“没有“另一个意思。Another meaning for "mei2you3"?

[webmagnets]

I came across the following sentence:

虽然我们没有人会故意判断上帝，却可能会无意中犯了这个毛病，因为我们是不完美的。

What does 没有 mean in this context?

If it means the same as 不是, then why did the author not simply choose to say that instead?

[abcdefg]

没有人 = méi​yǒu​rén​ = nobody; no one

[jiangping]

It just has the usual meaning here, and it could be translated as "There are none of us who...".

As for the structure in the original Chinese, I think you could regard 我們 as the topic, so it's a bit like saying "As for us, there are none [of us] who...".

[edelweis]

My understanding of the 我们没有人会故意判断上帝 part is that it is an existential sentence of the type

"place (without preposition) + (没)有 + (optional number and classifier) + thing or person".

我们 ("among us") is the place, and 人会故意判断上帝 is the thing or person which is located (or not) at that place.

In this type of sentence, 有/没有 could be replaced with 是/不是 in some cases (but I don't know the exact rule... only I feel that 有/没有 is used much more often than 是/不是).

[ma3zi1]

虽然我们没有人会故意判断上帝，却可能会无意中犯了这个毛病，因为我们是不完美的。

"Although there is no one among us who would deliberately judge God, nevertheless its possible that someone would unintentionally make this mistake; because we are imperfect."

没有 has the normal meaning here (i.e. "to not have/there is not"), however your confusion may lie in the idea that 有 is also an existence ("to be") verb in Chinese.

In answer to your question, the reason the author did not say "虽然我们不是故意判断上帝的人..." is because 是 is an existence verb with only the meaning of equivalency. For example: "This is a table", "This = table", "這是一張桌子". So the sentence with 不是 would mean:

"Although we are not people who would deliberately judge God..."

This sentence has a slightly different meaning than the first, and it requires changing the sentence a bit to get the desired effect.

If you want to use the other meaning of the English existence verb, you would say: "There is a table here", "在這裡有一張桌子".

To do a one-for-one replacement with 不是, you would end up with:

"虽然我们不是人会故意判断上帝..."

This means: "Although we are not people able to deliberately judge God..."

That's okay grammar in English, but not okay in Chinese. A Chinese reader would likely see:

"Although we are not people. Able to deliberately judge God..."

To a Chinese reader, that would be confusing.