Great statements. It seems clear to me that people who argue for the truth of religious statements do that not because they want other people to know the truth, but because they want to keep on believing what they already believe in. And they want other people to believe them so they can exert power on other people. If they are right then surely we must do what they say.
It is illustrative that people arguing for religious truths never bona fide accept the possibility that they might be wrong. They might say for argumentative reasons: "I don't assume God exists ..." but then they in effect continue with "But let me proove to you why it must be true that "God" exists". :-).
I put "God" in quotes above because it is not clear what people using that word in fact mean by it. Oh, God is "everything". Oh, God is "perfection". God is Love. God is Pure Goodness. What have you.
The problem with such arguments or "definitions" is that if God is Love, then Love must also be God. If God is everything then everything must also be God.
So they are arguing about properties and attributes of "God", but they are not defining clearly what it is they are arguing about.
The lack of clarity is often the point. They try to get you to accept that God is the uncreated cause, then slip into talking about the God of Abraham. For them this is a natural substitution, because in their belief system the two are one and the same.
But no careful thinker should accept that those two set of ideas are a priori the same thing. It is absolutely true that, if you accept the Bible, then the God of the Bible is the only possible candidate for the uncreated cause. But there are many possible belief systems with an uncreated cause, where the Jews are not the chosen people of that uncreated cause.
It is illustrative that people arguing for religious truths never bona fide accept the possibility that they might be wrong. They might say for argumentative reasons: "I don't assume God exists ..." but then they in effect continue with "But let me proove to you why it must be true that "God" exists". :-).
I put "God" in quotes above because it is not clear what people using that word in fact mean by it. Oh, God is "everything". Oh, God is "perfection". God is Love. God is Pure Goodness. What have you.
The problem with such arguments or "definitions" is that if God is Love, then Love must also be God. If God is everything then everything must also be God.
So they are arguing about properties and attributes of "God", but they are not defining clearly what it is they are arguing about.