THE DEATH OF THE AUSTRALIAN PHILOSOPHER JIM BAKER

'There are only facts, i.e., occurrences in space and time.'

- John Anderson, 'Empiricism,' Australasian Journal of Psychology
and Philosophy, December 1927, p 14.

On March 3, 2017, which just happened to be my 62nd birthday, an Australian philosopher and university lecturer of some renown passed away at the age of 94. Sadly, his death appears to have gone completely unnoticed in the mainstream media, apart from a death notice placed in The Sydney Morning Herald by his family. Of course, that was to be expected because the mass media caters for the tastes and interests of the hoi polloi, so the media takes the view that talking about philosophy and academics is a complete waste of time except perhaps when some eccentric university lecturer says or do something grossly politically incorrect or otherwise sensationalistic.

The man of whom I speak is Jim Baker, pictured. Allan James Baker was his full name. He was born on July 22, 1922 and he studied philosophy under the Scottish-born Australian philosopher John Anderson who was arguably Australia’s most original thinker and whose philosophy has had a very important influence in my own life.

Jim obtained a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree with double firsts in Philosophy and History from the University of Sydney and, awarded the Wentworth Travelling Fellowship, which is designed to assist graduates of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney to undertake research work in Europe, Jim went on to obtain the intellectually demanding two-year taught graduate degree Bachelor of Philosophy (BPhil) in Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford. 

In the 1950s he lectured in philosophy, and was a colleague of Professor Anderson’s, at the University of Sydney. He also taught at Macquarie University in metropolitan Sydney as well as in Scotland, New Zealand and the United States of America. For many years he was a prominent member of the University of Sydney’s Libertarian Society (the 'Sydney Libertarians') and the Sydney Push. In fact, Jim was a founding Libertarian. The Libertarians were the philosophic core of what became known as the Sydney Push. While a student at the University of Sydney, he had been an active member of two famous Andersonian societies of the era, namely, the Sydney University Freethought Society and the Sydney University Literary Society.

Jim is perhaps most famous – and rightly so – for having written two scholarly books on the realist philosophy of John Anderson, namely, Anderson’s Social Philosophy (Angus & Robertson, 1979) and Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson (Cambridge University Press, 1986). In his lifetime John Anderson never actually fully systematized his philosophy in book form. At the time of his death he was working on the index for a collection of his philosophical essays, the posthumously published Studies in Empirical Philosophy (Angus and Robertson, 1962). It was Jim Baker who subsequently systematized Anderson’s philosophy and he deserves enormous credit for that achievement. 

Jim acknowledged that there were 'difficulties' with certain aspects of Anderson's philosophy and he openly admitted to having 'criticisms here and there' with Anderson's presentation of realism. I do, too. I now think there are some fundamental weaknesses with Anderson's philosophy that prevent it from being fully coherent and internally consistent as a systematic realism (eg a certain undisclosed idealism, problems with Anderson's treatment of negative propositions, the essential unspeakability of the categories, etc). However, that is not important for present purposes. Jim always ackowledged the greatness of Anderson, and the depth of his thinking, without ever treating him as if he were a God ('the Master') and his teaching some sort of sacred doctrine. In short, Jim was very much his own man and not a sycophantic follower of his former teacher.

In his two books on Anderson’s philosophy, especially Australian Realism, Jim sought to demonstrate that the Australian (or Sydney) realism of Professor Anderson is a systematic and coherent philosophical position. Jim also penned the article on Anderson in the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed E Craig (Routledge, 1999), vol 1. He was also the author of Social Pluralism: A Realistic Analysis (A J Baker/Fast Books, 1997) as well as many articles on philosophy and social theory appearing in journals such as the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Philosophical Magazine, Dialogue, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Australian Quarterly, Arna, Heraclitus (being his own private circulation journal and newsletter) and Broadsheet.

I met Jim several times at the Sydney Realist Group where he would occasionally speak, as have I once or twice. Jim also penned articles for the group’s journal The Sydney Realist, as have I. I remember once asking Jim if he would autograph my copy of his book Australian Realism. He looked at the book for some time, then looked at me rather oddly, before finally saying, ‘Where do you want me to sign it?’ (I think he must have been accustomed to more difficult problems.) I said, ‘Anywhere.’ He thought for a moment, and then signed the book at the very top of the inside front cover. So much for literalism and realism. No, Jim was a giant of a man and a deep thinker and he deserved to be much better remembered than he was when he left us a week ago. His funeral was held at Sydney’s Northern Suburbs Crematorium on March 9, 2017.

