Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:07:05 -0700
From: Steve Callihan <callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com>
Subject: Re: god and grammar


At 11:01 AM 7/29/98 EST, you wrote:
>
>>
>>Another aspect of the grammar issue is the impossibility of (not)
>>saying/thinking certain notions in (Western) languages.  Take the phrase,
>>"God is dead. . ."   & consider the verb,  "sein" / "to be..." for
example.  Can
>>this be said without constructing a(nother) metaphysics?
>> 
>>					Ingrid
>
>
>i'm not sure what "constructing a(nother) metaphysics"
>means ???
>
>but i think that Steven would say that "God is dead" is a 
>meaningless statement and i wouldn't.
>
>Steve?
>
>henry

No, it isn't meaningless. I think what Ingrid was getting at is the role of
the pesky little "is" that is the glue of our discourse. To say, in other
words, that God _is_ dead implies that God is still a something rather than
a nothing.  Even asserting that God does not exist is to concede that God
is something conceibable. Although, we could also assert that talking
green-purple rabbits also do not exist with the same consequence -- we
concede that talking green-purple rabbits are at least conceivable, and
thus cannot be absolutely eliminated from the possible (they may exist in a
cartoon, for instance, or in our imagination, or, maybe, just maybe, one
might come hopping down the road some day).

As an experiment, remove the word "is" and any of its other tenses (be,
being, etc.) from your discource. See if you are capable of uttering even
the simplest notion. Mind you, this includes any implication of "is," such
as pointing at something, for instance, which is the same thing as saying
"it is it," if you will. Other verbal forms are themselves all implicative
of "is" -- "He runs" is just another way of saying "He is running," for
instance.

Best,

Steve




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