So are we defining things by consensus, so that all that is required is that people agree on something to make it "true"?

You're right that God cannot be described in this manner.

But you see that your example is not describing a characteristic of "red" but instead of characteristic of the dye that exhibits "red." These are different types of claims.

Eddi seems to care. Perhaps you do. I can't quite tell.

Nonsense, red is merely a name given to an observed phenomena and it works perfectly fine in my example. That you happen to claim red can only be used about one phenomena and then go around claiming the way everybody else uses it is wrong fails completely flat on its face considering the context of your argument.

Regardless you failed to respond to the actual fact that red IS a phenomena and can be used to make predictions whereas "god" can not, and you'll probably proceed with your customery rhetorical stalling tactics for 20 posts to make it go away.

Frankly for someone who seems to have troubles accepting the existence of his bedroom door (if we are to accept your usual argumentation as something you apply to yourself), your belief in god never stops to amaze me.

It must be surprising to you, then, to find that spiritual conversations also go nowhere when both of the conversants are spiritual, or when they are honestly seeking spirituality!

Less convenient, to be sure, but shocking.

Wat, Pletho/Splenda territory again? Defining things has little to do with things being true. It's completely irrelevant how you define "red", what is relevant is that once you choose a definition that definition is objectively quantifiable and thus statements of true/false regarding the color red are easily quantifiable. And yes, surprise surprise, language works by consensus.

Let's go back and take a look at the definition of red as a particular wavelength of light, as this is the proposed definition. You claimed that

Putting this in the context of red, the claim is that because I observe this particular wavelength of light, then my white t-shirts will begin to exhibit this particular wavelength of light. This claim has nothing to do with the color red. The predictive power of this statement depends on ...

* The characteristics of the dye that is generating (well, reflecting) the color red
* The characteristics of the washing mechanism (hot water is more likely to bleed the dye than cold water)
* The characteristics of the detergent used (if any)

It's entirely possible for a red shirt (which isn't "pure" red) to leak some of the supporting colors without leaking the primary colors if the conditions are right.

Red is a phenomenon and "God" is not a phenomenon. I agree with you here. We've had this discussion about phenomenological understanding (I think the term used then was "mechanistic" understanding). You cannot define a "God mechanism" any more than you can define an "Aaron W." mechanism. You can see the results of the actions I take, but you cannot take those results and reconstruct me.

You will have to explain the particular distortion of an argument I made for that to be a sensible statement. The closest thing I can recall to anything like this is a conversation where I was asserting the general reliability of the senses to determine information around us. If I see a wall, I'm not going to walk into it because I trust my senses to accurately tell me there's a wall there.

Nope, you are conflating having established the cause of a characteristic with the characteristic - so you are doing an very similar error to what you are accusing me of.

Strange that you agree with the absolute opposite of what I said. God is a clearly a phenomena in the way this word is commonly used in philosophy.

We haven't had this discussion and the only understanding I can have of you (or anything else) is a phenomenological understanding, so if you ever held an argument contrary to that you are clearly wrong.

Interesting. Thanks for that. And just to be clear, I am an atheist, but was raised Catholic, and for family reasons I continue to attend mass fairly often, so I referred to Catholic positions on morality. And in your last paragraph, I think you had it right the first time.