Opposite the title-page of Jim’s book Australian Realism there stand two epigraphs. Both are from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus or, more precisely, from the Scottish classicist John Burnet’s translation of Heraclitus’s Fragments in his book Early Greek Philosophy. The first of the epigraphs is this:

‘The world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling and measures going out.’ 

John Anderson loved and often quoted those words. Jim Baker must have liked them, too. So do I.

Thank you, Jim.


Note. Since writing this post, a well-written obituary for Jim Baker, penned by the Australian businessman and former trade union official Dr Michael Easson AM, who is also a member of the Sydney Realists, has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald. IEJ. March 25, 2017.

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THE EXISTENTIAL ANGST OF OUR BEING BOTH OBSERVER AND OBSERVED

The Scottish-born Australia philosopher John Anderson [pictured left], whose Australian realism (aka Sydney realism) has greatly impacted on my overall philosophy and thinking, taught that a single logic applies to all things and how they are related, and that there are three---yes, three---‘entities’ to any relation such as seeing, having, knowing, etc, namely, the -er, the -ed, and the -ing. Let me explain. First, there is the person who sees, has or knows. Secondly, there is the thing seen, had or known. Thirdly, and most importantly, there is the act of seeing, having or knowing. 

Now, here is the really important part ... nothing, absolutely nothing, is constituted either wholly or partly by, or is dependent upon, nor can it be defined or explained by reference to, the relation(s) it has to other things. For that reason the Biblical statement ‘God is love’ [cf 1 Jn 4:8] is logically untenable as a definition of God. Thus, Anderson firmly repudiated the so-called ‘doctrine of intrinsic relations’ (or fallacy of constitutive relations), which treats relations as if they were terms, and which says that everything is intrinsically related to everything else or, at the very least, is constituted by its relations to everything else.

So, when it comes to the practice of mindfulness, we see that it is a relation involving the following three entities:

* first, the person who is mindfully aware of what is occurring from moment to moment,

* second, the thing or things of which the person is mindfully aware from one moment to the next, each such thing being an occurrence in space and time, and

* third, the act, or rather process, of being mindfully aware from one moment to the next, which includes the ever-so-important acts of mindfully remembering what is present, mindfully remembering from moment to moment to stay present in the action of the present moment from moment to moment, and mindfully remembering in the present moment what has already happened.

Three separate and distinct things---each one of which is a fact---and none of which is constituted by its relations to any of the others nor dependent on any of the others. Such is the nature of reality, according to John Anderson, and such is the nature of the practice of mindfulness which is simply the practice of being fully present in the present moment from one moment to the next.

Well, that much at least is fine---not that I expect all people to agree with that way of looking at reality---but I have come to see that, when it comes to cognitive processes, the situation is even more complicated than what I have set out above. You see, there is the person who observes, as well as the other two entities referred to above, but there is invariably something else as well, namely, the presence of a purported entity sometimes referred to as the ‘observing self’ that is regularly at work in our mind. Not only do we observe but we are aware of a ‘self’ in us that is busily … yes, observing. But there’s more. We are self-conscious beings, and not only is there this ‘observing self’ in our mind---along with many other mind-invented selves---there is also an ‘observed self,’ in that the observing self (a subject) is able to ‘split,’ so to speak, and become an ‘observed self’ (an object). So, we have the ‘I’ subject and the ‘I’ object. The latter is arguably a self-knowing ‘I’ subject, but there is considerable disputation among philosophers and psychologists about that matter. As I see it, the whole thing is a matter of consciousness---a constant stream of consciousness or thought (bhavanga-sota, in Buddhism). All these ‘selves’ are generated by the process of thinking itself. They are nothing but thoughts that ‘harden,’ so to speak,’ into selves of various kinds. No one of these selves is more real or permanent than any others. In fact, none of them is the real ‘I.’

Of course, as I’ve pointed out on so many occasions, this ‘observing self,’ along with all other such selves (eg ‘transcendental self,’ ‘immanent self,’ ‘analytical self,’ ‘judging self,’ etc), has no separate, discrete, or independent existence apart from the person each one of us is. In that sense the ‘observing self’ is false and illusory. The problem is that most of us are acutely aware of its presence and ongoing activities in our mind.

