Monotheism and Minds: Why Monotheism Is Untenable

[LMNO]

Ok, so I guess the question about whether language can develop in isolation isn't that hard to figure out.  It's looking like just about every common definition of language includes some reference to "communication", so there necessarily must be a sender and a receiver, even if that receiver is the Self (leaving notes and reminders, for example).

So yeah, as long as it's a set of symbols, or sounds, or just about anything that can be sensed (Original Story Idea: A language communicated through taste), and has a structure that can be understood by a sender and a receiver, you can absolutely develop a language in isolation.


Which means, concerning the OP, we're left, again, with Nigel's list of assumptions.  And, perhaps, the complete overuse of commas, specifically by me.

Sorry I had to take the long way to get there, Nigel.

[Doktor Howl]

Even if commas are used properly, there's always too many of them.

[Doktor Howl]

For what it's worth, by the way, Brother Prickle has been a member for 3.5 years.

[hooplala]

I think Hoops and I could have some good conversations, if he could just get over his apparent hard-on for Telling Nigel To Be Nice.

Hoops, I have to tell you, I might say things people don't want to hear, but I haven't actually been a mean bastard since around May 2011.

When have I ever "told" you to be nice before today?

Nigel, you happen to be one of my favorite people here, but all I'm getting from you in this thread (more so in the beginning, to be fair) is "nobody read the OP, and by the way the OP is derp anyway".  I'm sincerely sorry if I've given you the impression I wanted you to play nice.

I'm tired and perhaps a little cranky today. I apologize for slagging the thread up, OP ask for a thread snip if it bothers you.

[hooplala]

For what it's worth, by the way, Brother Prickle has been a member for 3.5 years.

Slinking back out the way I came...

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Ok, so I guess the question about whether language can develop in isolation isn't that hard to figure out.  It's looking like just about every common definition of language includes some reference to "communication", so there necessarily must be a sender and a receiver, even if that receiver is the Self (leaving notes and reminders, for example).

So yeah, as long as it's a set of symbols, or sounds, or just about anything that can be sensed (Original Story Idea: A language communicated through taste), and has a structure that can be understood by a sender and a receiver, you can absolutely develop a language in isolation.


Which means, concerning the OP, we're left, again, with Nigel's list of assumptions.  And, perhaps, the complete overuse of commas, specifically by me.

Sorry I had to take the long way to get there, Nigel.

The receiver could also be the Void that preexists the Cosmos, kinda like God figuring out how to program nothingness into somethingness, but yes, basically we're left with the list.

[QueenThera]

BrotherPrickle, I don't know if I need to point out everything that's wrong with your thesis, but among the multitude of fallacies it contains is the assumption that language is necessary for thought.

I'm a little cringey at your sweeping declaration about the definition of God, for that matter; you seem to be using a very European definition ("God is Mind preceding Matter") that is probably bogged down in your own cultural context. You might be interested in knowing that Europeans often considered Native Americans "godless" not because they worshipped the wrong god, but because they were unable to recognize Native American spiritual figures as "gods" by  their definition at all.

That's fair as hell.

I was posting it based on a conversation with a friend, and when I get into those arguments, I find my thoughts snapping back into this Christian apologetics mindspace. Since I have currently tried to turn my back on it, I often find myself arguing for a Dawkins-viewpoint.

I do try to learn more about other cultures, and love hearing about different interpretations of God, but, well...yeah. Most of my seriously deep theology education is heavily rooted in the European tradition. Or the snippets of Buddhism I have gleaned from a fiction writer, but I already am pretty sure I have no idea what it really means.

[QueenThera]

Oh hell yes, that's the point of spitballing.

I just know that when I toss that phrase around, I am usually warning people that what I'm about to say hasn't been completely thought out in advance.

Carry on!

So does that mean you DON'T want people to pick apart your half-thought-through ideas and tell you what's wrong with them?

What's the benefit in even posting them, if that's the case?

