mookestink

I’m informed by Bishop Berleley’s belief that everything exists only so far as they are Ideas in the Mind of God.  All of creation, everything with the stamp of Reality, logical or not, exists Reasonably, by definition.  Ultimate Reality implies Ultimately Reasonable.

I would agree.  Reason, the principle of Reality, understands all things that are true; anything not true cannot take part in Reality.  The rule, that fundamentally all created things are comprehensible through Reasonable thought because such formed them, colours everything everywhere.

I am reminded of the Word, Logos.  John stated that identity with Logos makes Jesus divine, Reason incarnate.  It would seem that this ascribes more to God than a sky-daddy, and more to his avatar than the best friend of Christians.  Narrow the gate.

Would you assent to the proposition that God represents a personification of Logic?  I can see how that could help pass on the tradition of thinking logically, for those who understand its esoteric meaning.

I asked whether the two different signifiers (“I Am That I Am” and “A=A”) have the same meaning (signified) or not.  Does “I Am That I Am” have some other, possibly poetic, meaning?

Hold on.   Do you have an opinion on "A=A", the definition of a tautology?  Does that represent "I Am That I Am" accurately?  Or do they have totally different signifieds?  I ask this because you said, in another thread, that "God is Truth", and nothing screams capital-T Truth more loudly than A=A.

In ancient Chinese scripture (Tao te Ching) there arises untranslatable sentences, due to twin facts: (1) ancient Chinese does not use the verb "to be", and (2) Chinese lacks the distinction between verbs and nouns.  Indeed, the very first statement of the Tao te Ching reads, literally, "[Way] [can] [way] [not] [way]."  In Standard English, we translate, "The way that can be walked is not the Way."

If we dispose of the literal we can still understand Taoism.  I suggest a similar treatment of the Bible. Unpack the meaning.  Write commentary, not scripture.  You have all the important tools of language in E-Prime.

Some probing questions:

1. What series of signifiers equals "I Am"?

2. Does it simply mean "I exist", or can we look closer (in the sense that "to be or not to be" refers to suicide, not existence?)

3.  Why that series of words?

4.  In what context does that selection of words appear?

5. What signified does the writer point to? 

I started this thread in anticipation of the problem of parsing ontological claims in E-Prime. God counts.

Either a) We can speak of God in E-Prime, or b) we cannot.  If we can, we have no issue.  If we can't, we need to decide if 1) this presents an accidental problem, or 2) we see here a thoroughly desirable feature of E-Prime.

I lean toward the belief that the ambiguity of theological claims makes them an undesirable element of Standard English.  E-Prime fixes the problem.  We should classify as gibberish Scripture that we cannot translate into E-Prime.  Such Scripture gives the air of profundity and mystery, when in fact it merely confuses our imagination with non-sense.

I would identify myself as mookestink, and my parents named me Trevor.  A dictionary works by giving meaning to signs: a word (the signifier) means its signified. 

How does one determine what reality contains?  Does reality contain this table in front of me?

Good response.  How does this sound for the ontic question: “does a thing possessing all the properties of God appear in reality?”

I present to you English Prime, or E-Prime.  It transforms the English language by removing every instance of the verb "to be" from discourse.  This includes being, was, is, will be, are, am, exists, becoming, et cetera.  It forces one to use stronger, more accurate words than "to be", otherwise known as both the most over-used and the vaguest concept in our language.

A poet would see the importance of eschewing over-utilized phrasing; nobody has improved upon the meaning and efficiency of Shakespeare's "to be or not to be".  Heidegger exhausted the concept of Being, and made a career, in "Being and Time".

Above and beyond the necessary changes one must make to write or speak in E-Prime resides one major concern.  Ontology, or the question of what it means to be, appears to lose the plot when you try to defend any ontological position in E-Prime.  We cannot say that something exists, so questions about whether or not a Deity exists have no relevance.  Instead, we need to limit ourselves to what appears.

A philosopher would understand how much is predicated on the verb "to be", and see that it requires many alterations to one's beliefs to speak E-Prime fluently.  For instance, we can not say that we believe in the existence of anything, as that is not a meaningful proposition.  Solipsism, the question of whether or not anything exists other than one's own mind, is similarly a question of existence, and thus irrelevant.  Truly, English Prime resolves old problems just as it engenders new ones.  Whether one should use Standard English versus E-Prime primarily manifests as an aesthetic concern.

Furthermore, questions about identity and predication depend on the verb "to be".  For instance, to proclaim that "whatever is, is" or that "all bachelors are unmarried men" both no longer express anything meaningful.  We don't assume that we know what it means for something to exist -- "is" and "are" clue us into the fact that both propositions remain inexpressible in E-Prime.  Descartes' famously efficient maxim, cogito ergo sum, no longer remains simple.  Expressing what the "sum" actually means challenges our common sense notions of "what existence is".

I find E-Prime fascinating, and have been playing with it for the last couple weeks.  I still have yet to find a way around the ontological conundrum, but would definitely like to hear from someone more clever than I.

Can we talk about God from the perspective of E-Prime?  Surely, we cannot ask "whether He exists", because "exists" has, as its fundamental identity, a form of the verb "to be".

As a starting point, I recommend the following essay by Robert Anton Wilson: https://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm

i believe that problems about the existence of non-existence of God present an ultimately unintelligible question.  Due to the nature of language, we have ambiguous words (eg. nice, said) that lose all meaning due to overuse.  In the case of God, we can look to E-prime, English without the verb “to be”.  If we take all the niceness from English, and delete is, are, am, being, becomes, exists, we are forced to admit that talking about God’s existence generates a non-real dillemma.

I do not believe in existence, therefore I do not make certain claims.  I don’t believe I lose anything thereby.

If you look at the matter from the perspective of E-Prime, the problem disappears.  I do not even know how someone could frame the problem without some concept of Being.  Try it: speak without is, are, am, be, becoming, exists, reality and other such forms of the verb “to be”.   Both sides of the solipsistic debate assume that we know what “to be” actually means, not as a placeholder but as a concept.

Tag!  I found this place from the general religion discussion thread.