> Guys this is tic tac toe.
Basically, you're probably right. It's a somewhat entertaining game with words, but not that significant in the end. Especially after one has been exposed to Wittgenstein. I don't remember that he ever even bothered to give ontology his patented treatment, though he did have some interesting things to say about religion. Perhaps the closest he ever got to ontology was his work on the foundation of mathematics, but I'm not very familiar with that.
More relevant to the major concerns of this list is how one gets from the bare existence of a deity, if one even manages to establish that, to beliefs such as "adulteresses should be stoned," or, to take one more salient to this society, "once conceived, an embryo must be carried to birth." To do that, one has to go through a rather tortuous series of propositions, from the existence of God to the infinite wisdom of said person to the claim that certain specific passages in certain writings are directly dictated by said person, all of which, of course, are highly dubious.
In reality, certainly, no one goes through that process of reasoning to establish their religious ethical propositions initially. Instead, most people just accept the folk beliefs of their parents and other grown-ups around them and never bother to question them. Then they are profoundly shocked when they find out the other people don't share their beliefs. To restore their previous peace of mind, they dream up specious chains of inferences which they think will satisfy the demands of reason. Strangely enough, even some highly educated doctors of philosophy occupy their time this way.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ In my religion there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry and doubt. -- Cyril Connoll (The Unquiet Grave)