explicitness; the commands, ethical viewpoints, etc. have no special weight; they are neither dependent upon a creator or commanded by a creator. Normatively it just isn't the same. This comes into conflict with the overwhelming majority of people's ideas of religion, something you seem to agree with.

I am not interested in the physical possibility but our understanding of such a possibility ( how we use religious language to describe it) . — Wittgenstein

Space "creates", that is defines the Earth as a thing. It would seem to do so without taking any action, or even existing (no weight and mass etc). Understandable?

I think it would be a misunderstanding to confuse our kind of love with God's love. — Wittgenstein

One problem which I assume you are aware of (given your screen name) is that at the moment we assign the noun God to a phenomena we are joining an assumption that God is a thing separate from other things, for that is the function of nouns, to apply a label to such a division. Once the assumption of division is accepted that opens the door to endless debate over how to define the properties of this thing. God is this, or God is that etc.

If we were to decline the assumption of division, and not automatically assume God to be a separate thing, then it would seem the discussion and debate around defining God's properties could be discarded. This might be a very efficient way to sweep a ton of confusion off the table.

As always, I would suggest it could be quite productive to shift some focus to the properties of the tool being used to conduct the investigation. Thought operates by dividing a single unified reality in to conceptual objects. It attempts to impose a pattern of division on everything it observes. In our everyday lives at human scale this has proven a useful device, but attempts to impose that process of division on the very largest of scales may be inherently flawed.

Consider the word "space". As a noun "space" presumes that space is a thing separate from other things. But the deeper we look in somethings the harder it is to find the boundary between something and nothing.

If you rob religious language of its explicit, representational meanings religion is no longer religion in the commonly understood sense; it becomes less about a set of norms established by a divine creator and more about preserving a collection of backwards values by packing them into a loosely defined, metaphorical structuration.

I think you misunderstood what l meant by representational view. Wittgenstein thinks we should not see religious language as a reflection of reality (the world out there ) and for him it is perfectly okay to view religion as a collection of commands,hope, ethical viewpoints etc. You can strip away the metaphysics around it. I obviously don't agree with Wittgenstein. Religious language is actually a representation of reality ( according to religious people ). — Wittgenstein

I agree. People often consider the norms established by god to be part of reality, (god is omnipotent, so he could make them an objective facet of reality).Thus, I tend to think that Wittgenstein's view is incompatible with most religious people's beliefs. If they believe god has created objective norms, the representativeness of such commands or morals to those people is real; the metaphysics around it can't really be stripped imo for people who believe in representative norms established by god.

I'm saying that if you strip the language of its representativeness, its claim on reality, then you also deny revelation's explicitness; the commands, ethical viewpoints, etc. have no special weight; they are neither dependent upon a creator or commanded by a creator. Normatively it just isn't the same. This comes into conflict with the overwhelming majority of people's ideas of religion, something you seem to agree with.

Yes, it's hard to see why people fought wars over religion in that case , it can't be over some vacuous concepts being used as substitutes/metaphor for normative claims. However, l think Wittgenstein was trying to make a more subtle point. In order to understand religious language game, you need to consider the socio-psychological play at hand. It has got to do with psychology. The normative claims won't have the same force to them if you remove the existence of God from religious text but the faith in God according to Wittgenstein primarily serves as source of hope/salvation/peace/courage/command, it isn't a representation of reality but only used as such for its effectiveness. The religious people tacitly/subconsciously agree to that. Otherwise, you would need to explain how people seem to understand a paradoxical langauge. I don't agree with Wittgenstein still.

l think Wittgenstein was trying to make a more subtle point. It has got to do with psychology. The normative claims won't have the same force to them if you remove the existence of God from religious text but the faith in God according to Wittgenstein primarily serves as source of hope/salvation/peace/courage, it isn't a representation of reality but only used as such for its effectiveness. — Wittgenstein

Well, I can't disagree with that. I think religion serves practical purposes, and I also agree that religious people tacitly agree to use religion for its effectiveness. However, this psychological claim has nothing to do with how we should parse religious language in its usage by religious people when they talk about religious norms except insofar as it reflects on the psychology behind their beliefs; it is just an evaluation of religious language in terms of its effectiveness and psychological components, a way of understanding it from the outside.

