(This is a preliminary text, 14 November 2014.)
Religious persons must be able to attribute meaning to their expressions,
i.e. describe what they are talking about, if they want to be regarded as reasonable.
It is her an important demand, that to describe e.g. the expression “god”, they
must do that by means of a hyponym, i.e. genus
et differentiam.
However, the religious people can describe neither the genus northe hyponym.
It must here be mentioned that expressions as “something” or “being” are not
usable hyponyms, as they tell us nothing.
It must also be pointed out that it is not sufficient to use terms for
experiences as a hyponym. For when you have experiences, what exists are just your
experiences. So here, the genus is
“experience” - and nothing else.
This is described in the subsection “Religious explanations” in Treatise No
5
Someone may assert to have evidence of the truth of the sentence “God
exists” and express this evidence with the sentence “I have felt God’s
nearness”. In that case, however, the only thing that can be said to be present
or have been present is a feeling of a certain sort, viz. the very feeling
referred to however it might have been, but not an existence of anything else.
For that reason, the sentence cannot be an apt description of the feeling in
question. The experience referred to cannot give meaning to a new concept of a
god either, as the discussed sentence presupposes that the meaning of this
putative concept has been clarified, i.e. to which kind of entity the sign
sequence “god” possibly might refer. The semantic meaning of a sentence simply
must be clarified in order to express anything.
--
The atheists’ sentence “There is no god”, presupposes that in principle
this sentence could be true, but that it just happens not to be the case. This
gives religion an appearance of reasonableness.
In other words, the atheists do not understand the religious peoples'
fault, but commit it themselves.
