Re:Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
by dragonwriter on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @05:16PM
(#29718942)
> > > The existence of a concept is not the same thing as the existence of the thing the concept refers to.
> Yes it is
No, it's not.
> for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life.
This...requires the assumption that God does not exist (in re, if we must, since you seem to insist on the archaic, Anselm-like insistence that existence in intellectu is a real thing and that material existence is a predicate), but, even ignoring that giant problem with one premise, that's not true. I may have a concept of a robber who robbed my house when no such robbery actually occurred in the material universe, but the existence of they concept doesn't mean that a robber who robbed my house exists even if I have had no experience of a material robber only the concept, it means the concept refers to a thing that does not exist.
Ditto with concepts of God to the extent that God does not exist.
> Yes it is
No, it's not.
> for most of the average Joe believers the concept of god is the god, since they never faced any other kind of god in their life.
This...requires the assumption that God does not exist (in re, if we must, since you seem to insist on the archaic, Anselm-like insistence that existence in intellectu is a real thing and that material existence is a predicate), but, even ignoring that giant problem with one premise, that's not true. I may have a concept of a robber who robbed my house when no such robbery actually occurred in the material universe, but the existence of they concept doesn't mean that a robber who robbed my house exists even if I have had no experience of a material robber only the concept, it means the concept refers to a thing that does not exist.
Ditto with concepts of God to the extent that God does not exist.