The French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre [pictured right] wrote about another interesting phenomenon, and it is this. The very presence, and even the potential presence, of other people tends to result in our seeing ourselves (that is, the actual persons that we are) as mere objects in other people’s consciousness. This is not the same thing as the ‘observed self’ referred to above---that is, where a person is aware of himself or herself thought of as an object. No, this is said to be a phenomenon in the world. In other words, we see ourselves as observer---further complicated and amplified by that pesky invention of a thing called the ‘observing self’---and as someone actually observed by others, and not merely as an object external to ourselves, the latter being an object which, as Sartre pointed out, exists as ‘in-itself.’ Sartre sees the latter---the object ‘in-itself, that is---as existing in both an independent and non-relational way. I prefer the Andersonian view of situationality, namely, that all things exist in situations, that is, in relationship with other things. Independent, yes. Non-relational, no.

Anyway, when it comes to our seeing ourselves as someone who is actually observed by others, some say that what we are talking about is another damn self which, like all other selves, is created in and by our mind or consciousness---some sort of ‘self-conscious observed self’ once (or is it twice?) removed. I think the phenomenon is just another manifestation of our seemingly inherent and intractable self-consciousness and, in particular, the self-knowingness of the self coupled with the mind’s ability to generate and project countless numbers of self-aware selves including ‘selves upon selves,’ so to speak, ad infinitum. Anyway, whatever it be, it is something that, in Sartre’s ontology, exists as ‘for-itself’ as it is always in relation to something else. Personally, I don’t find that distinction or classification helpful. As I see it, the self that observes is in truth the exact same self that is observed. Ditto all other selves. 

The nature of self is to be conscious of itself. All consciousness in a sense is self-consciousness, for it is the nature of consciousness to 'see' itself. Life is consciousness in a very fundamental sense (cf the findings of quantum physics), although I reject Sartre's assertion that things-in-themselves exist only as objectivized by consciousness. Life, as I see it, consists of living things living out their livingness (actually, self-livingness) from one moment to the next, so it necessarily follows that life---that is, consciousness or be-ing-ness---is a state or rather process of self-knowingness, that is, a more-or-less constant stream of thought and consciousness, the latter consisting of observations about and reflections upon the self (or selves, to be more exact) as well as awareness of other people and the world around us, but even the latter is ‘editorialized,’ so to speak, in terms of what it external events supposedly mean for us. Everything gets filtered through, and distorted by, our collection of internally generated selves, or at least through the most dominant of them.

Now, the phenomenon of our seeing ourselves (that is, the actual persons that we are) as mere objects in other people’s consciousness is known in existentialist circles as ‘the Look.’ It is an ontological problem of no mean importance, and it tends to result in the formation of a number of interesting psychological phenomena such as an almost schizoid self-consciousness, acute or generalized anxiety, and, yes, a certain existential angst (especially when you start to ponder upon this whole damn thing). In his famous existentialist play No Exit (Huis Clos) Sartre has one of the three deceased characters in Hell, the lesbian Inèz, taunt Garcin, one of the others, declaring that she is nothing but the look that sees him---‘a mere breath on the air, a gaze observing you, a formless thought that thinks you.’

So, in Sartre’s ontology, which I don’t totally accept, each one of us is nothing but the look or gaze that sees the other.’ But, whatever we are, we are terribly self-conscious of being both the observer and the observed. Oh, the existential angst of it all! Can the observed self escape the eye of its own observer? Is there no escape, no exit, from all this? Death, perhaps? Well, not even death, according to Sartre. Read Huis Clos. There's an even greater existential problem---the inherent instability and essentially illusory nature of the self, together with the elusiveness of the human personality itself, over time. If you doubt the truth of that, read or watch the absurdist play Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett. As the failed writer Krapp listens to a 30-year-old tape recording of his own voice, a self at one moment in time is confronted with the self (or at least one of the selves) of 30 years earlier. The two selves are totally different and completely unknown, even unintelligible, to each other, so to speak. It all seems so depressing, so futile, and so hopeless. Indeed, in a very real and profound sense, it is.

