Something has a location, everything does not
When you "specify"or "classify", when you "define" or "desrcimminate" or "measure" you are effectively "capturing" something within a set of boundaries or parameters which differ it from the background. By "relative contrast" you denote how a thing is, how it behaves etc in comparison to everything else.
Things occur at a place and a time and in a certain way. But "everything" happens everywhere, all the time, and in every way. So essentially the term "everything" is meaningless. Undefinable. Un-appreciable at least because what use is it to us to define something with no specified parameters at all and also something we could never possibly experience?
Yet somehow I have defined "everything". Well I've given at least a basic set of parameters: all times, all places, all manifestations of information. But even these terms are inconceivable. I cannot imagine every place. I cannot imagine every time. Yet I can refer to it casually with a level of confidence because I have experienced "some time" of which there must be more. And "some places" if which there must be more.
How do we do this? How do we talk about the universe as a whole? How do we use the sum of everything in arguments when we dont even know/ could never know what it is? Whenever we use the term "universe" we have noun-ified it. Objectified it. But because we are part of the universe and cannot observe or appreciate it in its entirety because we have to be located spatially and temporally (bias of observation/perspective), as well as the fact that no information resides outside of the system to observe it in entirety.... any reference to "universe" is always wrong. Some basic poorly conceived notion of endless expanse. We are like atoms discussing the planet we are part of. Negligible but no less an occupant.
How can that which is unappreciable be definable?
Things occur at a place and a time and in a certain way. But "everything" happens everywhere, all the time, and in every way. So essentially the term "everything" is meaningless. Undefinable. Un-appreciable at least because what use is it to us to define something with no specified parameters at all and also something we could never possibly experience?
Yet somehow I have defined "everything". Well I've given at least a basic set of parameters: all times, all places, all manifestations of information. But even these terms are inconceivable. I cannot imagine every place. I cannot imagine every time. Yet I can refer to it casually with a level of confidence because I have experienced "some time" of which there must be more. And "some places" if which there must be more.
How do we do this? How do we talk about the universe as a whole? How do we use the sum of everything in arguments when we dont even know/ could never know what it is? Whenever we use the term "universe" we have noun-ified it. Objectified it. But because we are part of the universe and cannot observe or appreciate it in its entirety because we have to be located spatially and temporally (bias of observation/perspective), as well as the fact that no information resides outside of the system to observe it in entirety.... any reference to "universe" is always wrong. Some basic poorly conceived notion of endless expanse. We are like atoms discussing the planet we are part of. Negligible but no less an occupant.
How can that which is unappreciable be definable?
Comments (1)
Our minds naturally try to conceive of God as a thing, and then we proceed to try to define that thing. We argue endlessly over the definition of this "thing".
Such arguments will inevitably be pointless if God is not a thing, but instead the everything. As you point out, definitions, by their very nature, are not applicable to everything. And so even the word God becomes suspect, because as a noun it implies a thing, some phenomena separate from other phenomena.
And so we are left with nothing. Which as it turns out, just happens to be the most accurate description of everything.