Except the logic isn't 'if you can conceive of it, then it is real'. While, if you can conceive of it, then it exists - if only conceptually, that doesn't make it 'real', and nobody (except perhaps the caller) would say it does. The point is: If you can conceive of it, and convey your conception to someone else, your conception has some basis in your experience, ie: a basis in something that exists. C'thulu, Yog Soggoth, Dagon, Azathoth, all of them have their basings in things that exist, be it only the fear of madness and the unknown. Lovecraft's conceptions were rooted in his experiences. His creations were outgrowths of the things had seen, heard, felt, and known.

Now, Kevin can toss around all of the completely newly-minted words he likes, but even those don't actually demonstrate conception of things that don't exist. All they demonstrate is that if such things can be conceived, then communicating those new concepts is impossible without using things that exist as a common reference. Which isn't to say it can be shown that he hasn't conceived of something with no basis in existence, just that that is where the attempt to demonstrate conception of things with no basis in existence breaks down: There's no way to communicate such a conception short of direct telepathy. And I don't think Kevin's got that one down yet. :/

But the symbol is a message, and only because of "real" things. A unicorn means something unique to each of us, just as Brian's symbolic invention. I see a picture of mixing separate things,  that are real.

I'm confused again ! Are we just nit picking ? I mean the symbol must represent mixes of the existing in order to create a message, what ever it is, and so anything imagined has the energy of consciousness, which is real. If you can imagine it , it is real. Not that the mix of what you imagine exists as what most call a material object or even a measureable energy force. This is a bit like where Energy / Matter / Consciousness , gets blurry .....   QM !    

Nonsense.

Writing = telepathy. When you read the word 'Shootle', and that it is 'Gratooshed of Spittacles', your mind is going to put an image in your head (whether you'll admit it or not). If you read 'Jabberwocky', even though much of the language is nonsense, the narrative is quite easy to follow. By simply saying the word to you I've communicated the idea; what you make of it isn't going to be the same as what I make of it, because the word 'Shootle' and it's descriptors are nonsensical - but claiming it's 'impossible to communicate' is a joke.

Proof-reading is identifying and correcting the mistakes an author did not intend to write. Questioning apparently unsubstantiable assertions is quite a different exercise. For one thing, if it is required a lot in response to an author's output and results in retractions, further material that requires interrogation and evasive answers, then it calls into question the author's intentions themselves, and rarely in a manner that supports the author's integrity.

And can you point out any statement by anybody in this particular discussion who made the claim that myth has no capacity to meaningfully refer to the real world, let alone that it cannot but that popular fiction can? The issue was not that myth fails to correspond with reality but that its distortions of reality once served a useful purpose for people ignorant of basic scientific principles and that this purpose, if continually asserted by some people after that ignorance has been generally dispelled in society, suggests that something quite other than searching for truth lies at the root of their insistence on perpetuating it. If, as you claim, myth served another purpose I would be glad to discuss that assertion, as long as we agree at the outset that its role in establishing cultural identity, communal bonding and philosophical starting points from which discussion could eventually lead to more correct analysis of reality were never its purpose but a product of its presence. Other intellectual and social processes in any case achieved these things better, and many of these - such as formal education for example - had practically no other significant purpose.

Myths, and especially widely accepted myths that formed the basis of organised religion, were a stepping stone in intellectual development. As their relevance in that respect has declined, the defence used to perpetuate their acceptance as current and valid has of necessity retreated into obfuscation, empty assertion and other anti-intellectual arguments.

But then you've not communicated the idea, just the label for the idea. Jabberwocky is indeed partially nonsense,  but the nonsense is surrounded with referents that let us catch a hint of the concepts. If the image that forms in my mind isn't the one in yours, you haven't communicated the concept, because the concept in my mind (which will be based on my own experiences, which are things that exist) isn't the one in yours.

It's like speaking to someone in a language they don't understand: you can throw the words at them all day long, but until you are transmitting to them an idea which they are understanding as the same idea you're intending to convey, you're not communicating. You're just making noise.

We unavoidably and inescapably live as the Karma of myth !       < ----- SEE  

                                   WE are Magic !!!!!!!    

                     What isn't magical this ignorant day ! ?

Yes, Eloise, but who here made the claim that myth is only fiction and therefore epistemologically bankrupt? And who ever has? Epistomology, as you know yourself I'm sure, is a suitably vague if grandiose way of saying that something contributes or has contributed to knowledge, but without really saying how.

