"If there were no God, there would be no Atheists." -G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Hmm... this one had me thinking for a while because, if you've been keeping up with my philosophy, I have previously mentioned that man does not gain knowledge; he steals it; man does not create something new; he builds on something old. Essentially what I was saying is that there is no originality in human thought because we are incapable of actually creating a new thought. Think of any invention that we've made; they're all a fusion of two or more different old ideas. It is the evolution of thought.
That brings me to the aforementioned quote "If there were no God, there would be no Atheists." Usually, when I read something at some point during the reading I come to a conclusion about what they were trying to say, what their stance was, and especially in politics or philosophy, what they really meant.
Analyze any speech or essay and you'll learn a great deal about why the author is writing and what the world is like when he's writing it. Example: analyze Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and you'll understand a great deal about the 1960's civil rights movement, even if you don't call it that by name.
However, upon reading this quote, I was stuck. This marveled me, modesty aside, I don't frequent the realms of dumbfoundedness. What made this so eye-catching for me? Well, it follows my logic, that man cannot create something that doesn't already exist, and then takes it to a completely opposite conclusion, that there is a god.
Of course, I realized that both of us couldn't be right and likewise both of us cannot be wrong. There either is a god or there isn't, there is no middle ground. Even politicians can't find a gray area for this one. Then again perhaps I'm giving them too little credit. At any rate, one of us has to be wrong. And, therein I saw my problem. Either of us could be true based on the logic we provide. As we can't both be correct, there must be some flaw in our logic.
It got me to thinking about where knowledge came from and I realized just that, it comes from somewhere. That is, we don't have it already; we must discover it. Knowledge comes from our interpretation of nature. Remember that we are all part of nature and that without nature we would cease to exist, purely on a feeding level in the least. Therefore when we talk about whether or not a god exists we have come to two different solutions based on two different chains of interpretation.
Of course, and here's where human error comes in, we don't always go back to nature to find truth. Sometimes we solely look to man and other people's interpretations. So to find out who is right, we must trace back our chains of interpretation back to nature, to the truth. It goes as follows, in my opinion.
I believe that based on the laws of nature, there can be no omnipotent being. That is, to be omnipotent we must be devoid of time and if devoid of time, we cannot do anything because the moment we do there's time again and omnipotence cannot exist again. A paradox, an omnipotent being cannot exist without not existing.
All this serves to do is remind us that there is no middle ground. Either god exists or doesn't. In the opinion of G.K. Chesterton, because Atheists exist, god must. But what if all his logic was just a lie manufactured under the premise of truth, fused with other truths to create fiction. The sum of all parts and the total all of the parts taken individually mean different things remember.
When it comes right down to it, after all the muck is sifted through, he will say that his faith proves that god exists. However, we must ask ourselves where his faith came from. Well, directly, likely family or teachers or perhaps society as a whole. But really, it comes from the Church. And what does the Church want more than anything? Your redeemed soul? No, actually they want your money. That's all, they are the biggest example of a greedy corporate interest in the history of the world.
Of course some say they exist to unveil the secrets of the world. No, this is not true. Science does this job. Religion only seeks to prove the world based on a set of rules that earns them power and money. Greed. Corporatism run amok.
So what have I learned from this quote. There is false logic. The sum of the parts of true logic can be assembled to create false logic and from that false logic stem the evils of society. The creators of Church doctrine realized that to profit themselves they can combine the truths contained in the laws of nature and the truths in the desire of man to understand the truths of the laws of nature. This fusion of ideas leads to the understanding that man can gain profit off man by combining truths to make lies. Knowing this, the founders of the Church pieced truths together like "the universe was created" with truths like "there was a beginning of the universe" and "there was something before there was the beginning of you" and extrapolated these ideas onto the universe errantly to create a doctrine of false truths in order to brainwash man into giving them money because it is the key to salvation.
So which of us is right? Well, false logic is never true. So G.K. Chesterton must be wrong. And if you can either be right or wrong, and he's wrong, then I must be right even if I couldn't prove it, which I can and have.
Hmm... this one had me thinking for a while because, if you've been keeping up with my philosophy, I have previously mentioned that man does not gain knowledge; he steals it; man does not create something new; he builds on something old. Essentially what I was saying is that there is no originality in human thought because we are incapable of actually creating a new thought. Think of any invention that we've made; they're all a fusion of two or more different old ideas. It is the evolution of thought.
