What do you mean god exist?

One of the episodes of the Atheist Experience that I enjoy most is episode #572.

At first, I thought of trying to transcribe the episode. I failed miserably. And I think people who able to transcribe stuff are amazingly insane (in an admirable way, of course). Way too difficult for me.

Here's the episode:

And here's a really short 5 minutes that I transcribed. Pathetic, I know. It spans 23:53 – 28:56.

Tracie Harris:
Here he is again trying to describe it (God):

"This is the awesome glory of God, I don’t have a clue as to what he is – none whatsoever! This is what makes him so magnificent – because there is nothing in this world that could explain or describe or imagine what his glory is like. We only say 'God' and 'He' because it is the best way for us to identify what we are talking about. But that doesn’t describe what He is like or what He is made of or anything. A 'thing', we can describe. 'God' we cannot."

And let me tell you that the last part of that paragraph is something that most atheists would give a hearty amen to because it does seem like "a thing you can describe but god you cannot" and it also seems like "we don’t know who or what" or, you know, "what we are talking about" or anything about it. So if this is the description that I’m getting back and I’m trying to have a conversation with someone about "God exist" and I can’t even get past "God". I don’t know how to have a conversation.

Matt Dillahunty:
Yea, and... and I... you know, while I wouldn’t have phrase it this way and certainly wouldn’t have start with "this is the awesome glory of God." The idea that you’re saying, I believe in this thing that I can’t possibly understand, I can’t comprehend, I can’t even imagine, I can’t describe, I can’t know anything about. Why would anybody believe in that?

Tracie: Well… What is that?
Matt: What is it that you’re believing in
Tracie: Right.

Matt: How can you say that I can’t comprehend it but I believe it
Tracie: Right.

Matt: I can’t understand it. I can’t describe it. But I believe it.
Tracie:
Right. I mean I don’t know what it is I am supposed to be understanding that you believe when this is the response. Erm. I have no idea what, I mean, if you can’t make sense of it and you can’t understand it. How in the world you can possibly expect to communicate that to someone else?

Matt:
And what does it say for example if we extend it into what they’re normally talking about where this is a god that created you. And he specifically created you in a manner you’re unable to comprehend, understand, identify and describe or in any way know anything about him.

Now, I realize that not all the believers necessarily fall into this category but if you’re in that category, if you can’t, I mean, if you don’t even know what this thing is and you don’t understand, yet you’re believing it and then eventually you get the justification that I believe it because, you know, he made me, he made everything, that type of thing. Well… erm.. how do you know that, how you know there is any 'there' there? I mean it’s just madness.

Tracie:
Well, basically, it’s the description of nothing. I mean it’s a description of nothing. And then I supposed to talk about it like it’s something. And I don’t know how to do that. And I think that’s what I’m trying to say today is... that there is a definitional divide, I think, between, like, apologists and atheists that… there is no wonder that communication doesn’t happen or it’s so difficult.

When a person that is offering that sort of description for god does not understand the non-information they are providing. They are providing me a whole bunch of words and saying nothing. They’re describing nothing. They have given zero information in that paragraph. They’ve just spent an entire paragraph explaining to me why they can’t explain to me god and yet they want to dialogue with me about god.

Well if I want to have a conversation with someone about god, they have got to be able to tell me what they’re talking about. If you can’t tell me what you’re talking about, there cannot be a conversation. So I would say before you approach somebody to discuss your god, you need to sit and do some reflection and try figure out what you mean by that word, specifically what you mean.

And I also don’t mean what do you think what god does. I mean what do you mean god is. Because what you think god does is really irrelevant until there is, shown to be a god that is. Erm, you can tell me all day long, god creates worlds, god wrote the bible, god… and I cannot confirm any of it because I have no god to go to and examine and say you know what, that’s correct this god did write the bible.

Erm, that’s the other problem that we have with this particular person was the idea that the evidence that was being put forward on behalf of his god’s existence all assume god existed. So you would have the bible put forward and it’s like god created the bible and so here’s the bible and this is evidence for god. But if there is no god then god didn’t created the book so I can’t, you can’t come to me when we’re trying to determine or not whether there is a god and say you’ve got this book that is the product of that god and you want to enter that into evidence for your god. And I should accept it as evidence because it was created by your god. But, well, if the point of contention is whether or not god exist, of course I’m not going to accept that the book was created by god. We need to establish first that there is a god that can create the book. Then we can talk about whether or not he did create the book.