[joshuamcginnis]

> Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

This is a self-defeating statement. The statement itself is a claim about God. If it is true, then it contradicts itself because it asserts a truth about God (namely, that no truths can be defended about Him). This undermines its own premise.

[tines]

No, it's a second-order statement, a statement about first-order statements. It's not subject to itself.

[joshuamcginnis]

If it's not subject to itself, then it's claiming an exception to its own rule, which makes it self-defeating. A universal claim about truth can't exempt itself without contradiction.

[tines]

A statement about statements about X is not a statement about X and therefore doesn’t apply to itself.

[handfuloflight]

The distinction between "statements about X" and "statements about statements about X" doesn't resolve the contradiction here, because the original claim makes a universal assertion about all possible true statements about God. By its own terms, it must encompass both:

1. First-order statements about God

2. Second-order statements about statements about God

3. All higher-order statements as well

Put differently: The claim "Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense" is asserting that there exists no level at which defensive truth claims about God are valid. But this assertion itself constitutes a defensive truth claim about God—whether at first, second, or any other order.

The attempt to escape via orders of statements fails because the original statement's scope explicitly covers all truth claims regarding God, regardless of their logical level. If it didn't cover all levels, then it would no longer be claiming that "nothing true can be said"—it would instead be claiming "some things true can be said, just not first-order things," which is a fundamentally different claim than the original.

So by attempting to exempt itself based on being "meta-level," the statement has already conceded that some true things can be said about God from a posture of defense (namely, meta-level things)—which directly contradicts its own absolute claim that nothing true can be said.

This is why universal claims about the impossibility of certain types of statements are often self-defeating—they cannot consistently exempt themselves from their own scope without undermining their universality.

[tines]

> But this assertion itself constitutes a defensive truth claim about God

You seem to be asserting this without any proof, or at least none that I can follow. The assertion itself is a "defensive truth" about "truths about God," not about "God." I'm not sure how you are justifying considering "truth about [truth about [truth about [... X]]]" as the same thing as "statement about X".

Is it possible that you're considering the properties of the truths about X to be properties of X as well? I don't think this is justified. Properties of truths about X come from properties of X. For example, statements about the color of X are not statements about X itself, despite coming from properties of X. E.g. color(X) = color(Y) -/> X = Y.

Recursion doesn't complicate the case here. The original statement made assertions about "statements about God", not about God. For example, the statement "All statements about God are false" is not paradoxical, it is simply false (if we accept the law of the excluded middle). A statement like "Everything I've said about God is false" could very well be true, it's not paradoxical, despite also being part of the set "Everything I've said;" it's just not "about God."

[tines]

Thinking about your argument a little more, it seems like our disagreement comes from your belief that "about X" is 'infectious' to all higher order statements, whereas I don't believe this is the case. The best way I can think to argue my point right now is from examples.

Suppose we had many books about movies on one hand, each book containing movie reviews or something, and then we have one book about [books about movies] on the other hand, call it B. The book B, which is about [books about movies], simply contains the number of words that each book about movies has written in it. Is B "about movies"? I would argue that it is not, it contains nothing about movies in it at all, just numbers describing other books. I can say "all books about movies are wrong" without meaning to refer to B, as B is not wrong (as long as the word-counting is correct).

Would you argue that B is "about movies"?

[tines]

In addition to my sibling comment (which I can't edit any more), I noticed earlier that you said

> A universal claim about truth can't exempt itself without contradiction.

But the claim in question is not a universal claim about truth; it’s a claim about truths about God.