But how does that change your argument here?

Your argument here is that the Christian God would fit into this category... "why our gods are so human."   To the extent that Dawkins believes that 'belief in gods is driven by more basic human instinct' you'll have no argument out of me or most Christians since that is in fact what we believe, and what we've said.  The only difference is that Dawkins calls it a 'misfire.'  But your argument here was that anthropomorphisms are ipso facto evidence that the gods are the inventions of the people, and bear evidence of that by being very much in the image of their makers.

I won't belabor the obvious point that if we are all evolved to be religious we can hardly be blamed for being religious.  Nor should we doubt that there are hordes of other 'misfires' that we have inherited- there certainly are- except for Dawkins, of course, and the other atheists, the sole repositories of untainted, non-misfiring logic. 

But that's not what this thread was about.  If there is a God as Christians describe him there can be no doubt that he'd have to reveal himself in ways that we could understand him and that we'd understand him in terms we can likewise understand.   Is this not consistent with Dawkins's point about seeing the world as a 'bat' etc?   It should therefore follow that your argument in this thread, quite apart to its application to Christianity, fails, as understanding God or gods in human terms is absolutely what you'd expect and therefore can't be used in the slightest as an argument against the existence of gods or God.  To an ant God shows himself as an ant. To a bat, an bat.  Or, perhaps more accurately, all these creatures would perceive God through their own sensory-lens.

Rather than a 'misfire' its also conforms to the Christian view that humans were made to be happy and whole in God.  With the relationship with God broken, people try to satisfy that... ie, inventing 'gods.'   Rather than Dawkins offering anything innovative, he's actually walked into an argument that I can personally trace back to Augustine.  In other words, to make this argument you must concede the Christian claim that humans have a 'basic instinct to believe in God.'

But back to your arggument.  Insofar as your argument has any weight at all, Christians have noted this for centuries upon centuries, and so have been careful to note that what we say about God must in many respects be analogical and that in the final analysis God is barely like a human at all.   I hope you read my Sayers scans.   So, we might expect that you'd be giving the Christian God more thoughtful consideration than other 'gods' but we don't.  Why not?

Did you read the Sayers scans or not?

"If God is truly unknowable, then we can have no relationship with him at all."

Well, obviously that is true.  But I'm not saying that he is 'truly unknowable.'  I'm merely pointing out what is pretty much obvious to everyone.  It was even obvious to Dawkins, except it didn't occur to him to apply his whole 'how would the bat see the world' issue back to the question of how would we see the world, and in particular God.

I think you've got your burka on a bit too tight, there, friend. 

I understand his argument, but you completely missed the point.  The belief in 'gods' can just as easily be seen as a vindication of the Christian claim that humans were created to have rest in God.  Why the argument is attractive to you requires no explanation.  What requires explanation is why you can't imagine that the same argument makes it just as plausible that the rejection of the belief in gods is actually the 'accidental consequence' of other behavior imperatives.  Perhaps Dawkins is the genetic freak, the misfire, the broken brain.   Perhaps it is a genetic malfunction to deny God rather than to affirm him.   Perhaps its a mental weakness to favor naturalistic explanations over non-naturalistic explanations?  Certainly the possibility is worthy of consideration since even Dawkins must admit (he almost sounds embarrased as he does) that humans the world over are religious and children especially are ready for 'religious explanations.'

How nice to be able to invoke 'misfires' to explain away uncomfortable facts of reality.   It may just be me, but I find it more reasonable, if I'm in the 5% of the world's population standing opposed to the other billions, to consider it as a very live option that it is me that is deviant, and not they.  But that's just me. 

"My point, however, is that Christians have tried to play down anthropomorphism for precisely the reason I bring it up here."

This is where you completely overstate the matter.  Christians don't downplay the anthropomorphisms at all.  We find them fairly uninteresting, to tell you the truth.  Its a mountain out of a mole hill because speaking in anthropomorphisms, metaphors, etc, etc, about anything except for pure math- and pure math still requires symbols- is the fact of our reality.

Your problem is very clearly that you cannot distinguish between gods that really are anthropomorphic and a concept of a God described in anthropomorphic terms but understood to be something of a different sort.

You don't think that particles really have 'spin' do you?   Do you think an electron cloud is really a cloud?  And so on and so forth.  The imagery and the metaphors help us understand something of what we are talking about and are true in that sense, and with a mind on those limitations.

You made the objection that I could not explain the Christian God without using anthropomorphisms but have apparently ignored occasions where I have done just that- or do you think trancendence and immanence are anthropomorphisms, too?

Perhaps you might say that my attempts to explain these things will return us to metaphor, and perchance they will.  But on the other hand I'd like to hear you explain spin without returning to metaphor, etc.

"He cries out for the ineffability defense--i.e. that God doesn't have to make sense."

Well, that isn't the argument at all, or the defense I'm raising.  The Christian God makes a tremendous amount of sense, especially given the parameters of the worldview he is described within.  Its no wonder God makes no sense to you, assuming as you do a worldview with no room for God and then trying to understand God in terms that exclude him a priori.

