We like to think there is a natural relationship between the words we use and the world around us, and superficially there is when words are representative of specific persons, places, and things with which we have intimate contact (e.g., my face, my house, my child, my car).

Beyond this knowing interaction, most representational words are abstract and generic (e.g., tree, dog, car, lake) while non-representational words are nothing more than mental proxies for multi-worded definitions (e.g., God, Heaven, Hell, Sin, Soul, Afterlife, Truth, Evil, Fact). Non-representational words have no references or agents in the ‘real world’ so can only derive their meaning by calling upon other words, a completely made-up and arbitrary process, and wholly subjective.

While I can point to a “tree” in the real world and I can point to a ” rock” in the real world, or a dog, or a fire, or an atom in an electron microscope, the only place I’m able to point to “God” or “Heaven” or the “Soul” are…where? Only as words in books, because ideas like God or Heaven or Soul exist by definition alone and are not based on anything measurable or falsifiable. They rely on subsets of other abstract definitions in order to be ‘known’ and cannot be known outside these definitions.

Religious ideas, supernatural ideas, mystical and occult ideas exist by way of definition alone and vanish in the absence of language. Trees and rivers and rocks don’t disappear in silence, but gods and ghosts and demons do (only to re-appear again whenever mouths or books are opened) and so much more than these. Even history, literature, philosophy, science, and politics will all melt away when language is removed.

Where is Plato outside the book? Where is Jesus? Muhammad? Postmodernism? Critical theory? Culture needs language to operate, so what does this ‘mean’ about culture if language is artificial? What does this ‘mean’ about us and the way we live our lives (or is it the other way around)?

When a person claims that ‘God is all-powerful or ‘God is all-knowing’ or ‘Heaven or Hell await us when we die’, was this information derived from direct interaction with the physical world or from language alone? If I remove language I can still point to my face, I can still point to a tree, but I am unable to point to God or even the the terms used to define God’s attributes (e.g., Omniscient, Omnipotent). In other words, God is defined by terms that exist themselves only by way of definition, as mental constructs, and not as anything mensurable in the real world. God, therefore, is only a word and literally ‘defined’ into existence. Where can God be found outside of language (or Heaven, or Hell, or Angels, or the Soul, or Life-After-Death)?

Saying ‘God is all-knowing’ is as meaningful, therefore, as saying ‘Galfaloon is Omni-Spritely’ since in both cases the subject and object rely on interior definitions alone to be known (i.e., neither ‘God’ nor ‘all-knowing’ or ‘Galfaloon’ nor ‘Omni-Spritely’ are found anywhere outside of abstract language). What an ingenious trap! Using subsets of artificial terms to argue the character of other artificial terms (akin, perhaps, to molding an idol out of clay and giving it made-up attributes then calling the idol a representation of God and its attributes God’s attributes).

This is the counterfeit nature of language, since all subjects and objects rely on artificial subsets for definition.

Language, therefore, is an imaginary patterning system we use to point to-

and-from ourselves, each other, other things in the universe, and things that exist only in the mind as subsets of language. It makes no difference whether we’re talking/writing about Creationism (”Intelligent Design”) or Evolution (”Darwinism”), since the language involved in both cases is part of the same imaginary patterning system. The arguments used to defend Creationism and the arguments used to defend Evolution both consist of words that do not exist in the real world. Words are not natural. Words are symbolic components used in the imaginary patterning system and symbolic components do not exist . Words are not real.

The important issue here isn’t whether someone is arguing from a religious point-of-view or a scientific point-of-view, a liberal point-a-view or a conservative point-a-view, a Christian point-of-view or an atheist point-of-view, but that irrespective of the words chosen the world simply exists, untouched and unchanged by the discussion.

A hundred billion words exchanged will never make a scientific theory into physical reality nor will it produce a spirit, a miracle, an angel, or life-after-death. The world, the universe, all the various things that make up the universe simply are, while language is an imaginary patterning system we lay over things to interpret them and invest them with meaning (although ‘meaning’ is purely conceptual and does not exist in the real world).

When we imagine the world to be one way or the other—e.g., whether natural or supernatural—it’s as if we are looking through language and symbols to see the world, then mistake our language and symbols to be the world. Language and symbols are not the world. The world precedes all language and symbols. The world simply is.

You make some very interesting points here. I think the problem lies with the weakness of language.  Only through faith can language take on new deeper meanings that can’t be explained to or understood by non-believers.