Randon Musings

Why do people have an innate need to complicate things? We don’t seem able to watch a simple game of sport without endless numbers and stats and discussing the captains dodgy knee and whether it will affect his ability to turn to the left or not. We don’t seem able to impliment a tax system which can be understood by any single person, and when we have “tax reform” it always seems to result in a more complicated system than that we had before. Is is something intrinsic to our reasoning brains, this need to add layers of complication to any simple concept. Perhaps this explains the popularity of complicated fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons, with all those numbers and rules. Philosophers seem to have taken this propensity to complicate to amazing levels, particularly in these postmodernist times.

I was pondering all this when the Sydney eruv idea came up. First you decide you can’t do simple things for religious purposes, thereby making life harder and more complicated. Then you add some more unnecessary complications to change the rules so you can do a few of the things you previously decided you can’t do. All to support a concept with no evidence to suggest it has any basis in reality. So is religion merely pandering to our inner desires for complication (at least of things we have some control over)? An ancient D&D?

Theists talk about god all the time. God this. God that. Yet what do they mean by god? As an atheist I am happy to define god as “a supernatural entity with unspecified yet impressive powers which exists only on the mind of men”, yet I expect theists would be unimpressed by this definition.

The problem I have is that theists themselves don’t seem to have a definition which can actually be used to describe something, either for gods in general or for particular gods. Individual theists seem to have individual definifions of their particular god, often similar to others who profess to worship the same god yet seemingly never exactly the same.

Apologists in general seem to start from the presupposition that god exists and that we all know what is meant by the word “god”. I’m afraid that we don’t, and this difference in definitions makes genuine discourse problemmatic if not impossible. When talking with theists I get the feeling we are indeed talking about very different concepts and while this is the case there is little chance of any real understanding.

So, is there a definition out there that both theists and atheists can accept as adequately describing the word “god”? Definitions of particular gods might be a bit more difficult, but would certainly make dialogue easier. It would be good to be able to get on the same page and have a real conversation.