Who Isn't He?
Perfect or Bust
Sherlock Holmes often remarked that “when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable—must contain the truth.” Arthur Conan Doyle's famous fictional detective is “indubitably” correct.
We have to be careful in our discernment of what is and isn’t possible. So for now, my dear reader—let us limit our inquiry to the solid footing of logic. By employing logical deduction we can readily see who God is not. Indeed, this "process of elimination" can carry us a long way towards eventually noticing Who God Is.
The following argument employs a basic method of inference called "denying the consequent," or Modus Tollens. This is a foundational element of propositional logic and takes the form "If P then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P." Notice what follows dear reader, because it is quite “elementary.”
P1: If God Exists, then He Is the Perfect-Being. (The law of identity)
P2: An imperfect being cannot be the Perfect-Being. (The law of non-contradiction)
C: Therefore, an imperfect being cannot be God. (The law of excluded middle)
I must encourage you now to be brave as well as smart. You might not want to apply this test to your belief system for fear of finding a previously unnoticed weakness. But it's in your best interest to do it. Please don’t trust blindly in a system of belief that cannot be true. Socrates said, “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Right now, I dare you to examine yours.
"Who are you Lord?"
Paul the Apostle ca. 60 AD
The World Cannot Be God
The belief that God and the universe are one and the same, and that everything including you is actually part of God is called pantheism. An example from popular culture is ‘Eywa’ of the Avatar universe.
Ask yourself: “Is the world perfect?” You are a part of this world. Are you perfect? If you're not perfect, and I'm not either—how can the world be perfect?
Pantheists believe that "God" (aka: the world) is beyond notions like good and bad, and that such ideas are only a matter of our limited perspectives. Is that right? Is racism good from some perspective? Are rape, murder, slavery, and intolerance really bad—or is that just “your perspective?” Is leukemia in a newborn baby only bad from the perspective of a loving parent? No! All such things are self-evident imperfections. They are clear examples of a world gone wrong, and they beg to be set right again.
Perfection is immune to change. The world isn't. It began in the finite past, and it suffers from decay and increasing disorder (entropy). If the universe is left alone, it is going to die. This fact is described by the second law of thermodynamics. The universe and everything in it needs to be rescued, including you! Why? Because it’s an imperfect place full of imperfect things—and the "whole show" is dying.
Also, an impersonal place can’t give itself in love to complete another being. The world can't love you. It has no love to give. Since Love is essential to Moral-Perfection, God Is a Personal-Being. Without loving persons, the world is a cold and careless place. And without the Perfect-Thinker to form and guide it, the world is a meaningless place. Since the world is demonstrably imperfect...
...it cannot be God.
The gods Cannot Be God
The belief in multiple gods takes one of two forms. The first is dualism which imagines two god's of equal and opposite powers. This idea is often represented by the popular “yin & yang” symbol of Taoism. A pop-culture version of the idea can be seen in ‘The Force’ of the Star Wars universe.
Dualism suffers from the same problem of moral perspective as does pantheism. The “dark-god” and “the light-god” both think they're the "good-guy"—and they spend all eternity trying to wipe each other out. So where does the good of balance come from?
For balance to keep one of these two god's from destroying the other, it would have to be up and running before they ever locked horns with each other. Indeed, balance has to come from something "prior to" and "greater than" these competing gods.
Think about it. To prevent one god from destroying the other one, a cosmic referee is needed who is wiser and more powerful than them both. The gods of dualism need a “god” of their own just to survive. They're dependent on a higher-power just like you and I are. In short, these gods lack Ultimacy. And since lack is an imperfection, the god's of dualism are imperfect.
Also, since the god "over" dualism doesn’t prefer life over death, good over evil, or love over hate—it is imperfect too. Why?
The answer is self-evident. Think about it. Is it objectively better to serve one god instead of the other?” Says who? Adolf Hitler served “the good” according to him? Was he wrong to do so or not? What does "wrong" mean anyways? What gives any of us the right to judge his actions?
My dear reader—if any of us are to reason morally, there must first be a Perfect Moral Reasoner to unite moral truth to the moral facts. Since no "god" in the dualistic system does this, there is no "God" in the dualistic system. Since each god is demonstrably imperfect...
...they cannot be God.
You Cannot Be God
A second worldview imagining more than one god is called polytheism. The ancients called it paganism. It may surprise you to realize that belief in many gods is alive and well today, but it's carefully camouflaged within the false-neutrality of postmodern relativism. This is the popular idea that each of us can construct our "own truth."
Now, Truth is perfect-information about the way things really are. It has to come from a Perfect-Thinker, and it is recognized in this world on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Thus, hidden within the idea that you can construct your "own truth” is an unacknowledged belief that you can create your "own world."
The Creator of the world is God! To live “your truth” you will have to kick Him out of His chair and sit there yourself. To construct meaning, you'll have to become "God." But are you perfect?
Polytheism is by far the most popular belief system on Earth. It always has been. Notice this carefully my dear reader. There is no real difference between the humanism of today and the paganism of yesterday. We humans sometimes change our minds about what’s "good" as often as we change our socks. What we call "good" today might be "evil" tomorrow—and vice-versa.
The gods of paganism were just like us. In Homer’s description of the Trojan war, the gods picked sides and worked against each other instead of together. Indeed, Zeus and Aries switched teams partway through to please the women in their lives. Mount Olympus isn’t perfect. It's a silly soap-opera of corruption—just like Washington D.C.
Can't you see how important meaning is to understanding Who God Is? If the word “God,” doesn't mean anything, how are we supposed to recognize Who God Is? Once
we can apprehended what "God" means, we can see that to become gods ourselves, we'd have to flip Reality upside-down and backwards. We can’t do it, even though we all want to. And that’s the big problem for today’s humanist-paganism—even for the quasi-christian version called Mormonism.
Mormons believe that God is a human who eventually “grew” into a god. But recall my dear reader that Essential-Perfection cannot grow. "He" simply Is. Indeed, He always Was, Is, and Is to come (Revelation 4:8 and 22:13).
The Mormon god is like you and me? He changes his mind like he changes his socks. Like Zeus and Aries, he commands things (like plural-marriage or the exclusion of non-white people from the priesthood), and then changes his mind for the sake of appeasing others. Such a "god" is weak and fickle. They're just like the rest of us. Since "the gods" are demonstrably imperfect...
...they cannot be God. And neither can you.
"Who Are You Lord?"
Saul of Tarsus thought that he was an expert on who God Is. Like all Jews, Saul knew that "I AM is One God" (Deuteronomy 6:4). This deep conviction led Saul to Damascus to stomp out those worshipping the "Son of God." On Saul's way, God knocked him off his high-horse—literally. Saul cried out: “Who are You Lord?”
God answered...