Absolutely not, but the OP is a bit of noob and had been recently trashed in at least one other thread over something fairly insignificant. I just wanted to point out that this wasn't being presented as a fully thought out thesis.

Is this one an actual noob? Or is it one of the "I used to post here and then I left and then I came back" folks?

I can't keep them straight, and apparently I'm only allowed to talk to some of them like adult human beings.

Actually, both! I was a noob a while ago, and I think trying too hard. You said I was someone else, and I realized I was making an ass of myself. So, left for years. Came back recently, and enjoying looking through the threads. So...I think I count as both. I hope I'm not breaking any rules.

[LMNO]

It's all good.

[Doktor Howl]

It's all good.

You make Baby Jesus cry when you lie like that.

[Telarus]

Ok, so I guess the question about whether language can develop in isolation isn't that hard to figure out.  It's looking like just about every common definition of language includes some reference to "communication", so there necessarily must be a sender and a receiver, even if that receiver is the Self (leaving notes and reminders, for example).

So yeah, as long as it's a set of symbols, or sounds, or just about anything that can be sensed (Original Story Idea: A language communicated through taste), and has a structure that can be understood by a sender and a receiver, you can absolutely develop a language in isolation.


Which means, concerning the OP, we're left, again, with Nigel's list of assumptions.  And, perhaps, the complete overuse of commas, specifically by me.

Sorry I had to take the long way to get there, Nigel.

I think this is the really interesting part of all of this. It says to me that the monolithic-self (i.e the narrative of self continuity), along with the monotheistic god (the narrative of singular-continuous deity) are 'illusions'. I've mentioned elsewhere how useful illusions like the 'self' function to 'keep the body out of traffic' and stuff like that, but the other side of this is also interesting. Imagine that GOD was all the seraphim taking turns wearing a mask....that fits the language in Genesis 1 anyway.


EDIT because I think synchronicities like this can be meaningful - this came up on Facebook from another Discordian seconds after I posted this and it ties to the mono-narrative.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

BrotherPrickle, I don't know if I need to point out everything that's wrong with your thesis, but among the multitude of fallacies it contains is the assumption that language is necessary for thought.

I'm a little cringey at your sweeping declaration about the definition of God, for that matter; you seem to be using a very European definition ("God is Mind preceding Matter") that is probably bogged down in your own cultural context. You might be interested in knowing that Europeans often considered Native Americans "godless" not because they worshipped the wrong god, but because they were unable to recognize Native American spiritual figures as "gods" by  their definition at all.

That's fair as hell.

I was posting it based on a conversation with a friend, and when I get into those arguments, I find my thoughts snapping back into this Christian apologetics mindspace. Since I have currently tried to turn my back on it, I often find myself arguing for a Dawkins-viewpoint.

I do try to learn more about other cultures, and love hearing about different interpretations of God, but, well...yeah. Most of my seriously deep theology education is heavily rooted in the European tradition. Or the snippets of Buddhism I have gleaned from a fiction writer, but I already am pretty sure I have no idea what it really means.

It's an interesting conversation. I'm still not quite sure what you were thinking when you posted the OP, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring it out even still. But it did remind me that God is a fairly amorphous word in itself.

I honestly don't know what you mean by God in the OP. I suspect it's a strongly Abrahamic concept, and you've done little to dissuade me of it, but at the same time I'm not discounting that Nigel caught a whiff of something a little more nuanced but not necessarily apparent. If that's the monotheistic model that you're using as a reference point, that's fine, but please spell that out, because as I mentioned, while the Western concept of pure monotheism tends to be Abrahamic, there is also nuance there. I'm taking it literally that your premise is opposed specifically to the concept of a monotheistic deity that requires language to bring the universe into existence, because, as far as I can tell, that's what you've been given us to work with, and that puts it pretty firmly in the Abrahamic camp. Aten hit the reset button. Ahura Mazda decided to start off with metalworking (the sky is metal, btw). The pantheistic god just kinda showed up as a natural result. Maybe I'm thinking too hard about it but you linking creation to the idea of a transcendent deity using language specifically to make this shit happen seems to me to be specifically geared towards the concept of Yahweh.

