greatest intellectual adventure since Father introduced me to Professor Thomas Henry
Huxley.
Professor Huxley introduced me to the fact that theology is a study with no answers
because it has no subject matter.
No subject matter? That’s right; no subject matter whatever – just coloured water
with artificial sweetening. `Theo-‘ = `God’ and `-logy’ = word(s), i.e., any word
ending in `-ology’ means `talk about’ or ‘discussion of’ or ‘words concerning’ or
`study of’ a subject named in the first part of the word, whether it is ‘hippology’,
or ‘astrology’, or `proctology’, or `eschatology’, or `scatology’, or something
else. But to discuss any subject, it is first necessary to agree on what it is you
are discussing. ‘Hippology’ presents no problem; everybody has seen a horse.
‘Proctology’ – everybody has seen an arsehole… or, if you have been so carefully
brought up that you’ve never seen one, go down to your city hall; you will find the
place full of them. But the subject tagged by the spell-symbol `theology’ is a horse
of another colour.
`God’, or `god’, or ‘gods’ – have you ever seen ‘God’? If so, where and when, how
tall was She and what did She weigh? What was Her skin colour? Did She have a belly
button and, if so, why? Did She have breasts? For what purpose? How about organs of
reproduction and of excretion – did She or didn’t She?
(If you think I am making fun of the idea of a God fashioned in Man’s image or vice
versa, you have much to on.)
I will agree that the notion of an anthropomorphic God went out of fashion some time
ago with most professional godsmen… but that doesn’t get us any nearer to defining
the English spell-symbol `God’. Let’s consult fundamentalist preachers… because
Episcopalians won’t even let God into His sanctuary unless He shines His shoes and
trims that awful beard… and Unitarians won’t let Him in at all.
So let’s listen to fundamentalists: `God is the Creator. He Created the World. The
existence of the World proves that it was created; therefore there is a Creator.
That Creator we call “God”. Let us all bow down and worship Him, for He is almighty
and His works proclaim His might.’
Will someone please page Dr S. I. Hayakawa? Or, if he is busy, any student who
received a B-plus or better in Logic 101 ? I’m looking for someone able to discuss
the fallacy of circular reasoning and also the concatenative process by which
abstract words can be logically defined by building on concrete words. What is a
`concrete’ word? It is a spell-symbol used to tag something you can point to and
thereby agree on, e.g. `cat’, ‘sailboat’, `ice-skating’ – agree with such certainty
that when you say ‘sailboat’ there is no chance whatever that I will think you mean
a furry quadruped with retractile claws.
With the spell-symbol `God’ there is no way to achieve such agreement because there
is nothing to point to. Circular reasoning can’t get you out of this dilemma.
Pointing to something (the physical world) and asserting that it has to have a
Creator and this Creator necessarily has such-and-such attributes proves nothing
save that you have made certain assertions without proof. You Nave pointed at a
physical thing, the physical world; you have asserted that this physical thing has
to have a `Creator’. (Who told you that? What’s His mailing address? Who told Him?)
But to assert that something physical was created out of nothing – not even empty
space – by a Thingamajig you can’t point to is not to make a philosophical statement
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or any sort of statement, it is mere noise, amphigory, sound and fury signifying
nothing
Jesuits take fourteen years to learn to talk that sort of nonsense. Southern
fundamentalist preachers learn to talk it in much shorter time. Either way, it’s
nonsense.
Pardon me. Attempts to define `God’ cause one to break out in hives.
Unlike theology, `metaphysics’ does have a subject, the physical world, the world
that you can feel, taste, and see, the world of potholes and beautiful men and