Thursday, March 7, 2024

None But God

The laws of logic are inherently true and thus are more foundational and important than all else, but they are not a conscious being, rather a set of intrinsic necessary truths that cannot have been any other way.  They transcend all beings and everything else depends on them for their very possibility.  As far as entities go however, there is also the possibility that a person or some other conscious creature will ignore reason out of desperation, anger, frustration, sadness, or apathy.  There is no single emotional state that could be experienced, and anyone who looks to their own subjective feelings as if they ground reason or morality is deluded.  Complicated scenarios make this appealing to a specific kind of individual.

Even if some people say or perhaps genuinely think that God, the ultimate entity (not existent, which would be the laws of logic) since he is the uncaused cause, is the true being of authority, they will still blindly or hypocritically yield to everything from sudden spurts of emotion to the layered social pressures they might face.  This is in part, aside from the stupidity of every individual involved, how legalism becomes so present in the church.  Like the Pharisees of Christ's lifetime who thought that it was washing hands before meals instead of the real commands of God that deserve loyalty (Matthew 15:1-14), modern Christians are not immune to this inverse moral ideology unless they choose to be, including Christians who have less of an excuse for their folly.

It might not be washing hands that is a common example of legalism today, but everything from profanity to masturbation to opposite gender friendships and much more is still controversial in some Christian and secular communities despite being objectively nonsinful (Deuteronomy 4:2).  Out of a desire to please others, plenty of non-rationalists will eagerly or at least outwardly conform to all sorts of assumed, erroneous, hypocritical, emotionalistic, or counterproductive whims if they think it will bring them freedom and peace.  Reason and the truths it grounds are far more important than freedom and peace, for these things are only truly found in logical truths and, when applicable, moral obligations rooted in the divine nature.

Hearing these facts from others will not make some people cling to them although they are having to put less effort into their discovery, as they have social prompting instead of having looked directly to reason and various secondary things like the Bible in order to realize what logically follows from them.  Hearing or happening to think of them alone, whether or not this is in the context of making assumptions, will not make someone hold to how no being but God deserves allegiance.  Reason is true independent of all else and to deny reason is to rely on it, but mere human conventions and personal preferences are morally meaningless regardless of God's exact nature.

Sadly, knowing these things will not necessarily remove or thwart emotional irritation with them.  There could always hypothetically be someone who loves truth for its logical necessity while fearing some of the things which are logically necessary.  As other people and their conflicting or assumed beliefs or preferences must be confronted, do not stray from reason, and when it comes to other beings, only God's nature could make it so that some things are good or evil, and thus none but God deserves true allegiance or submission.  Any submission to a human should never be given to a selfish or generally irrationalistic person unless it is out of sincere love, but absolutely no one could be in the right, logically or morally, for trying to pressure someone else to change when logic, God, and justice do not require it.

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