The good news, as I see it, is that it is indeed impossible for there to be, at the psychological level, observation without the annoying, interfering presence and consciousness (including self-consciousness) of both the observing self and the observed self, not to mention that ‘self-conscious observed self’ phenomenon discussed above The Indian spiritual philosopher and anti-guru J. Krishnamurti [pictured below right] wrote:

When you look at a flower, when you just see it, at that moment is there an entity who sees? Or is there only seeing? Seeing the flower makes you say [i.e. think], ‘How nice it is! I want it.’ So the ‘I’ comes into being through desire, fear, ambition [all thought], which follow in the wake of seeing. It is these that create the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ is non-existent without them.

Now, Krishnamurti did indeed expressly acknowledge on several occasions that there certainly is an entity, in a physical sense, who observes---namely, the person who observes. However, what Krishnamurti strongly disputed was the idea that there was, at the psychological level, a separate, independent, permanent, stand-alone entity called the ‘observing [or witnessing, or perceiving] self’ … or any of the other ‘selves’ for that matter. Yes, we do indeed tend to operate as if there was such an entity, and to a very large extent our misbelief in the separate and independent existence of such an entity only helps to bring it into psychological being and keep it alive. Worse, as Sartre pointed out, we also tend to perpetually see ourselves as an actual object in other people’s consciousness.

True meditation, said Krishnamurti, is:

… the understanding of the whole activity of thought which brings into being the ‘me’, the self, the ego, as a fact. Then thought tries to understand the image which it has created, as though that self were something permanent. This self again divides itself into the higher and the lower and this division in turn brings conflict, misery and confusion. The knowing of the self is one thing and the understanding of how the self comes into being, is another. One presupposes the existence of the self as a permanent entity.

Krishnamurti went on to say that ‘if you consider the self a permanent entity, you are studying a self which is non-existent, for it is merely a bundle of memories, words and experiences.’ True meditation---Krishnamurti didn’t use the word ‘mindfulness’ but that it what he was talking about---is ‘to see the movement of every thought, to understand it, to be aware of it, is to come to that silence which is meditation, in which the “observer” never is.’

Artist and copyright owners unknown.

All rights reserved. (Original source: The New Yorker?)

In truth, there is at the ontological level only you (that is, the person who you are), the person or other object observed, and a state of observation in your mind. Ideally, when you are mindfully ‘at one’ with the person or object observed, the observer and the observed become one, so to speak, and there then is at the psychological level nothing but pure observation and choiceless awareness of ‘what is.’ In true meditation, or mindfulness, the so-called ‘observing self,’ along with all other selves including the so-called ‘transcendental self,’ ‘analytical self,’ ‘judging self,’ and ‘observed self,’ disappears from consciousness. So, as Krishnamurti says, when you truly look---that is, just look and not judge, compare, analyze, interpret, name, etc---at a flower, you just see the flower, and at that moment---please note those words, ‘at that moment’--- there is no psychological entity that sees. Nor, for that matter, is there then any sense or consciousness of our seeing ourselves (that is, the actual persons that we are) as objects in other people’s consciousness.

Now, if we can but extent this choiceless and seamless seeing from one moment in time to the next, and then on to the next, and so on, there will then be nothing but observation. We will come to see things as they really are---in many cases, for the very first time. In time, we will become so engrossed in what we are doing that we will cease seeing ourselves (that is, the actual persons that we are) as objects in our own minds as well as objects in other people’s consciousness.

Gone will be the so-called ‘observing self,’ the ‘observed self,’ and the so-called ‘self-conscious observed self.’

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GOD IS NOT ABOVE LOGIC

I have engaged in some prominent debates with Sydney Anglican (read Episcopalian, if you're American or Scottish) bishops and the like at various universities over the years on such important topics as the existence of God and whether Jesus physically rose from the dead. One of the bishops I debated in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney was Dr Glenn Davies [pictured below] who is now the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. At least I found him to be a real gentleman. He was also no dill, although I didn’t find him to be much of a debater, nor apparently did a number of his Christian supporters---including some prominent members of the Sydney University Evangelical Union who organized the debate---who wrote to me after the debate saying that even they thought I had ‘won’ the debate. Of course, that neither proves nor disproves anything at all. Important issues of the kind in question are not truly resolved one way or the other by formal debates governed by the rules of debate.

