Logical Fallacies about God and Money
If God exists and he’s all-powerful, can he turn a circle into a square and have it still be a circle? If he’s all-powerful he could do it. At least, that’s what some people think. I mean, if he’s all-powerful, he can do anything, right? There’s just one problem with the question, it’s intellectually incoherent. A circle can’t be a square, because it’s a circle, you see. They are two different things. What’s really being asked is, if there are no limits to God’s power, can God behave in ways that are absurd. If not, then, he wouldn’t be all-powerful, therefore, he’s not God.
“Ah, dang! I guess I’ve just proven that God doesn’t exist.”
What it really proves is that the question is silly, and so is the person asking the question. This is precisely the way that debates about how to end poverty are frequently played out. Here’s a hypothetical; the U.S. government spends billions and billions on a particular weapons system, leading to this question; “Are you trying to tell me that we can spend a 100 billion dollars on a weapon, but we can’t eliminate poverty? Heck, just give every American a million dollars. That’s probably less than the pentagon pays for a shovel.
"Ah dang! I guess I’ve figured out how to end poverty, proving that it’s all a scam.”
OK, now that all Americans are millionaires, how many are going to get up and go to work at McDonalds, or Walmart? None, is the answer. Would you go to work at some crummy job if you were a millionaire? Of course not! What happens, then, now that nobody is at work….uh…hmm…uh? Yes, in days there would be mass shortages of everything and your paper money would be worthless. This is hardly new, Germany in the 1920s and Venezuela and Zimbabwe today, are a few examples this problem at work. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s 37 year dictator…..uh….I mean president, printed so much currency, that at one point the country faced nearly eighty billion percent inflation. That was in a single month. There are decades, even centuries of data about what happens when people print money without there being anything of value to back it. Meaning, that the original question, and its answer about how we might eliminate poverty by giving everyone a cool million, is just as intellectually incoherent, as the question about God.
Here’s the thing, just because something seems rational, doesn’t make it so. Generally, these kinds of questions and their corresponding answers, are just as intellectually incoherent. The questioner, however, doesn’t know this, so it all can seem pretty reasonable. In other words, in a world of blind men, no one will know that they’re blind.
As Stan Lee used to say “Nuff said.”
Mark Magula
“Ah, dang! I guess I’ve just proven that God doesn’t exist.”
What it really proves is that the question is silly, and so is the person asking the question. This is precisely the way that debates about how to end poverty are frequently played out. Here’s a hypothetical; the U.S. government spends billions and billions on a particular weapons system, leading to this question; “Are you trying to tell me that we can spend a 100 billion dollars on a weapon, but we can’t eliminate poverty? Heck, just give every American a million dollars. That’s probably less than the pentagon pays for a shovel.
"Ah dang! I guess I’ve figured out how to end poverty, proving that it’s all a scam.”
OK, now that all Americans are millionaires, how many are going to get up and go to work at McDonalds, or Walmart? None, is the answer. Would you go to work at some crummy job if you were a millionaire? Of course not! What happens, then, now that nobody is at work….uh…hmm…uh? Yes, in days there would be mass shortages of everything and your paper money would be worthless. This is hardly new, Germany in the 1920s and Venezuela and Zimbabwe today, are a few examples this problem at work. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s 37 year dictator…..uh….I mean president, printed so much currency, that at one point the country faced nearly eighty billion percent inflation. That was in a single month. There are decades, even centuries of data about what happens when people print money without there being anything of value to back it. Meaning, that the original question, and its answer about how we might eliminate poverty by giving everyone a cool million, is just as intellectually incoherent, as the question about God.
Here’s the thing, just because something seems rational, doesn’t make it so. Generally, these kinds of questions and their corresponding answers, are just as intellectually incoherent. The questioner, however, doesn’t know this, so it all can seem pretty reasonable. In other words, in a world of blind men, no one will know that they’re blind.
As Stan Lee used to say “Nuff said.”
Mark Magula