Ken e-mails and I respond in blue:
I turn on my computer and check out the Maverick Philosopher and suddenly half of my day is shot. First I have to look up the word 'pellucidity' and then I am stuck trying to figure out why your claim about the phrases 'God-P' and 'God-R' does not seem right to me.
It sounds like I'm doing something right! You can look up a word without getting out of your chair. Here's a tip that you may already be aware of: type 'define: pellucidity' (without the inverted commas) into the Google search box and you will get a page of definitions, some of them from reputable sources. (I don't consider Wikipedia a particularly reputable source.) Needless to say, this works for almost any word inserted after the colon and not just for 'pellucidity'!
I agree that the sentence [from Martin Buber], "What the philosophers describe by the name of God cannot be more than an idea," is false but to state that that 'God-P' and 'God-R' have the same referent, if they have a referent, seems false to me as it carries an assumption of the monotheism of the 'God-R' that may not be present in 'God-P.' The idea that there is and can only be one God is one that does not have to be accepted in 'God-P' and I do not believe that it would be possible, except by defining 'God-P' ='God-R', for 'God-P' and 'God-R' to always have the same referent. Maybe you can point out where I am wrong and what I missed.
Well, every discussion occurs within a context, a context which cannot be ignored or set aside, since the very meaning of the terms of the debate is influenced by the context. The present immediate context is Pascal's exclamation, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob -- not of the philosophers and scholars" and Buber's comment thereon. The Pascalian exclamation and the Buberian comment themselves fit into a wider context, Judeo-Christian monotheism. The question before us is whether, within this Judeo-Christian monotheistic context, there is any merit to the notion that what philosophers qua philosophers talk about and argue for and against is numerically different from what religionists qua religionists talk about and try to relate themselves to. My answer is plain from my earlier posts: this notion has no merit whatsoever.
Your suggestion seems to be that the God(s) of the philosophers needn't be one, but could be many, even if the God of the religionists must be one. My answer to you is very simple: in the precise context I have specified, namely, the context of Judeo-Christian monotheism, both the God of the philosophers and the God of the religionists is one. Polytheism is simply not a Jamesian live option within this tradition and certainly was not for Pascal and Buber whose utterances provide the immediate context of my remarks.
Of course, there is nothing to stop you or anyone from shifting the context. Philosophers are free to make a case for polytheism if they care to. Within the community of polytheists, the question could arise whether the gods of the philosophers (the gods the polytheistic philosophers argue for) are the same as the gods of the religionists (the gods the polytheistic religionists invoke in prayer, etc.) But that question is not my question.
Note that I am not merely stipulating that 'God-R' and 'God-P' have the same reference. That would be arbitrary and unmotivated. What I am doing is unpacking the concept of God what we already have and work with in the Judeo-Christian tradition. My point is that within this tradition, pace Pascal and Buber and many others, it makes no sense to imagine that what the philosophers are talking about when they talk about God is numerically different from what the religionists talk about when they talk about God.
Finally, none of my discussion presupposes the existence of God. As I said, I am unpacking the concept of God, and this concept is what it is whether or not it is instantiated.
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