I remember my first few years as a grad student, a professor reassuring my friend and I that no physicist ever gained true expertise in the topics by taking the classes. We'd learn the subject matter, but the real mastery would come when we had to teach it. Since about January my wife and I have been teaching a Sunday school class on logic and critical thinking, and even though the subject matter is pretty basic, I'm finding more insights into the topic that I just hadn't noticed before.
One of these is with the Law of Identity, which is our next topic. Stated, the Law of Identity sounds really dumb: "A thing is itself, and not anything else." This apple is this apple, and not a banana. This apple is this apple, and not that apple. It applies to claims, as well. The claim that the sky is blue, is the claim that the sky is blue, and not some other color. It's the claim that the sky is blue, and not that my car is blue. And if we disagree on what is meant by "the sky" (do we mean the night sky?) or "blue" (my wife says this color is "blue"), the language disagreement doesn't make the claim itself ambiguous or unknowable. My claim still means what it means.
I was thinking recently how this applies to God.
What do we mean when we say the word, "God"?