I was the ‘atheist’ in these debates. Well, I wasn’t just play-acting for I reject all forms of traditional theism. If there is a ‘God’ that God is certainly not the crude anthropomorphic ‘being’ in whom my opponents believed. Atheists do not necessarily reject or deny the existence of God, rather they simply lack theistic belief (Greek áthe (os) god-less + -ist). Most, if not all, agnostics, are really ‘soft’ atheists, for they too lack theistic belief and, like atheists, live their lives as if there were no God, which may well be the case in any event. In other words, agnostics, by virtue of their lack or absence of theistic belief, are for all intents and purposes what are known as 'practical atheists,' as opposed to those who are metaphysical or philosophical ('hard') atheists. Forgive me, I digress (as usual).

Now, in the debates in which I participated I would seek to demolish the traditional, classical so-called ‘proofs’ for the existence of God. My opponents, knowing full well that those ‘proofs’ are all fundamentally flawed and have been found wanting by those 'evil, atheistic philosophers,' would invariably seek to rely upon what is known as presuppositional apologetics. A presupposition is an assumption that is taken for granted. That is, they would take for granted God’s existence---yes, Christian presuppositionalism presupposes the existence of an absolute God and temporal creation---because their a priori Christian beliefs would not allow them to proceed otherwise. 

You see the Christian presuppositionalist's 'reasoning' is derived from their basic presuppositions from which they refuse to budge no matter what counter-reasoning is presented by their opponent. They take for granted the truth and reliability of the Christian Scriptures and assume from the beginning the supernatural revelation of the Bible as the ultimate arbiter of truth and error. They then try to show how belief in the Christian God, Jesus, the Bible, the 'miracles', etc, is supposedly more reasonable than non-belief in those things. Amazing, really. You see, in light of their presuppositions about things metaphysic they see all thinking on such matters---well, at least their thinking---as being wholly receptively reconstructive of their (note this---narrow, emphatic evangelical) interpretation of what is set forth in the Bible as supposedly being God's Word (that is, God's thinking).

My Christian opponents’ arguments rested almost entirely on an absolutist belief in the Bible as the source of truth because the Bible is supposedly inspired by God, in whom, so we are told, we can believe because the Bible affirms it, and the Bible is the source of truth. ('Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.' Well, the Bible must be right, mustn't it? Because the Bible is the Word of God. It says so. So it must be right. Etc, etc.) This sort of reasoning is entirely circular and tautological, and is little more than fideism, which asserts---in its strongest form---that belief in the existence of God cannot be established by reason at all, but must be accepted or rejected wholly upon faith. 

In at least one of the debates in which I participated my opponent told the audience that, given my rationalistic worldview, I was simply incapable of entertaining any worldview of a 'supernaturalistic' kind. In other words, he was accusing me of presuppositionalism---of a naturalistic, rationalistic kind. Not so. I do not start with any such presupposition. My present position is simply that the physical world in which we live yields no credible or reliable evidence of 'supernaturalism.' This is not a naturalistic bias on my part at all. Not at all. I repeat, I do not start from any naturalistic or rationalistic presuppositions. For example, believing that there are no good reasons for believing that God exists does not necessitate that God does not and cannot exist since mere belief is not proof that God either exists or doesn’t exist. Although I lack theistic belief my mind is not closed to the possibility of God existing, although I think that’s most unlikely. My mind is not foreclosed to reason, counter-argument or evidence to the contrary. I fear, however, that my Christian opponents' minds were foreclosed. Their theistic presuppositions could not under any circumstances allow them to rightly determine God’s non-existence from evidence. Their basic presuppositions compelled them to always interpret all evidence in a manner consistent with those absolutist presuppositions.

With Bishop Robert Forsyth, the Anglican Bishop of South Sydney,
whom I debated in 2005 at the University of Technology, Sydney

In these debates---as in my various writings---I tried wherever possible to rely on reason and its principal ‘tool’, logic. (I must be honest. I would from time to time also employ some ridicule and theatrics well.) Now, when I use the word ‘logic’ I am referring to traditional Aristotelian logic. My opponents would then retort, ‘God is above the rules of logic.’ Really? That can’t be right. Now, for the sake of what follows, let’s assume that there is a God of the kind my learned clerical opponents claimed made the world, is watching attentively over it, and so on. How could this God be ‘above’---whatever that word means in this context---the rules of logic?

First, the assertion that God is above logic is not an a priori proposition. Where is the theist’s proof for this assertion? In fact, the theist, although rejecting the applicability of logic, always ends up applying logic, albeit wrongly. Theists tend to do that, and they end up tying themselves into knots of their own making.