You compound this omission of exact meaning in what you say by then levelling a charge against atheists in general, saying that they are more likely to dismiss myth as irrelevant as to see any merit in it. Only a very foolish person would claim that myth did not play a role in advancing knowledge since it was, for a long time, the repository for many of the more abstract but necessary concepts required to make sense of one's surroundings. In as far as anything common can be attributed to atheists except disbelief in deity I would say from my own experience that the opposite is true. Atheists, who can roughly also be grouped as likely to include a fair number who are sceptical about unfounded assertions, generally also therefore have quite a knowledge and intellectual appreciation of mythology and are in no way dismissive of its impact. Just look at Rook's disseminations on this site, or indeed the reasoned arguments presented by many others as to why they abandoned blind belief in favour of rationality. One cannot deconstruct delusion without first acknowledging its source and assessing it in terms of its historical impact and its current power to delude. This in itself acknowledges mythology's epistomological role, but should not be confused with any subsequent evaluation by the atheist of the quality or antiquity of the knowledge referred to.

Your suggestion that other forms of intellectual and socially evolutionary processes originated in more symbolic cultural forms before evolving into what you call a logically explicit form is too vague also to stand unsupported. While it could well be true of, say, medical understanding and application, it falls short as a generalisation when applied to political expression. But that is almost a whole other topic - and overlaps with mythology without really contributing to the discussion in hand.

I am sorry to hear that you think I am interested in casting aspersions on your character. I am not. I am casting huge aspersions on your stated assertions - and rightly so, in my book. They deserve it, and all the more so since they are expressed with some rather big words which, to many people unfortunately, are enough in themselves to convince them that the person is making something more than mere assertion. When you do so, I acknowledge it.

And no, I do not believe that you posit anti-intellectual arguments. But your views succour those who do, and who do not have the vocabulary (or intelligence) to rise much above gainsay. If anything, I am valiantly attempting to sve you from inadvertently becoming their spokesperson! Gallant man that I am

Yes, but I hope you'll understand that the reasons I am not elaborating on the 'hows' of epistemic value in myth/legend is plain and simply it's too long and involved and not the subject of this thread.  My point here was to show that conceivability to possibility gives credence to the essential point that they (myths) do have value which is not readily recognised.

Ok, I stand corrected. I'm still hesitant to believe that the average secular person is able to see far beyond attributing myth purely to ignorance and delusion, but I accept that it can't always be the case and I apologise for any prejudice I might have just demonstrated by that comment.

Just on that, as I was looking over my last post just now I noticed that I failed to finish making the point I had intended with this sentence:

"I do believe that it is a natural process of human evolution that sketchily defined and sensed ideals are projected into culture through symbolic imagery and that symbolic imagery makes a genuine material contribution to the eventual actualisation of that ideal into formal culture."

Naturally I meant for that to relate back to the quoted text and I forgot to do that. So for clarity the above should be followed by : hence I mean that I cannot promise to uphold that agreement because I believe that the actualisation of an envisioned ideal was the intended purpose and role of symbolic imagery.

Aside from that, as I said earlier, I would welcome your comments on my beliefs regarding how myth and legend does and moreover can potentially still contribute to human knowledge, but I think it belongs to another discussion and another time when I am not posting here distractedly.

nuff said. Thanks.

I found some horses !   WITH music     

IRON BUTTERFLY THEME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qkcwBsKizU

       Eloise    

   This is symbolic ....

i kissed a girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ZEE9jpIic

Then flip the coin, better yet , watch it spin ..... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SDVQ0D95Ac&NR=1

                            Be a Healer

No worries!  I appreciate you taking the time after all.

I think I need to do a better job of explaining: we can conceive of an equation that has been proven non-existent.  Yes, we may not be able to imagine the terms individually, but we can think of something along the lines of "f(x) = (pi/r^-2)- ..." which will return a value for x, even though we know this equation cannot acutally exist.

Is the devil in the details?  Does this mean that since the construction cannot be envisaged in specific detail mean it doesn't meet the criteria?  We can think of the things separately, but the sum is lesser than the whole, given that the whole cannot possibly exist.

Surely something that is beyond "the limits of existence" cannot exist in the known universe, by definition, no?  So by declaring that we lack the language to describe that something since it is outside the bounds of the universe, is to necessarily admit that the something cannot exist in the universe.  Did I err somewhere in that?

Thanks much for your input.

A minor nitpick here, that I wasn't going to post in full.. but on second thought it probably should be made clear at this point- the equation you've written there would return a value for f(x) rather than x, they aren't the same thing, conventionally f(x)=y where x is the variable which you plug a value into to return the different values of y. also specifically that equation which you've written is a function of r so it would be f(r) anyway.

