The Impossible Dream
The Impossible Dream
This chapter argues that it is impossible to believe in God and also impossible to disbelieve in God, because the question of God is impossible to ask. It first explains the meaning of “impossible” and describes two kinds of impossibility: Physical Impossibility and Conceptual Impossibility. It explicates the distinction between Physical Impossibility and Conceptual Impossibility and cites God as an example of the latter. It suggests that the impossibility of God is sui generis. Based on the logic of cause and effect, it asserts that there is not, and can never be, a concept of God. We can never have the idea of a world that didn't have a beginning. Something must have started everything—a First Thing, an Unmoved Mover. The concept of God would be the concept of something that must absolutely have existed and that—equally—cannot possibly have existed. There is simply no such concept. On the basis of these arguments, the chapter proposes a doctrine that it calls aprolepticism, which is not theism, atheism, or agnosticism.
Keywords: God, Physical Impossibility, Conceptual Impossibility, Unmoved Mover, aprolepticism, theism, atheism, agnosticism
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