God is like a square circle

I don’t need to have seen everything in the universe to be able to say God doesn’t exist, I can just point certain things out that effectively make the idea of god (as he is commonly believed in) contradictory:

All knowing and all powerful – If God is all knowing, he should know the future with certainty. If he is all powerful, he would be able to do something other than what he first ‘predicted’ he would do. Do you see the problem? If he really is all powerful (and able to do something other than what he first predicted), then he isn’t really all knowing, because he wasn’t right when he first made the prediction. The only way to ’save him’ knowing all is making it so that God is not able to do something other than what he first predicted, therefore he is not all powerful.

Life without birth or death – The idea of god completely divorces the concept of life from the ideas of birth or death. It also completely divorces the idea that living beings need to eat or get energy out of something in order to continue living.

Consciousness existing without matter – Once again, saying that god is a conscious being is completely divorcing the concept of consciousness from reality. It’s like trying to spend the concept of money without using any actual coins/notes/credit cards.

God exists in another dimension – What a stupid idea, do you try and get your homework remarked because “your answer is actually correct in another dimension”? You’re just trying to push god into the unknowable/unprovable category but you’re also not realising that you have no reason to believe this. If you really want everyone to be agnostic about god, well then they should also have to be agnostic about the existence of Santa Claus, the easter bunny and the tooth fairy and so on.

And even if I granted you all these things, you still have absolutely no reason to believe that there is only one god and that that one god is the same as the one you believe in. For all you know, there could be 26000 gods!

Please, stop deluding yourselves.

Where do you keep your faith?

Depending on how well you know me, you may not know what I think about religion. Generally, while I respect the freedom of all people to hold religious beliefs as they please, I generally regard religion as a blight on the world, holding us back from the truth and real rational thought. Not only this, but teaching your child that “God exists” is harmful to your child’s mental growth. Why? It’s harmful in the same way that teaching your kid that “square circles” could exist in reality. God is a concept riddled with logical flaws, and its time people realised this.

I was born into a christian family who were fairly religious and I swallowed the entire thing, hook line and sinker! I went to catholic schools as a child, sang in choirs and prayed to God with all my might. I honestly thought he existed, even though I never actually heard him myself, or saw any real evidence to show that he did exist. I think part of the reason I believed was because of all the positive reinforcement I was getting at school, church and home. Also, I wanted to fit in with the rest of the crowd, which is yet another of the bully tactics that theists will use to get children to believe their lies and misinformation. When I finished high school, I finally began to question the idea of God, did some reading and finally realised that God never really existed.

So I’ve been thinking about my history with religion lately, and its time to share something that I consider to be a useful insight into how people are able to believe in God(s).

I think what people do when they think about the concept of God, is they keep God in a separate place. They don’t think about the real world at the same time as they think about God. How do I know? Because that’s what I did when I was christian. It’s the only way to continue to lead your life, otherwise you’d just be completely embracing irrationality and not even be able to think straight long enough to realise that you need food/air/water.

After a certain age, it becomes very hard to change the way you think. For example, if you’ve already grown up believing in God and you have already taught your kids “God exists”, you aren’t going to be changing to atheism or agnosticism. Likewise if you’re a part of any kind of religious group or active in a religious community. The cost to you would be too much, and you’d rather just keep that part of you separate from the real world. So in this way, I’m not expecting this post to have any sort of convincing power with anyone over the age of about 20, after about this time it would probably become too hard to reject the concept of God.

My message to all religious people is clear, stop holding your ‘faith’ in a separate part of your mind and bring it out into the real world. Don’t try to escape logical justification with such cheesy phrases as “Logic doesn’t apply to God” or “God exists in another dimension/galaxy/universe”, you’re really just lying to yourself. The sooner you learn to reject irrational concepts like Gods/Square Circles/2+2=5, the sooner you’ll learn to accept responsibility for what happens in your life and make better decisions, rather than just “deferring to God to handle the problem”.

The reason I argue so strongly against religion is because I regard it very much like a prison for the mind. I know that most religious people (especially older people who are more entrenched in their beliefs against all logic and evidence) who read this will not give it a moment’s thought. But for that small number of people (mostly young people) who may potentially read this and question God’s existence, you are the people for whom this post is intended. Whatever the truth may be (that god doesn’t really exist), you should embrace it, it is the only way you’ll free yourself.

People have a need for leadership

In continuing with my theme of destroying reasons to prefer democracy and governments over freedom, I’m going to attack this idea that “it is human nature to seek leadership”. It is so often that I hear this, that it really gets annoying after a while. Please note that I want to distinguish this from the standard “power corrupts” argument, I’ll do a post about that sometime in the future.

Ok, so if you think it is “human nature” to follow leadership, there’s one simple question that needs to be asked.

If we like following leaders voluntarily, why do they need to point guns at us?

If it really was human nature, then there would obviously be no need to enforce taxation or compliance with rules. So I think before you give me this argument, you need to consider whether this is actually an argument for government, or an argument against the idea of governments.

Also, another objection to this idea that “humans want to seek leadership” is that it’s not even consistent across all of humanity, because there are people who want to lead, and if you are leading, you obviously cannot also be following. So you’re creating two different kinds of people, where there aren’t really any biological differences between the two, so this theory is already looking shaky.

“Just go and politically campaign!”

This is yet another common objection, so its time to go over why anarchist libertarians don’t go and start up an “anarchist party” and play within the rules of democracy.

Saying that “You should just go start a political party” to solve the problems of some third party entity is ignoring what the situation is. If there is some child abuse group in the neighborhood, and you opposed it, would you then voluntarily go and join this group and try to infiltrate it, become the leader and stop it from abusing children? Of course not, you would denounce their acts as evil, and tell other people to stop supporting this child abuse group.