What about consciousness?  Do you think you could explain human consciousness without resorting to metaphor and anthropomorphisms?  If you can't do it with human consciousness, why do you insist that we should be able to, and MUST, do it with God?

They show up as thumbnail images just a few posts above here.  You should be able to clean them up.

Much of it actually has been paraphrased, but you seem to be operating on the happy illusion that I'm making this stuff up.  I think you would be helped to hear someone other than me say it and I think you would be helped by understanding what Christians really are arguing.

"We ground our perception of the world in experience."

Right.  So it is no surprise at all that we describe our experience in human terms.

"The deist God is certainly less anthropomorphic"

You might think.  But note how they called it a 'watchmaker God.'    It didn't escape anthropomorphisms, it just changed the choice of anthropic images to use.

"Sntjohnny, in your zeal to contradict every point made by an atheist you have missed his point."

Actually, you brought up Dawkins here with the intention of showing how he has adjusted your pov.  My point was that his arguments can just as easily be taken another way and apply directly to this thread here.

"If blind trust in authority is part of the explanation of why god-belief is so ubiquitous,"

That is a different argument for a different thread, but its worth noting that Christianity in no way presents itself as being about 'blind trust.'  Note, Dawkins defined 'faith' in that way- but that doesn't mean that's what we mean.

"Most people like to feel that they are part of the mainstream and that their beliefs fit in."

heh.  No, that's not my point at all.  As I am a creationist, I know pretty well what its like not to be a part of the mainstream and you dont' see me trying to soften that view to fit in, do you?  No, my point was that if one is trying to establish some measure of what is misfire and what is the appropriately firing, I would tend to statistically consider that if 5,000,000,000 people are religious, its not THEY suffering the misfire.

"We simply cannot do without metaphors.  The thing about metaphors, though, is that they always break down at some point, and people can use metaphors that lead them astray."

Sure, but that presumes that you are able to identify when that happens.  Great, I agree.   You seem to think that Christians are unable to understand this.  My point has been to show you that we are well aware of the issue.

A truly anthropomorphic god would be an entity really created in the image of man.  Like Thor.  The God of Christianity is not anthropomorphic in that sense at all.  It is understood that our descriptions of God in anthropomorphic terms portray a limited picture.  You admit that we must use metaphors but slap the Christians around when they do.

"Metaphors are clearly useful in explaining certain behaviors of particles, but they are also inherently misleading.  You want to say the same about your god, but you want to cherrypick what is misleading about the anthropomorphic metaphor."

Just like you want to cherrypick what is misleading about elementary particles.   

You can maintain a strawman until your deathbed for all I care.  It only makes sense that it will be Christians themselves that will be able to best explain where the metaphors or analogies 'break down,' just like it will be the nuclear physicists that are in the best position to explain where their metaphors break down.

That makes rock solid good sense.  So what's your problem?

"I have told you what is useful about the anthropomorphic metaphor--the influential power that a personal relationship provides."

Well, useful from the pov of assuming there isn't a God.     Not so useful if there really is a God and we have to figure out how to talk about him.  Not all of us decide in advance of the question that there is not a God before we evaluate the matter.

Really- have you not considered the situation given the assumption, at least for the sake of argument- that there is a God as Christians explain him?

But according to the Christian concept of God, the sum of everything is found in God.  Man may be made in the image of God but nothing exists apart from him.  Not the tree, not water, not the star, not anything.   This would be 'immanence.'  All of these things bear some relation to God.

Or, once again, do you think that when a Christian refers to a boat as a 'she' that he is daft enough to think it has a vagina?  A boat described in anthropomorphic terms is different than one actually constructed anthropomorphically (how'z that for an image you don't want in your head?    )

"Nothing is explicable independent of metaphor or analogy, because we understand things by relating them to concepts and ideas that are familiar."

Big shocker, then, that we'd understand God in these terms, too.  :rollseyesagain:  However, I predicted that you would be annoyed if I admitted I'd use anthropomorphisms to explain God and asked that if you objected, that you explain 'spin' without them.  Here we see you adamantly affirm that 'nothing is explicable independeant of metaphor or analogy' thus exempting you from describing 'spin' without them but mysteriously allowing you to somehow demand that I do with God.

But even math, you said, requires metaphor.

At anyrate, this is raw assertion.  If it doesn't need a metaphor and its merely a variable, you should find it simple enough to explain it to me without the metaphor.

I'm waiting.

"Orientational metaphors"

Oriented in relation to what?

"Nothing can be explained without metaphors."

And we're back to you agreeing that this is the case.  But utterly unfathomable to me is how you insist that we do so with God and hold it against the Christians if they use them as well.  It might be a problem if Christians weren't aware that they were using metaphors, imagery, anthropomorphisms, etc- alas, as I have been showing... Augustine, Lewis, Sayers, Wright, we are well aware of the issue.

"Hence, we don't need metaphors in order to believe in its reality."

Its reality is not relevant.  I asked you to explain it without metaphors.   In particular, I asked you to explain it without anthropomorphisms.

I strongly suggest the Sayers scans.  If you can't access them on the thread, I'll email them to you if you like.