RELIGION USES REAL PARADOXES AS AN EXCUSE FOR INVENTING SPIRITUAL RELIGIOUS PARADOXES

We will examine one parasitic feature of religion.  The only valid paradoxes are in physics but religion invents ones of its own.  Hinduism has the paradox of how weak man can be God, master of the universe.  Christianity has the paradox of Jesus being ordinary human being and also God at the same time.  Christian Science Church says that evil is not real and yet it claims to battle it.  Mormonism has the paradox of a fraudster being thought to be the best person next Jesus who ever lived, Joseph Smith.

Let us take a look at one core religious application of paradox.  Now first of all a paradox is when two things are true though they contradict each other.

So how do you resolve it?  Well, it is not a contradiction simply because contradictions are nonsense and we know neither is nonsense. The problem is our understanding.

Religion like any ideology, will generate and claim paradoxes where the evidence is not good enough that there is an actual paradox.  The evidence that sides of it are right is lacking.

One good example is an unlimitedly powerful and good God tolerating the intolerable evil and remaining good.

More examples: God makes all completely and so controls all so our evil choices area as much his as ours. They happen more because he gives us the faculties and creates the situation that invites evil than because of us. 

Dead men stay dead but Jesus rose.

Certain cancers don't go away but Mary's did.

So – that is why we need a high standard of evidence.  That is enough.  (Forget about strict proof!)  That is the only way to avoid contradicting the truth or contradicting ourselves without realising.

There is no great evidence that we really have free will.  We fear the consequences of not believing people are responsible for what they do and are not programmed or conditioned to do it.  Not wanting to believe something does not make it untrue.  It in fact warns that a too much bias is happening so arguments for free will will lack credibility for that reason.  Even if they were valid, it does not follow we have the arguments because they are good but because we want them.

 

big evidence is needed for a paradox. The bigger the paradox or the bigger you want to declare it then don’t cheat. Provide the case for it.

The only way you can tell a paradox from a contradiction is if one side is virtually as certain as the other and both are certain beyond reasonable doubt.

Nobody has the right to declare something a paradox. It is up to them to be the messenger of the evidence so the evidence is what is really doing it.

Paradox is being abused as ideology without that condition.

Why do I care?

Because one dubious paradox is as good as another. and we need a culture of consistent people. Inconsistency is a mark of populist thinking and ideology and even well-behaved ideologies