THE UNCREATED UNIVERSE
The word God represents a meaningless concept based on the incorrect notion that sentences that are grammatically sound necessarily have meaning, either by being true or by being false. It is the definition underlying the word that shows the concept to be meaningless.
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Analysis of a comprehensive definition of the word God can yield the following essential element: "The source and donor of all existence."
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We must therefore consider the concept of existence.
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If I say "The snark exists" then it seems that I have made a statement which might be either true or false. Suppose that it is false. "The snark does not exist" is then true. But if this negation is true then the subject "The snark" does not represent anything, so that the negation is about nothing at all and is meaningless. Removing the negation of a true negated sentence leaves the unnegated sentence false, and vice versa. Removing the negation of a meaningless negative sentence has neither of these effects - the unnegated sentence is equally meaningless.
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It follows that if any sentence containing the words "exist", "existence" etc. in the sense used here appears to be either true or false, and so have meaning, then it is meaningless and, reductio ad absurdum, it is inevitably meaningless. The above element in the definition of God and hence the concept of God are thus both meaningless.
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The sense of "exits" etc. used here is that of being the consequence of an act of divine creation. It can be regarded as the absolute sense of the words. The sense seen in "Dinosaurs existed in the Jurassic period" is very different and is acceptable. It can be regarded as the relative sense, being relative to time or place.
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It should not be supposed as some have done that if "We exist" is meaningless then we do not exist. "We do not exist" is equally meaningless. "We exist at the present time" is acceptable and true because "exist" is being used in the acceptable sense. Confusion between the acceptable and unacceptable senses of "exist" etc. may lead to the supposition that the acceptible sense implies that the other sense is acceptable.
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Atheism is usually regarded as the supposition that the sentence "God does not exist" is true. But this sentence is doubly meaningless in that both the definition of the subject and the predicate are meaningless. Atheism is best regarded as the supposition that the concept of God is meaningless - the concept does not represent anything in the world that lies outside the mind.
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Because existential words are meaningless it follows that we cannot make existential distinctions between things. Thus we cannot suppose that our universe exists by being the result of an act of divine creation and that others do not.
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It is commonly supposed that our universe at the present time is the latest consequence of an initial act of creation - it inherits its existence ultimately from that act. By abandoning this idea we must regard the universe at the present time as the starting point for our consideration of it. The development of this principle will be found in my blog The Real Job of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
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A more complete exposition of these ideas and their consequences can be found on my website
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