But going on with that line of thought, an equation for squaring the circle would look something like this:

pi(r^2) = s^2

solve for s

sqrt(pi(r^2)) = r*sqrt(pi) = s

Thus a unit circle has an equal area to a square with sqrt(pi) sides, but because pi is transcendent there's no telling what value those sides would have. The square could not technically exist, but you could draw some arbitrarily close approximation using a rational number close to root(pi)

The value of root(pi) isn't non-existent, per se. Pi is transcendental which basically means there is no final decimal number to it, without a final number one can't calculate a square root. Basically what it means is that you could start drawing a side of a circle/square to about a length 1.77 but you couldn't finish it to the satisfaction of the equation because the transcendence of pi requires you to continue drawing the line at ever decreasing intervals forever. So the value of root pi exists, but you cannot, even given an infinite amount of time to do so, pin it down to a discrete value.

The conundrum is that the pi ratio is introduced geometrically to define a closed space. Pi* any line equals a perfect circle which surrounds the line completely, passing through its end points. You cannot accurately draw this circle in the sense that at the end of your drawing you must continue approaching the limit at the join forever. In this sense it is impossible for a perfect circle area to be closed in a finite time. It's almost as though a circle cannot exist, we cannot know a circle since by it's definition it is a closed space with a perimeter given by a ratio of pi to it's width/height and no such space can ever be closed.

So it's not that we cannot perceive of it in any specific detail, we can conceive of the detail quite well, it's that this detail mocks the empirical basis which we have used to achieve our understanding of it. This is what makes it a paradox rather than a conception of something which doesn't exist. What we have is a group of conceptions of things that exist which don't fit together perfectly in the abstract. From it we can suppose that one (or more) of our explanations is missing some key fact about the real universe, but it doesn't affect that the individual conceptions in the main are extrapolated from existing artefacts.

No it's not necessary to presume that if formal conceptions fail to mesh neatly that there must be nothing where the disaccord is found, we just might suppose that where our best instruments of logic encounter a contradiction that we have reached a limit of existence, even though it's not a completely sound conclusion. 

If we don't suppose a limit then we should rightly backtrack and assess the veracity of the instruments at that boundary and we might then discover that there is no contradiction where other instruments are used. 

However, in any case said instruments are conceptions of existing things, even if they are found to have been imprecise ones in light of review.

Thanks so much ronin-dog

     I hate it !  Life hurts alot, as you know .... 

     I want what the kids want !  WE could party and make fun all our goal .... that I will labor for .... working for fun  ....  

I have a huge quibble with point 4, since it allows every version of the concept that people have conceived (which I would suggest is phenomenally greater than the hundreds, if not thousands, which have received names and been broadcast in the past.)

What the ontological argument suggests to be purporting to me therefore is that all gods must exist. Or, if it denies one it must deny them all.

But you are right to shoot it down anyway on what constitutes existence. If we allow that anything exists just because we conceive it in our minds then we have at the very least yet another bad Schwarzenigger-type movie in the offing ...

and

See, here's the simplest problem here: The concept of 'God' doesn't really exist in human understanding. The concept of 'God' partially exists in human awareness, but the concept itself is not understood.

Understanding the concept would necessitate being more complex than the concept, since our own complexity would include all of the complexity of the concept.

In turn, since 'God' is supposed to be the creator of the universe, God's complexity (having conceived of the universe) must be greater than the universe's.

The universe contains humanity. Thus, the universe's complexity exceeds humanity's, as humanity's complexity is part of the complexity of the universe.

Which leaves us with:

Human Complexity > God's Complexity > Universe's Complexity > Human Complexity.

Not possible.

Ergo, we cannot conceive of God. We can merely label really big swatches of 'WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!?!?!?' as 'God'.

Which is consistent with experience: as science advances, God recedes.

Okay, the short version refuting Lewis' position: By definition god must be perfect, so if we can't conceive of anything more perfect then he must exist. Also by definition, a perfect being can do anything, but something that is perfectly good is incapable of doing evil, therefore god can either do everything OR is perfectly good, but not both. By the law of contradiction both can't be true, but by Lewis' assertation both have to be true, and so Lewis' argument must be false. QED.

As for something of which the human mind can conceive but doesn't exist: negative numbers. Have you ever held less than zero of something? What does it look like if you are holding only two pennies in your hand and someone takes three pennies out of that hand?

I still like the Furger Argorock argument better.

(Note: I didn't read the whole thread before I posted this - a bit hippocritical considering my epic-tome-sized Letter to a Christian Father thread, but I did it anyways >:D )

Pretty grim usually, it's called debt.

