In a previous article soCode <news@socode.com> writes:
:
;Wen-King Su wrote:
:> In a previous article soCode <news@socode.com> writes:
;> :
:> ;Wen-King Su wrote:
;> :
:> ;> Why would a person who has no belief or knowledge of what a god is
;> :> presume gods to have supernatural power?
:> ;
;> :We have many cultural concepts of what "a god" is, and we have a
:> ;specific word. These concepts all assume that the supernatural
;> :exists, and without that the need for the concept, and the word, evaporates.
:>
;> Such a word and its associated concept merely describe what many people
:> believe. A person with no belief sees no reason to associate that with
;> what may actually be a god.
:
;Except that that is what the word means. Without the ability to
:associate a lexicon with semantics, there is no language.
The word god has no meaning in the vocaburary of a non-believer.

:> If he meet somebody who has a different concenpt of what a god is,
;> the most he can say is "wait a minute, that
:> doesn't agree with what those other people call god". He can't say
;> that is not god.
:
;If I meet somebody with a concept of a god that does not include
:supernatural powers, I can and will say that is not a god, by the
;generally accepted definition of the word. Hence, you are wrong.
That wouldn't be precise if the word god has no meaning to you.
;> :> We can only quibble with a
:> ;> believer on that when the believer says god is a being with
;> :> supernatural power.
:> ; > If the believer says god is everything that a dog is
;> : > an no more, then there is nothing to quibble with.
:> ;
;> :We have a perfectly good word for "dog", namely "dog".
:> ;
;> :Substituting that word, by way of example, with a replacement
:> ;from your own private language will not change the dog.
;>
:> But you can't say it is not a god to a person that says a god is
;> everything a dog is and no more.
:
;You are quite wrong; I can indeed. Someone may call their toaster
:a television, but it will not change it from what other English
;speakers mean by a toaster into what they mean by a television.
That is because toasters and televisions are both words that have
meaning to a non-believer. Imagine a person coming from a remote
primitive tribe. Someone point to a toaster and say to him
"television". He is going to know no better.
If enough people point to television and say "television" first, and
then someone else point to a toaster and say television, he is going to
think "hmm, I guess I don't really understand what a television can
be". Not until after someone explained to him what is a television and
what is not a television, and that he has accepted that explanation to
be correct, can he say "hey, that is not a television".