Y'know, I'd shrug it off and say, James knows what I mean, but it's also true his faculties on that count are mysteriously unreliable, and while there remains a question whether it is fair to expect him to remember anything, it has to do with something he said, once, that is explicitly relevant to the topic setup. It also happens to be an example of why he fails.
Sorry, Michael, if that part of reality fails to accommodate your extraordinary need, but that's the way life goes, sometimes.
Meanwhile, should I tell you to learn to read, or would it be better if you could just tell us precisely what words you require people to say; I just don't see the utility in going out of your way to be worse than useless. If you're going to put on a pedantic show like that, literacy really is a prerequisite.
No, really, if the idea isn't clear enough to accommodate your need in the one post, the second, as it happens, is entirely given over to that subject. Yes, even the third note, which attends the purpose and manner by which we seek to define God; remember where that note comes from:
I never have understood what so confuses ostensibly enlightened people about the idea that if you disarm the device then it cannot continue to do its damage.
Or, maybe I have.°° Disarming God, as I said, once upon a time, is a simple idea, but also becomes a fairly difficult social process. And rational discourse requires a certain amount of effort. It would be one thing to make the joke that we have discovered the problem, but, at the same time, there is also a viable question to what degree that such sloth is actually in effect.
After all, if one suggests, meh, because "theists" don't deserve the effort or respect of attending the historical record°°°, it's true, we are actually looking at a functional problem, right there.
(#132↑)
Again, the purpose and manner by which we seek to define God. See, for instance,
#3↑, above, and a response at
#7↑, which proposes, "We need an idea of the kind of thing described before we can instantiate it, don't we?" and then goes on to offer two paragraphs of fallacious projection. This purpose and manner of seeking to define God is what it is, but, y'know, whatever. To the one, atheism is just a word that means, without God, and has nothing to do with being useful. To the other, if we go back to Bowser and James at
#2↑ and
#4↑, the latter's characterization of
pantheism more suits political argumentation than any pursuit of truth, knowledge, &c.
Toward that end, an insider tip is that sometimes people just say stuff because they know someone else will respond; these advocates aren't really advocates, but two-bit distractions easily gratified by those who either cannot tell the difference, or think there is some utility in playing up to insincerity. In this case, page one should have made a certain point.
Nonetheless, toward your pretense, as well as
#133↑, which recounts various relevant notes about the definition of God, including
panentheism. Regardless of whether the discussion 'twixt Bowser and James actually went, we might take a moment to reflect on an evolving theological proposition. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:
“Panentheism” is a constructed word composed of the English equivalents of the Greek terms “pan”, meaning all, “en”, meaning in, and “theism”, meaning God. Panentheism considers God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world. It offers an increasingly popular alternative to both traditional theism and pantheism. Panentheism seeks to avoid either isolating God from the world as traditional theism often does or identifying God with the world as pantheism does. Traditional theistic systems emphasize the difference between God and the world while panentheism stresses God's active presence in the world and the world's influence upon God. Pantheism emphasizes God's presence in the world but panentheism maintains the identity and significance of the non-divine. Anticipations of panentheistic understandings of God have occurred in both philosophical and theological writings throughout history (Hartshorne and Reese 1953; J. Cooper, 2006). However, a rich diversity of panentheistic understandings has developed in the past two centuries primarily in Christian traditions responding to scientific thought (Clayton and Peacocke 2004a). While panentheism generally emphasizes God's presence in the world without losing the distinct identity of either God or the world, specific forms of panenethism, drawing from different sources, explain the nature of the relationship of God to the world in a variety of ways and come to different conclusions about the nature of the significance of the world for the identity of God.
(Culp↱)
Also, a citation I used yesterday,
in another thread↗ becomes relevant, here:
Theological changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also involved a shift in meaning for key concepts that operated in both religious and political life, for example, “freedom”, “justice”, “virtue”, and “vice”. For theology, the process at work was the same as Gordon Wood once described for intellectual developments more generally: “Although words and concepts may remain outwardly the same for centuries, their particular functions and meanings do not and could not remain static—not as long as individuals attempt to use them to explain new social circumstances and make meaningful new social behavior.” In America as much was happening in theology from new meanings given to old words as from the introduction of new vocabularies.
(Noll, 4)
The underlying fallacy of the instantiation this thread seeks is the expropriation and subordination of external iteration according to internal demand, to wit,
not the living experience expressed in whatever frail and contextually-bound manner by someone the critic mistrusts
a priori.
There is a general question of whether a critical assessment can survive scrutiny according to its own standards; there are also times when history would expect that particular critiques cannot. If a functional question about the utility of engaging such arguments arises°, it can be set aside for another discussion. More particularly to the moment, fallacious expropriation and ossification, such as we see in
#12↑—which responds to wandering insincerity in its own dubious context requiring ahistorical presupposition of both sincerity and cohesion—result in a fragile pretense that looks a lot like a straw man. Yet again: The purpose and manner by which we seek to define God.
If the purpose is personal satisfaction, whatever; a roomful of zealots slinging fallacies about religious belief is a roomful of religious zealots.
____________________
Notes:
° For example, a question of how one reads others compared to presents oneself. This isn't a question of temperament and heated dispute unless it happens to be on any given occasion; rather, if one reads for the worst in others, seeking the most controversial—even if extraordinarily rarefied—interpretation possible, there arises a question of what others are to think if one's own expression, in its less charitable interpretation, happens to fit with the rest of what one is arguing, and the more charitable interpretation would make the statement an outlier inconsistent with the rest of an argument. There are days when such questions are irrelevant or, at least, overstated; but sometimes the real answer is discrediting, or even disqualifying.
Culp, John. "Panentheism". 2008. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Rev. 3 June 2017. Plato.Stanford.edu. 15 April 2020. https://stanford.io/2Vv4y4n
Noll, Mark. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
but without being un scientific to name in public sky daddy as the designer.