Secondly, what is the point of reasoning about God if the principal tool of reason---that is, logic----is inapplicable or unreliable. Never forget that logic is about things, not thought, and about how things are related to other things. It is always a case of … what is.  As the Scottish born-Australian philosopher John Anderson [pictured below left] pointed out, there is only one order or level of reality such that a single logic applies to all things and how they are related to each other. There can be nothing ‘above’ or ‘below’ the proposition---not even God. Anderson was a realist, an empiricist, and in more recent times I have come to see that idealism and realism are not really in conflict with each other. Indeed, they need each other, and they even complement each other. Irrespective of whether or not you accept Anderson’s strict realism, I think what he said about there being only one order or level of reality is true, even if one embraces monistic idealism.

Thirdly, and most importantly, if there were anything above logic we simply could not trust our senses at all. All our attempts at fact-finding, determining what conclusions and inferences can be drawn from any given set of facts before us, and drawing appropriate conclusions and inferences from those facts, would be futile---and we know that is not the case. We can reason---and we must ... if we are to know our true bearings and 'navigate' our way successfully through life. With our eyes open, and wide awake, I mean.

Fourthly, if God were above logic there could be no interpretation (logical extrapolation) of God’s Word or Christian apologetics. For example, the various arguments for the Trinity would collapse. They’re pretty weak in any event, but that’s another story.

Fifthly, the theist does in fact use logic when expedient, that is, when it suits their purposes. Take, for example, the law of non-contradiction (viz that anything with a contradictory nature cannot exist). The theist affirms that God cannot contradict Himself. Thus, God cannot create a rock that God can’t lift. God cannot create a round square. God cannot make the immoral moral. God may be all-powerful but God is still constrained by logic. If that were not so, then there would be nothing to stop God from creating a rock so heavy that God could not lift it and then in the next moment lift it. In short, a God ‘above’ logic doesn’t make sense at all. It is inconsistent with the very attributes that are said go to make up God (reason being one of them). Reason and observation tell us that nothing can be done by anything---including God---that is not otherwise part of its capabilities.

Finally, assuming, for the moment that the God of traditional theism does in fact exist---something which, in my opinion, is highly unlikely indeed---that God would not be above logic nor below it. As with morality or goodness, reason would have to be an integral part of the nature of God. It would not be a question of God ‘submitting’ to logic nor could it be truly said that God arbitrarily created reason. In short, reason, a fundamental human capability, would have to be seen to be part of God’s nature and, once again, as the theist keeps on telling us, God does not and cannot contradict His own nature.

Of course, all that assumes that the God of traditional theism does in fact exist. I have written and spoken elsewhere on that matter.

WHY THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF GOD IS CONTRADICTORY

I hope to show in this post why the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic idea of God is inherently and irredeemably contradictory. 

Now, at the outset I need to make one thing perfectly clear. When we speak of the ‘traditional' idea of God we are referring to the supposed and presumed existence of a 'supernatural,' 'infinite' and 'immortal' personal or superpersonal being who is said to be all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-loving (omnibenevolent) and everywhere present (omnipresent), and who, at least according to the traditional interpretation of the Christian scriptures, is said to have taken human form uniquely in the person of Jesus Christ, who traditionally is said and held by Christians to be both fully human as well as fully divine. One more thing---this infinite God is said to be entirely separate from His [sic] finite creation, even though it is asserted that it is possible for us to 'know' this God.

Here’s one reason why the traditional theistic concept of God is inherently and irredeemably contradictory. In the course of this post I will give you some other reasons as well. If a supposedly supernatural God had an existence or presence before reality, that is, before the supposed creation of all that which is, then that God must be ‘unreal’, and therefore not God. Why? Because it is impossible to postulate a reality before it was present. That’s right. 

Christian apologists and other theists postulate the existence of some ‘atemporal’ reality, but that is a meaningless proposition. Why? Because action implies multiple states, and multiple states in turn require some form of time. Now, it is asserted that God exists ‘outside’ of all time, but the God of the Bible and the Qur'an is supposed to both think and create. ‘“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD’ (Is 55:8). ‘Your thoughts are of great worth to me, O God. How many there are!’ (Ps 139:17). ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen 1:1). ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things’ (Is 45:7). ‘That is Allah, your Lord; there is no deity except Him, the Creator of all things, so worship Him. And He is Disposer of all things’ (Qur’an 6:102). ‘Allah is Ever-Knowing, Ever-Wise’ (Qur’an 8:71).