That brings me to the aforementioned quote "If there were no God, there would be no Atheists." Usually, when I read something at some point during the reading I come to a conclusion about what they were trying to say, what their stance was, and especially in politics or philosophy, what they really meant.
Analyze any speech or essay and you'll learn a great deal about why the author is writing and what the world is like when he's writing it. Example: analyze Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and you'll understand a great deal about the 1960's civil rights movement, even if you don't call it that by name.
However, upon reading this quote, I was stuck. This marveled me, modesty aside, I don't frequent the realms of dumbfoundedness. What made this so eye-catching for me? Well, it follows my logic, that man cannot create something that doesn't already exist, and then takes it to a completely opposite conclusion, that there is a god.
Of course, I realized that both of us couldn't be right and likewise both of us cannot be wrong. There either is a god or there isn't, there is no middle ground. Even politicians can't find a gray area for this one. Then again perhaps I'm giving them too little credit. At any rate, one of us has to be wrong. And, therein I saw my problem. Either of us could be true based on the logic we provide. As we can't both be correct, there must be some flaw in our logic.
It got me to thinking about where knowledge came from and I realized just that, it comes from somewhere. That is, we don't have it already; we must discover it. Knowledge comes from our interpretation of nature. Remember that we are all part of nature and that without nature we would cease to exist, purely on a feeding level in the least. Therefore when we talk about whether or not a god exists we have come to two different solutions based on two different chains of interpretation.
Of course, and here's where human error comes in, we don't always go back to nature to find truth. Sometimes we solely look to man and other people's interpretations. So to find out who is right, we must trace back our chains of interpretation back to nature, to the truth. It goes as follows, in my opinion.
I believe that based on the laws of nature, there can be no omnipotent being. That is, to be omnipotent we must be devoid of time and if devoid of time, we cannot do anything because the moment we do there's time again and omnipotence cannot exist again. A paradox, an omnipotent being cannot exist without not existing.
All this serves to do is remind us that there is no middle ground. Either god exists or doesn't. In the opinion of G.K. Chesterton, because Atheists exist, god must. But what if all his logic was just a lie manufactured under the premise of truth, fused with other truths to create fiction. The sum of all parts and the total all of the parts taken individually mean different things remember.
When it comes right down to it, after all the muck is sifted through, he will say that his faith proves that god exists. However, we must ask ourselves where his faith came from. Well, directly, likely family or teachers or perhaps society as a whole. But really, it comes from the Church. And what does the Church want more than anything? Your redeemed soul? No, actually they want your money. That's all, they are the biggest example of a greedy corporate interest in the history of the world.
Of course some say they exist to unveil the secrets of the world. No, this is not true. Science does this job. Religion only seeks to prove the world based on a set of rules that earns them power and money. Greed. Corporatism run amok.
So what have I learned from this quote. There is false logic. The sum of the parts of true logic can be assembled to create false logic and from that false logic stem the evils of society. The creators of Church doctrine realized that to profit themselves they can combine the truths contained in the laws of nature and the truths in the desire of man to understand the truths of the laws of nature. This fusion of ideas leads to the understanding that man can gain profit off man by combining truths to make lies. Knowing this, the founders of the Church pieced truths together like "the universe was created" with truths like "there was a beginning of the universe" and "there was something before there was the beginning of you" and extrapolated these ideas onto the universe errantly to create a doctrine of false truths in order to brainwash man into giving them money because it is the key to salvation.
So which of us is right? Well, false logic is never true. So G.K. Chesterton must be wrong. And if you can either be right or wrong, and he's wrong, then I must be right even if I couldn't prove it, which I can and have.
Comments
"I believe that based on the laws of nature, there can be no omnipotent being. That is, to be omnipotent we must be devoid of time and if devoid of time, we cannot do anything because the moment we do there's time again and omnipotence cannot exist again. A paradox, an omnipotent being cannot exist without not existing."
Presumably such a god would have existed before the universe did, if he/she/it did in fact create it. Then therefore they must have existed at some point devoid of time. That is, at some point there was no progression in matter because as there was no universe, there was no matter.
Herein lies a paradox. A god exists before time must then create something, therefore existing within time, and since creation of something involves the movement of some type of internal thinking of a greater being, they must by the definition of time I provided also exist within time and without time. Within time because their thought process exists and therefore evolution exists, that there was a point where the universe wasn't and a point where it was, and therefore time itself always exists. And without time, by the definition of a "creator". A god must have created time, yet they are trapped by its paradox. In short, a god would need time to exist to have been able to do anything and to be a god would have to exist without time to have created it.