Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila!
This is a good example, as people saying this are in some ways doing the opposite of what you advocate, but in other ways, they are doing the same thing.
I think people are motivated to say “God is love” out of a desire to avoid being logically compelled to view certain others as wrong (there is a twist, some passive aggressive non-believers say it to claim atheists are wrong when saying theists are wrong). The exact motivation isn’t important, but its presence would provide a countervailing force against the sheer silliness of their confusion (which is worse than yours in an important way) and explain how they could possibly make it.
The mistake being made is to pretend that there are inherently attached meanings to a word, as if those words simply had that meaning, regardless of context of using words in general, and that word in particular, when that context is totally adequate to explain meaning. When it is clear that contemporary theists and all their ancestors were in error, the hippie says “God is love” to pretend there is no disagreement, and that “God” meant love—instead of what was obviously meant, or often weirdly in addition to the contradictory thing that they admit was meant.
You do the opposite in that rather than seek ways to interpret others as agreeing or being right, even when there is obvious disagreement, you seek ways to interpret others as disagreeing or being wrong. You use the exact same mechanism of ignoring context and how language is used.
You avoid the worst error of the hippies, which is claiming that others mean both “God is love” and “God is an agent, etc.”
However, reductionists take the history of language and find words have many connotations, the meaning of “moral” and find it has a long history of meaning many different things, many of several things, and that the meaning people accept as associated to the term has to do with the quantity and quality of many aspects, none of which are intrinsic.
You have apparently decided that it’s magic or moral facts are the type of facts that can’t be explained in terms of how the world is is the element absolutely essential to “morality”, when (presumably, as so many random hundreds I’ve encountered accept the reductionist usage) thousands of others do not.
I doubt that were there a room full of hippies totally separated from theism that they would feel any need to obfuscate by saying “God is love”, which is why it is appropriate to barge in and correct the usage, as the usage is confusion designed to create the illusion of agreement.
You are attempting to create an illusion of disagreement about morality, where your disagreement is with how multitudes use “morality”—and that is not the sort of argument that it is possible to win because if that’s how we’re using it, that makes it right when we talk without confusion among each other, and reasonably use it with those whose linguistic sensibilities we don’t know explicitly. The reason why we’re doing so is because it most clearly communicates (out of all the words we could have used), and our stretching the meaning of “morality” to exclude magic is no more unusual than the stretching of the term “write” to include jabbing at keys with the fingers. We would continue to use it so in absence of non-reductionists, whereas hippies would revert to “love” in absence of theism.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally.
Please understand, the disagreement is not about what happens but about what it means to literally be the tooth fairy.
This is a good example, as people saying this are in some ways doing the opposite of what you advocate, but in other ways, they are doing the same thing.
I think people are motivated to say “God is love” out of a desire to avoid being logically compelled to view certain others as wrong (there is a twist, some passive aggressive non-believers say it to claim atheists are wrong when saying theists are wrong). The exact motivation isn’t important, but its presence would provide a countervailing force against the sheer silliness of their confusion (which is worse than yours in an important way) and explain how they could possibly make it.
The mistake being made is to pretend that there are inherently attached meanings to a word, as if those words simply had that meaning, regardless of context of using words in general, and that word in particular, when that context is totally adequate to explain meaning. When it is clear that contemporary theists and all their ancestors were in error, the hippie says “God is love” to pretend there is no disagreement, and that “God” meant love—instead of what was obviously meant, or often weirdly in addition to the contradictory thing that they admit was meant.
You do the opposite in that rather than seek ways to interpret others as agreeing or being right, even when there is obvious disagreement, you seek ways to interpret others as disagreeing or being wrong. You use the exact same mechanism of ignoring context and how language is used.
You avoid the worst error of the hippies, which is claiming that others mean both “God is love” and “God is an agent, etc.”
However, reductionists take the history of language and find words have many connotations, the meaning of “moral” and find it has a long history of meaning many different things, many of several things, and that the meaning people accept as associated to the term has to do with the quantity and quality of many aspects, none of which are intrinsic.
You have apparently decided that it’s magic or moral facts are the type of facts that can’t be explained in terms of how the world is is the element absolutely essential to “morality”, when (presumably, as so many random hundreds I’ve encountered accept the reductionist usage) thousands of others do not.
I doubt that were there a room full of hippies totally separated from theism that they would feel any need to obfuscate by saying “God is love”, which is why it is appropriate to barge in and correct the usage, as the usage is confusion designed to create the illusion of agreement.
You are attempting to create an illusion of disagreement about morality, where your disagreement is with how multitudes use “morality”—and that is not the sort of argument that it is possible to win because if that’s how we’re using it, that makes it right when we talk without confusion among each other, and reasonably use it with those whose linguistic sensibilities we don’t know explicitly. The reason why we’re doing so is because it most clearly communicates (out of all the words we could have used), and our stretching the meaning of “morality” to exclude magic is no more unusual than the stretching of the term “write” to include jabbing at keys with the fingers. We would continue to use it so in absence of non-reductionists, whereas hippies would revert to “love” in absence of theism.
Please understand, the disagreement is not about what happens but about what it means to literally be the tooth fairy.