How, please think about all this for a moment. Thinking and creating (making) things are both time-related activities. In other words, God is supposedly timeless but also causally efficacious, that is, God can affect material objects (the latter being a time-related concept).  However, the only truly timeless things that we know are abstract objects---for example, numbers and sets---and they have no causal properties. But, God is supposedly abstract as well as having causal properties. That is a contradiction, and nothing with a contradictory nature exists or can exist. So God---at least the traditional theistic God---cannot, and therefore does not, exist.

The well-known Christian apologist William Lane Craig [pictured right], in his book Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (2002), states that ‘outside of time, God is eternal; and with creation, God has entered time’.  Well, if Craig is right, it means that God must have changed, but God, so we are told, is supposedly immutable. Now, if God is not subject to time, having entered the natural world from ‘outside’ (whatever that means, for it is impossible to conceive of anything existing ‘outside’ the universe), God can no longer be said to be supernatural or infinite.  Why? Because it is impossible to speak meaningfully of the supposed infinite acting in the finite, the supposed non-temporal acting in time or entering into time.

Here’s another contradiction that cannot be resolved. I ask you this---why would a supposedly supernatural God (again, how can we conceive of anything being ‘supernatural’) bother to create a ‘natural’ universe, assuming for the moment that the universe was ‘created.’ Did God feel a lack of something? Did God want company, or something? If so, then God was not perfect in Himself/Herself/Itself. You see, so-called creationism and perfectionism---God is said to be both creator as well as a perfect being---are mutually exclusive.

Of course, there is no such thing as the 'universe.' That's right! You see, the word 'universe' is just that---a word. It simply means the sum 'total' of all there is, with the totality of all things being what is known as a 'closed system.' Each 'thing' is a cause of at least one other 'thing' as well as being the effect of some other 'thing,' so everything is explainable by reference to everything else. End of story. 

Hence, all theological talk of the supposed need for some 'first cause' is, well, nonsense. As the Scottish-Australian philosopher Professor John Anderson [pictured left] pointed out, 'there can be no contrivance of a "universe" or totality of things, because the contriver would have to be included in the totality of things.' (In any event, the entire notion of a supposed 'Being'---the 'contriver'---whose essential attributes [for example, omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience] are non-empirical is unintelligible and inherently contradictory. In any event, why would a supposedly supernatural 'contriver' bother to 'create' a natural universe, assuming (once again) that it was created?

Here’s another inconsistency, assuming you're still 'with' me. God is supposedly blameless, yet there is the supposed reality of divine punishment, hell and eternal damnation. Those two ideas don’t sit comfortably together. I much prefer the Buddhist idea that we are punished by our 'sins,' not for them. Further, the existence of gratuitous evil and suffering in the world is incompatible with the notion of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. Evil or suffering is gratuitous if, in the view of reasonable persons, the world would be improved by its absence. Now, an omnipotent God would be perfectly able to create human beings that were genuinely free but who never used their freewill to do evil, but only to do good. However, it is said, at least by Christian apologists, that God knowingly created human beings who, God knew in advance, would use their freewill to do evil. I am sorry, but such a God is then morally responsible for all the evil and suffering in the world that has in fact ensued. Why? Because, as I have said, if God is all-powerful, God could have created human beings that were genuinely free, but who only used their freewill to do good. For example, a recovering alcoholic, who wishes to stay sober, chooses not to drink, one day at a time. Yes, he or she could choose to drink, but they consistently choose to exercise their freewill not to drink. If human beings can do that, then surely any decent God, who was all-loving and all-powerful, would want to create people like that. 