No worries.

Ah, but still, imaginary numbers still have their roots in actual things, or at least, in experienced things, ie: in quantities. It's a matter of abstraction. '2' is an abstraction. '2' doesn't exist on its own, it's really a descriptor of 'how many?' But once we're capable of working on an abstract level, we can deal with '2' without worrying about '2 what?'. Similarly, the concept of 'square root' is based on the concept of the 'square' (mathematical, not geometrical, obviously). 'Square Root' is simply a shorthand for 'quantity for which X is the square'. While we are combining a number of abstractions (quantity as independent from physical objects, negative numbers, and square/square root), the process is all rooted in something experienced: I have two thumbs, for example.

The idea isn't that we can't conceive of anything that doesn't actually exist, it's that we cannot conceive of something that isn't rooted in things that exist. Everything we think of is, really, something we've made out of the things we encounter around us.

Actually, there's a whole 'nother thread on the 'rock so big he can't lift it' question. Over there, I basically said that yes, God could, but in order to do so, he'd have to make the rock, and then limit himself to being unable to lift it. In this case, he could make the burrito, but he'd have to then make himself unable to eat it all. In doing so, he'd be ceding his omnipotence, and would be unable to regain it, ever, because by having the option of regaining the omnipotence in the future, he retains the capability of lifting the rock or eating the burrito, he's simply not exercizing it.

So, as I said there, he could... but in order to do so, he'd have to stop being God. Just like evil, to be what God is claimed to be, he'd have to have the capacity, but never exercise it.

Actually, it gets better than that. If you doublecheck the bible, Satan is never shown to do anything that's not God's Will. The only time we see his motives at all is Job, and in that instance, he quite clearly goes to God, as a good Prosecutor is supposed to do, and asks permission to put Job on trial.

Nor, in fact, is Satan, or even Sammael (NOT the hellhound from the first Hellboy movie...), the seraph often considered to hold the position of 'Satan' (it's a job title, btw, not a name) among those who Fall as recounted in the Book of Enoch. The rebellion is lead by Azazel (yes, from the Denzel Washington movie), and creates the Nephilim (yes, from the second Prophecy movie), but neither 'Satan', nor Sammael, are listed.

So really, there's nothing at all to suggest that Genesis doesn't unfold exactly the way God wants it to. But... are you ready for the kick in the pants? "Good", from the theological position, is defined by God. God will always do Good, because Good is whatever God says it is.

Sadism... now, that's another thing entirely... and I'd have to say that the God of the Genesis account is one major sadist. Probably also a drunk and a wife-batterer. And a pedophile. I mean, not for nothing, but Adam and Eve were what? 1, maybe 2 DAYS old when he tells 'em to 'be fruitful and multiply'?

Sick fucker.

Right! But they're not evil, they're good, because God said so. Like I said, he's one sick bastard.

LMFAO! To be fair i don't think he knew what the word conceive means. one of my favorite conceptions are the Aliens from the Alien movie.

I think the point is missed entirely.  You drew upon experiences which already exists and simply gave it a name.  You previously knew of Sharks, flying objects and different sounds and letters to be blended together give this thing a name(furger-Argorok) There is nothing new here. 

If you could conceive of something outside existence you would be able to describe it.

Man cannot create ANYTHING not even a new thought.  He had to experience something.  Think of a new color without using existing colors....if you can.

All these things already exists.  All these things have been experienced. 

Reason is born of experience.

Therefore, if man cannot create ideas or reason outside of our experiences then where did the idea of GOD come from???

ANSWER: By logic we had to have experienced him.

 G 'A W E' D  we are ....

This really had me stumped for awhile but I think I have two arguments that beat this. The first being that I just conceived of something that does not exist, I'd tell you what it is but unfortunately english, or any other language for that matter, does not have the neccessary vocabulary to describe it. This being bacause it does not exist and therefore why would any language be able to describe it. I know kind of weak.

My second argument is that C.S. Lewis' argument is moot in that God is always described with things that do exist and therefore is just a complilation of these things.

Yes, but are you just stating this or are you really unable to describe something that you are thinking of? It seems to me that if you can already conceive of it, then it's ludicrous to state that you can't describe it. How would you have conceived of it then?

Haha, if you can't imagine God, except with things that do exist, then you can't conceive of him, invalidating the original argument. If you follow the theist's own flawed logic, then we have just proven that God does not exist. 

How I wish I'd only seen your post sooner. D: Nonetheless:

Great picture.