[LMNO]

Yeah, but he said the YHWH thing didn't count as an example, when he mentioned the Elohim. 

So, the sticking point for me is, exactly who is claiming that god was an isolated Mind Before Matter when it created the universe?  So far, I haven't seen any creation myth that has that as part of the story.

I think this is the really interesting part of all of this. It says to me that the monolithic-self (i.e the narrative of self continuity), along with the monotheistic god (the narrative of singular-continuous deity) are 'illusions'.

I'm not sure where how you arrived there from

you can absolutely develop a language in isolation.

I was simply saying that a single person can develop a means of coding, storing, and recalling information absent any other person.

Say a person is in isolation, on an island.  We'll hand-wave the fact that solitary humans don't have a high survival rate, and stay focused.  This person has a pen of goats, and he lets them out in the morning, and pens them up at night.  In order to make sure all the goats are there, when he lets them out in the morning, he puts a stone in a bucket each time a goat walks through the gate. At night, he takes a stone back out as each one walks back in.

That stone is a form of language.  It's a word.  It's coded to mean, "this is a goat," or simply, "goat".
The bucket is also a word.  It means, "field".

A stone in a bucket means, "a goat is in the field".  If there are extra stones left over in the bucket at the end of the day, he's telling himself that "there's a goat missing."  This is one form of language that can develop in isolation.

And you can easily show it's a form of communication, because if there were two people on the island, one of them could put the stones in the bucket in the morning, and the other one could take the stones out at night, and the second person would immediately know if there was a goat missing, without having to speak to the first person.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ok, so I guess the question about whether language can develop in isolation isn't that hard to figure out.  It's looking like just about every common definition of language includes some reference to "communication", so there necessarily must be a sender and a receiver, even if that receiver is the Self (leaving notes and reminders, for example).

So yeah, as long as it's a set of symbols, or sounds, or just about anything that can be sensed (Original Story Idea: A language communicated through taste), and has a structure that can be understood by a sender and a receiver, you can absolutely develop a language in isolation.


Which means, concerning the OP, we're left, again, with Nigel's list of assumptions.  And, perhaps, the complete overuse of commas, specifically by me.

Sorry I had to take the long way to get there, Nigel.

No worries! I'm always pleased when you end up agreeing with me, because I respect your thinking.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think Hoops and I could have some good conversations, if he could just get over his apparent hard-on for Telling Nigel To Be Nice.

Hoops, I have to tell you, I might say things people don't want to hear, but I haven't actually been a mean bastard since around May 2011.

When have I ever "told" you to be nice before today?

Unless I'm mistaken, you have made at least one other "ease up on the noob" post directed toward me in the last few weeks, so I wound up with a bit of that impression.

Nigel, you happen to be one of my favorite people here, but all I'm getting from you in this thread (more so in the beginning, to be fair) is "nobody read the OP, and by the way the OP is derp anyway". 

I was addressing the two people who had replied at that point, who are LMNO and Twid. I replied that way because
A: They seemed to be replying to the OP as if it were a criticism of Judeochristian religion specifically, which it wasn't, and
B. because in my opinion the OP is of limited value because of three specific assumptions that it appears to make, which I then spelled out.

I'm sincerely sorry if I've given you the impression I wanted you to play nice.

Apology accepted. I want to clarify that the only thing that bothered me was that what you seemed to be arguing against wasn't the content of my posts, but the tone of the delivery of the content. To me, that says you are reading my posts in a hostile, aggressive tone. I'm not sure what I could do, other than adding obsequious phrasing like "I'm so sorry, I might be wrong about this, but...", to change the tone, and I'm not willing to do that.

I'm tired and perhaps a little cranky today. I apologize for slagging the thread up, OP ask for a thread snip if it bothers you.

No worries, that's up to BrotherPrickle.