This dissertation argues that Christians worship a different God than Muslims. In particular, Christians worship the Trinity, whereas Muslims worship the non-triune God.
Chapter 1 begins the discussion of reference and explains why this topic is important.
Chapter 2 discusses the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. Furthermore, this chapter argues for the position that we can examine a sentence without knowing the utterer's particular intentions.
Chapter 3 argues for the neo-Millian view of reference over descriptivist notions of reference. Furthermore, this chapter argues that ‘Jesus Christ’ has semantic content which asserts a Trinitarian proposition.
Chapter 4 argues that descriptions function semantically like quantifiers. However, descriptions have pragmatic content which rely upon speaker intentions. This is important because ‘there is no God but God...’ is a description. Therefore, the phrase ‘there is no God but God...’ isn't a referring phrase.
Chapter 5 argues that ‘God’ is a general term. More specifically, it appears that Christians who accept the Nicene Creed are committed to the view that ‘God’ isn't a proper name. If God were a proper name, then Modalism becomes a more tenable view.
Chapter 6 analyzes the statements ‘Jesus is Lord’ and ‘there is no God but God, and Mohammed is his messenger.’ The purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the referent of ‘God’ in the sentence ‘I worship God’ is the same for Christians and Muslims or different. Since Muslims believe in the non-triune God and Christians believe in the Triune-God, I argue that it's uncharitable to attribute worship of the Trinity to Muslims on the basis of the law of noncontradiction. I conclude that Christians and Muslims worship different objects.
Chapter 7 argues that Muslims worship a fictional object. I argue in this chapter that fictional objects are abstract objects. Furthermore, abstract objects exist in some real sense.
Chapter 8 is the conclusion and a summary is provided of the argument made in my dissertation.