I don't agree with Wittgenstein still. — Wittgenstein

Did Wittgenstein actually talk about religion? Or are you just applying what he had to say? Did some research and you seem to just be applying Wittgenstein's theories about patterns of intentions.

Otherwise, you would need to explain how people seem to understand a paradoxical langauge. — Wittgenstein

What says that they understand it? There is nothing saying that there can't be dissonance.

Here is the thing about language. We can invent whatever terms and ideas we want. But if we are going to claim these terms represent reality, we must show their actual or necessary existence in reality. There is nothing outside of space and time, because we cannot show it to be actual or necessary. Therefore a "transcendental being" is imaginary language, not language that describes reality.

So unfortunately, theists who describe God this way are describing an imaginary God, not a real God.

There is nothing outside of space and time, because we cannot show it to be actual or necessary. — Philosophim

Microbes, atoms, quantum waves and distant galaxies didn't exist because we couldn't show them to be actual and necessary.

Did Wittgenstein actually talk about religion? Or are you just applying what he had to say? Did some research and you seem to just be applying Wittgenstein's theories about patterns of intentions.

He did talk about religion and religious language. He gave a lecture or more on it. He didn't talk a lot about it but it exists out there. I am only reiterating what l understood from reading his work. Btw, his work isn't easy to interpret and there is always a room for disagreement. I am not talking about intentions really, it's a feature of religious language game. The primary purpose is moral/existential assurance from a divine being. You can sort of infer the intention/tacit agreement among religious people as a necessary condition.

Here is the thing about language. We can invent whatever terms and ideas we want. But if we are going to claim these terms represent reality, we must show their actual or necessary existence in reality. — Philosophim

Why would someone need to demonstrate anything about reality if they are making a baseless claim?

In fact, Wittgenstein was brought up because it seems unlikely that religious people can demonstrate or describe anything about god. He is, as you say, imaginary. Your argument might be relevant against a theist, but we were not disputing whether or not religious people's claims actually represent physical reality; what is relevant is that they aim to represent reality and fail to do so due to problems inherent to the language used, which is, once again, where Wittgenstein comes in.

edited for coherence, sorry

The primary purpose is moral/existential assurance from a divine being. You can sort of infer the intention/tacit agreement among religious people as a necessary condition. — Wittgenstein

Yeah, I agree to a certain extent. I still think religion has outlived its usefulness, and that viewing it as a collection of stories/metaphors/sources of existential assurance is the minority view, but still better than telling young children that they are bound for hell.

Yeah, I agree to a certain extent. I still think religion has outlived its usefulness, and that viewing it as a collection of stories/metaphors/sources of existential assurance is the minority view, but still better than telling young children that they are bound for hell.

You should read Kierkegaard. I think you won't find him narrow minded. He was against crowd mentality first of all. According to Kierkegaard, truth is subjectivity. Scientific facts are important and without a doubt, improve our material life but they are not capable of giving us a meaning in life. I will go through his philosophy briefly, Kierkegaard laid out 3 stages of life, the preceding stage is found in the subsequent stage , except in a refined form. You have the aesthetic, moral and religious stage of existence. The first one is characterized by individual self centered pursuit of pleasure/comfort, the second stage forces a person to live up to some ethical ideal/serve the people around him selflessly. The final stage is essential and the most difficult, it is the religious stage. Here you take a leap of faith, you believe in something that you can't possibly justify. It's for that reason alone called belief. You discover your meaning in life by resigning to the paradox of faith. Those who justify faith on reason are deceiving themselves and others. Preaching is counterproductive in this age and not useful really. People should be left to make up their own mind. Btw, Wittgenstein admired Kierkegaard and was in awe of his deep faith. Perhaps, he got the mystical texture in Tractatus from Kierkegaard.


You can check this out ( pdf available )
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief by Wittgenstein.
The religious section has 19 pages only. It's a quick read

The final stage is essential and the most difficult, it is the religious stage. Here you take a leap of faith, you belief in something that you can't possibly justify. It's for that reason alone called belief. You discover your meaning in life by resigning to the paradox of faith. — Wittgenstein

That sounds interesting. I'll definitely read some of him. I am inclined to think faith is undesirable being a humanist, but maybe faith does have a place? I'll have to think about that.