Ben Goren wrote:
> Mike wrote:
>
> > Ben Goren wrote:
> >
> >>> 2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in
> >>> and wor****ped by a people, especially a male deity thought to
> >>> control some part of nature or reality.
> >
> > "A being of supernatural powers or attributes..." I.e. this
> > definition requires the entity to actually HAVE the powers and
> > not just that someone believes it has them or just that someone
> > calls it a god.
>
> Read past the first half-dozen words, Mike. It's all about
> ``believed in'' this and ``wor****ped'' that and ``thought to'' the
> other.
But it also has to be in reference to an actual entity. I.e. if an
entity exists that has supernatural powers but no-one wor****ped it, it
wouldn't be a god. If it was wor****ped but had no such powers, it also
wouldn't be a god. If it supposedly had such powers and was wor****ped
but didn't really exist, then still no gods would exist. You need all
THREE things (actual existence, powers and to be wor****ped/believed in)
in order for that type of god to exist.
> Here's a clue. The dictionary writers are largely Christian. They
> no more think that the gods of definition 2 actually exist than
> you or I do.
And that was part of the point was that even though Pester **** has a
cabinet full of things that were wor****ped as idols, that doesn't mean
he has a cabinet full of gods.
> >>> 3. An image of a supernatural being; an idol.
> >
> > Again, it requires an actual supernatural being that the idol is
> > an image of.
>
> Congratulations, Mike, for unequivocally proving the existence of
> unicorns, leprechauns, and dragons.
And how did I do that? There are images of those things but the actual
entities that they are images of don't exist. An idol exists but not the
god that it represents.
> >>> 4. One that is wor****ped, idealized, or followed: Money was
> >>> their god.
> >
> > And this is the one that, IMHO, trivializes the term to
> > meaninglessness as well as equivocates the word. I don't
> > disagree that people DO use the term in that way. What I
> > disagree with is in saying that they SHOULD be able to use it in
> > that way since it basically reduces the rationality of the way
> > language works.
>
> Tough ****.
But it's still not meaning that gods exist in the form that Pester ****
wanted to equivocate that they do.
> >> You'll note that both definitions 2 and 4 reduce to ``Does
> >> someone call it `a god'?''
> >
> > Also, keep in mind that Pester ****, who started this whole
> > thing, was attempting to say, in effect, that "the #4 type gods
> > exist so you must agree that gods exist so you can't say 'the #1
> > type god doesn't exist.'" I.e. he's trying to equivocate on the
> > two definitions.
>
> So?
>
> I mean, really. Some net.kook makes a piss-poor attempt at a very
> weak rhetorical trick, and you want to use that as an excuse to
> re-write every dictionary on the planet?
No, I STARTED off showing how he was equivocating. Then I went on into
what my OPINION of the use of the word was. But my main point was the
equivocation.
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