The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

I read a very good book many years ago, published in 1979, I think. It won the Pulitzer prize, and it was concerned with Godel’s theorem, entitled “Godel, Escher, Bach”.

I had to read it several times before I grasped the basic ideas, But the author, Douglas Hofstadter, also wrote a book a bit simpler, called “I Am A Strange Loop”. A pretty good read.

In “Godel, Escher, Bach”, Hofstadter would introduce his ideas with a conversation, in Lewis Carrol fashion, between Achilles and the Tortoise. The conversations were based loosely around Zeno’s paradox.

At one point, Achilles was trying to use logic to convince the Tortoise that Achilles’ conclusions simply could not be denied if the tortoise accepted logic as the ultimate arbiter of truth.

The Tortoise, like most humans, said that he was very reasonable, and would never accept a conclusion that was illogical. Achilles just knew the argument as won.

Achilles began, “If I show that A is true, and B follows from A, then we must also conclude that C is also true as a conclusion following from the premises of A and B”.

“Of course” said the Tortoise, “It’s obvious that this should be the case”.

“Then you agree?”

“In principle”.

“What do you mean, ‘In principle’?”

“I mean that if A is true, and B is true, the we would conclude that C s true as a premise following from A and B”.

“That’s what I said”

“Yes” said the Tortoise, “But if A is true, and B is true, and C follows logically as a premise resulting from A and B, then we would conclude that this is summed up in premise D”.

“What?”

“You see, if A, B, and C are true, we would establish this as premise D, which simply states the fact of the truth of A,B,and C”.

“Okay” said Achilles, “I’ll accept that. But then surely you must accept D as the final statement of truth”.

“Not at all” said the Tortoise, “If D is the statement of truth summing up A,B.and C, then certainly we would establish this as a subset of premise E, which states that if A,B, C, and D are true, then E”.

Achilles smelled a rat. “But surely there would be a stopping point. Let’s say that Z is the statement that sums up the truth of A through Y. Surely you then have to accept that Z is the truth?”

“Of course” said Tortoise, “But then we would also have to say that A1 is the statement that demonstrates the truth of A through Z, and then A2, A3, A4, until we finally arrive at the ultimate truth”.

“Which is?”

“I don’t know. How many numbers are there?”

“Infinite numbers. So if I say that infinity sums up the truth of all previous statements, we can stop there?”

“I suppose, but where does infinity stop?”

What occurred was that both Achilles and Tortoise were discussing a kind of “schematic” of truth. not the truth in terms of each statement itself, but in terms of statements that represented truth or statements about truth, as each one saw it.

This is my point in talking “about” truth. We can develop processes of organization, mechanical representations of ‘truth’, but in fact, the arguments can proceed into infinity. The system of mathematics simply cannot define truth in any limited fashion. It can go on forever….

That is the essence of Godel’s theorem. In order to find out if truth could be represented in mathematics, Godel had to develop a system in which the system of math actually referred back to itself. To do this, he had to develop a “Godel number” system in which the axioms of math( plus, minus, division, multiplication, etc) were represented as numbers themselves, so that the system was “self referencing”.

What Godel demonstrated b this was that a system of complex mathematics would produce a statement which said of itself, “I exist, but I cannot be proven within this system”.

From “outside” the system, the person could see if it was true, but the system itself simply had nothing to say about it! it was undecidable, therefore making the system incomplete.

The result was “in any consistent axiomatic formulation of number theory, there exists undecidable propositions”.

This same process may also be admitted by looking at Jeremiah 17:9 and Romans 8:7. When the human mind looks inside itself for truth, “self references”, it will come up with an infinity of possibilities as to what is true, especially in regard to God!

If we seek to organize truth about God in the form of rules and laws, that organization will have to reflect the limitations of our own minds. It will reflect also the incompleteness of our mathematical systems and our systems of logic as well.

We can’t get “there” from “here”.

That’s why, if we seek to “convert” others to a certain truth, that truth will ultimately split into an infinity of different ideas and concepts! No human mind can represent God in a complete sense, and that’s what both Paul and Jesus tells us.

Good arguments about free will and omniscience building.

When God “tested” Abraham, did he know for sure what Abraham would do?(Assuming, of course, that there was an Abraham, or God).

How about Genesis 15? God allegedly put Abraham to sleep and pointed out: “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not their’s, and shall serve them. And they shall afflict them four hundred years”.

This was a guarantee of something that would happen to Abraham’s children BEFORE Isaac was even born. assuming the story was true, therefore, we are forced to logically conclude that it would occur as prophesied regardless of what choice Abraham made regarding the sacrifice of Isaac on the alter.

Of course you can argue that “God is this, God is that, or god is the other…” but the fact given is this: Abraham’s descendants were to be enslaved four hundred years. Of course, this assumes that any of it ever happened, but if you’re going to argue “God” from a biblical perspective, you’re sort of stuck with what you’re given.

Of course, we can take it as a lesson similar to conclusions of Talmudic scholars: God was showing Abraham that sacrifice would not be the way of obedience or “proof testing” of faithfulness. In fact, the chief “sin” or blasphemy against God is the sacrifice of children at “Tophet“, which is to be a great place of burning.

Now, you can argue on this a million different ways, but from what we read above, we would have to conclude that whether Abraham sacrificed Isaac or not, Abraham’s descendants would be slaves in Israel four hundred years.