In any event, the God of traditional theism is far from attractive. According to the Bible, God deliberately killed every living thing on earth (Gen 7:20-24), murdered innocent children (Ex 12:29), murdered over 50,000 people because they dared to look into the Ark (1 Sam 6:19), murdered infants and ripped fetuses from the womb (Hos 13:16), and supposedly commands the death penalty for adultery (Lev 20:10) and the murder of homosexuals (Lev 20:13)---and that's just for starters. Not a very nice person, to say the least. The God of the Qur’an can be just as unlovely. Unlike the Judeo-Christian God, who is said (except by some stupid and ignorant Christian fundamentalists whose God hates 'fags' [see picture above]) to ‘hate the sin but love the sinner,’ Allah loves only the ‘good’: ‘Allah loves not transgressors’ (Qur'an 2:190); ‘He loves not creatures ungrateful or wicked’ (Qur'an 2:276); ‘Say: 'Obey Allah and His Apostle;' but if they turn back Allah loves not those who reject Faith’ (Qur'an 3:32); ‘Allah loves not those who do wrong’ (Qur'an 3:57, 140); ‘Allah loves not the arrogant, the vainglorious’ (Qur'an 4:36); ‘Say, if ye love Allah, follow me; Allah will love and forgive you your sins’ (Qur'an 3:31). All I can say is, thank God for the great Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick who famously wrote, ‘Better believe in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. Belief in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a man can cherish.’ (I once spoke those words of Fosdick at a debate at the Sydney Town Hall at which Dr William Lane Craig was present. However, the organiser of the debate, St Barnabas Anglican Church, Broadway, Sydney, shamefully edited out those words from my speech in the video tape of the proceedings. The truth hurts.)

Now, if the existence of certain state of affairs is logically incompatible with the purported existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God, or if it is intrinsically improbable that those states of affairs would subsist in a universe with such a God and more probable than not that they would subsist in a universe without such a God, then there are more than good grounds for believing that such a God does not exist.

Here’s another contradiction or dilemma.  (I could give you many, many more, but that's for another day---and post.) Does God have a body? If so, where can we locate that body? You see, if God does not have a body, the alleged properties attributed to God (for example, that God is powerful, loving, good, and just) are totally misleading. Why? Because all such predicates apply to bodies whose behaviours are publicly observable. They do not apply to so-called ‘disembodied minds.’

In this post I have tried to use logic. Now, when I debate Christian apologists, they invariably assert that God is ‘above’ logic. That cannot be the case. God---or at least any concept of God---cannot be ‘above’ logic, whatever ‘above’ means. You see, the assertion that God is above logic is not an a priori proposition. Where is the theist’s proof for this assertion? In fact, the theist, although rejecting the applicability of logic, is still applying logic, albeit wrongly, in their arguments for the existence of God. The theist is tying themselves into a knot of their own making. What, I ask you, is the point of reasoning about God if the principal tool of reason---logic---is inapplicable. Never forget this---logic is about things, not thought. Logic is about how things are related to other things. In logic it is always a case of … what is. As philosopher John Anderson pointed out many times, there is only one order or level of reality such that a single logic applies to all things and how they are related to each other. There can be nothing ‘above’ or ‘below’ the proposition---not even God. If anything were above logic we simply could not trust our senses. That’s right---if God is above logic there can be no interpretation or logical extrapolation of God’s word, nor could there be any system of apologetics. For example, the various arguments for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity would immediately and totally collapse.

The theist is often a hypocrite. Theists do in fact use logic when expedient, that is, when it suits their purposes. Take, for example, the law of contradiction (that is, that anything with a contradictory nature cannot exist). The theist affirms that God cannot contradict Himself [sic]. Thus, God cannot create a rock that He [sic] can’t lift. God cannot create a round square. God cannot make the immoral moral. God may be all-powerful, says the theist, but God is still constrained by logic. If that were not the case, then there would be nothing to stop God from creating a rock so heavy that God could not lift it and then in the next moment lift it. 

In short, a God ‘above’ logic doesn’t make any sense---not that a God subject to logic does either, as I’ve tried to show. Be that as it may, the idea of a God ‘above’ logic is inconsistent with the very attributes that go to make up the traditional theistic concept of God. Reason and observation tell us that nothing can be done by anything, including God, that is not otherwise part of God’s capabilities.

Assuming, for the moment that the traditional God of theism does in fact exist, that God would not be above logic nor below it. As with morality or goodness, reason would have to be seen as part of the very nature of God. Yes, any sensible concept of God would have to accept that God does not ‘submit’ to logic nor arbitrarily ‘create’ logic. Reason would have to be seen to be part of God’s nature. A sensible believer would also have to accept that God cannot contradict His/Her/Its own nature.

Are there more sensible concepts of ‘God’? Indeed, there are. Here is a previous post of mine that may be of interest to thinking---as opposed to believing---people.

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