And while we’re arguing it, does God create evil? How about Isaiah 45:7? Or Amos 3:6?

Does “free will” mean freedom from God’s foreknowledge? From every definition available, from a purely physical view, “free will” is simply the ability to choose as we believe. There is no evidence for anything greater. Freedom is the absence of absolute knowledge.

If you want to try and define God, you will end up exactly with the situation we see today: over 38,000 estimated versions of christianity, none of which can prove the authority of their beliefs, and therefore, as Jesus said in Matthew 24;23, no reason to follow any of them.

Comments

I got a great question in the “comments” section. Is it a problem, humanity being free, and God not being all knowing? After all, we do seem to see evidence in numerous place in which God is not all knowing.

In fact, the fundamental premise of christianity is that God does not know whether we will “accept” him or ‘reject” him. But that is where we immediately run into a problem, not only with Paul’s teaching, but with those teachings attributed to Jesus, as in Matthew 13:11. Whatever “it” was that the people of Israel were supposed to know, “it” was not given. Paul says pretty much the same thing in Romans 11:7.

The flaw in christianity that stares us in the face is that if it is necessary to “choose Christ”, there should be something we can choose and know for a fact that we have chosen correctly, yet Jesus(or somebody) gives us the ONE obvious and truthful answer: follow none of them?

Why? Simply because we have no logical reasonable, rational criteria by which we can choose. Any attempt to do so, based on the condition of human ignorance, would only produce increasing chaos and confusion, and we are told that God is not the author of confusion.

If you believe in confusion, therefore, you don;t believe in God. But by the same token(for the atheist’s benefit), if you believe in truth, you cannot believe in confusion, since truth must be consistent with all truth. Therefore, if you believe in “God” and “truth” as a basis of anything worth believing in, you would have to assume that one is basically the same as the other.

EXCEPT for one big problem: Paul says the natural mind is enmity against God and cannot be subject to God’s laws. Jesus himself(allegedly) refers to truth in that same sense when he speaks of the “spirit of truth” in John 14:17: “Even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive…”

Truth is not “received”, nor is it a ‘given”. We see this indicated in Matthew 7:14. “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”.

Notice, it didn’t say “choose it”. It said “find it”.

How would one know when they have found truth? They would know when they realized that other humans can no more tap into the truth in any absolute sense than they, the individual, can.
That is exactly consistent with the quote I gave of Ayn Rand in my other post.

Are we free from God? First, is there even a God? How do we possibly define God? What process of choices can we assume that leads us to God? We simply don’t know. But we CAN test the limits of the knowledge of man! We know now mathematically that it is simply impossible to contain all truth in one single package, and any attempt to organize truth will only lead to an infinity of undecidable propositions!

Look at “christianity” around you today. What do you see? Over 38,000 versions estimated within christianity, and who knows how many religious ideas outside of christianity.

Is the natural mind, therefore, subject to God? Every scrap of physical evidence says no! Romans 8:7, therefore, must have been correct, and if that was correct, then so must Romans 9:16-22 be correct. We simply have no process of choice as to the “one true way” to God!

Like the punchline of the old joke says, you can’t get there from here!

So, in what context are you free? It means you’re free from men(or women) who try to tell you “this way to God!”. As “Ex-Android” pointed out, “belief is not akin to truth”. However, if I get an idea that something is true, then I must believe that if I pursue it, it can be proven one way or another. I may not know it to be true, but I can believe it to be true and seek to prove it or disprove it. Or to put it in more scientific terms, in order to prove something, it must be falsifiable. If it can be proven true, you must also have the ability to prove it false.

Can I prove there is a God? No. Can I prove there is not a God? No. In order to prove either conclusion, I must have some way of showing the possibility of a belief being false, and we simply do not have that kind of knowledge.

Consequently, we must prove what is true in terms of physical evidence. If “God” is shown to be inconsistent with physical evidence, then we must reject “God” to the extent we can show inconsistency. But keep in mind that in absolute terms of “infinity”, there is no way to demonstrate the consistency of our thinking from within that system itself!

What odes it mean? Again, it means we can’t get from “here” to “truth” in any ABSOLUTE SENSE, nor can we get from “here” to “God” as an absolute representation of truth!

Therefore, our freedom, whether atheist or “christian”, must consist of being free from ALL authority structures of men! 1 Cor 7:23: “..be ye not the servants of men”.

1Cor 9:19: “For though I be free from all men…”

2 Peter 2:19: “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage”.

The RSV says “he is ENSLAVED”. So what did Jesus say? “If any man says to you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not”(Matthew 24;23).

The atheist and the TRUE christian find unity in that statement. If you would follow truth, you cannot follow men, and that definitely includes religions of men(and they ALL are religions of men or women). If you would be free, you must learn to think for yourselves!

proselytizing? See what Jesus said about the dominant religious leaders of his day: “For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more a child of hell than yourselves(Matt.23:15)”.

As Hebrews 4:12 tells us, the truth is like a two edged sword. It cuts collectivism both ways. The statements in Romans 8:7, 8:29-30, and 9:16-22, cuts collectivism both in terms of christianity AND in terms of the collectivism of atheism. There is no “us” and “them”, because no person can have a monopoly on truth.

“ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. You can’t have two “truths”. Truth is consistent with all truth.