Saying “You should go and start a political party” is also ignoring the fact that the democratic system is ‘rigged’ (I don’t mean in a conspiracy sense here). I mean rigged in the sense that the government has become the means for “ill gotten gains” of certain groups within society, and these groups will never support the reduction/elimination of the very thing that is providing them with their ill gotten gains. A candidate who promises to “keep the government out of people’s lives” will just lose to one who promises the world to the citizens. Even if their policies only result in more poverty and violence. I think that the true purpose of government programs is to violently take the possessions of others, or enforce a particular way of doing things (special interests such as unions want to have more bargaining power so they push for favourable legislation, or big corporations might push for govt erected barriers to new competition)

This system of democracy and violent government imposition cannot be changed from within. To suggest that it can be, I think you really have to have the wrong idea about what government exists for. We will outgrow the idea of violent governments when more people see it as a ridiculous idea, like the idea of slavery being legitimate. People who realise child abuse is wrong, refuse to join or voluntarily support child abuse groups. Personally, this means I choose to spoil my ballot and I also choose not to work for the government.

“If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave”

“If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave”

This “love it or leave it objection” is an extremely common objection in defence of democracy and governments, so it’s worth dedicating an entire post to. I’ll put peoples’ common responses/objections in bold type.

One implication behind this idea is that the state can do no wrong to anyone within its borders. This is wrong because this justifies the state doing absolutely anything, so long as it is within its physical boundaries. (eg murdering people) Could some guy just come to your house and start stabbing you and then say “If you didn’t like it, you’d leave! So therefore I’m justified in stabbing you”? Obviously not.

But you broke the government laws, so therefore the violence against you is not unjust

Well we’re discussing where the moral authority of a government comes from, so this is committing the logical fallacy of begging the question. You can’t assume the government is right to make laws and then say that the fact that those laws exist makes it right. That’s circular reasoning and that won’t get us anywhere.

But people passively submit to the government by complying with its laws!

The fact that people obey certain laws/commands, is not itself an acceptance of those laws/commands. If some guy mugs you at gunpoint and you hand over your cash, does this really mean you consented to it? More likely you just did it because otherwise you would be locked up.

Besides, if the government really thought we’d all passively submit to its laws/taxation, why are guns even necessary to get us to pay its taxes and comply with its laws? Why not just make taxation voluntary then?

But the government provides you with a service!

The argument that the government “provides you a service” is not a fitting analogy because there are stark differences between voluntarily choosing services and government ’services’. With regards to government services, the public do not choose whether/when/where/what kind/who from/how much. Sure, you might argue that democracy is how these are decided, but that is only done on a collective level, the individual does not get any sort of final decision on what happens with their own money. To argue for democracy and these “decisions of the collective” is to argue against the notion that everybody is the sole owner of their own body and their own produce.

But the government is like your landlord, if you don’t like it, go find another landlord!

The landlord analogy also is not a fitting one, for more than one reason. First of all, there is no explicit contract that was signed by people for the governments services.

In order to actually legitimately demand that a person leaves a place, you need to be the legitimate owner of that land. I would argue that the state is not the legitimate owner of the land. This is because generally speaking, there were people who lived in each country and owned land before states were established in that country. Even in the case of government conquest of land, conquest is not a legitimate way to morally claim land, because it is indifferent from stealing land. There has never been a unanimous, voluntary agreement to hand over all property to the state.

The only way to continue to argue this “love it or leave it” objection in the face of what has been presented above is to use circular reasoning, assuming the very thing you’re trying to prove. You have to argue that everyone has tacitly agreed to hand over ownership to the state. This argument reduces to the absurd when you realise what it really means in the context of “love it or leave it”:

You’re basically arguing that by virtue of the fact that owners did not move their land to another country when the government asserted control, that they are tacitly accepting the states ownership over their land. Moving land is practically impossible, so ‘failure to move it’ could scarcely be regarded as tacit consent to the government claiming ownership of that land.

Why don’t you just try to keep the government small?

I used to fit into the category of minarchist, thinking that it would be possible to restrain the government and through this way, allow people more freedom to do what they want to do. I’ll be the first to admit that its an appealing position and argument, but I have recently realised that:

1. It is fantasy to think that the government can be restrained
2. Permitting government is still permitting evil, even if only a little bit

1. The most restrained state that ever came into existence would probably be the American Republic, and yet, look at how regulated they’ve become already! It only took them 100 years for civil war to break out, as well as ever escalating taxation. The power disparity is just too great for citizens to be able to hold their government in check. A vote does little to nothing against an institution that has the legal monopoly over the use of force, currency and laws. There is nothing external to the government that can really hold it in check, and its really funny how people think a “separation of the powers” accomplishes this.

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” –Frederic Bastiat

Has there ever been a state that remained small over the long run? I think that the potential for corruption is too great, which is why as long as the state exists, some people will use it to bludgeon other people and steal from other people.

2. If taxation is theft, then all taxation is theft. If it is wrong for the government to take away our self-ownership rights in some areas, then it must also be so for all areas that it enforces its will on us. Permitting the government to continue to exist is permitting evil to continue to exist. The minarchist position is like saying “oh if only we could decrease the number of beatings we get to once a week, that would be fine”.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” — Henry Thoreau

We must realise that government is the source of so much evil and so many of our problems. We must strike not at the branches of evil, but at the root.

Why government wants you to vote, and why you shouldn’t vote

The reasons the government wants people to vote:

• It keeps the public thinking that “the people” are the ones in control, which is itself a form of control over you
• In voting, you are legitimising the system
• In voting, you are supporting the use of violence to enforce your will on everybody else

Here’s why you shouldn’t vote:

We live in a cage with invisible bars, we are our own jail guards. We delude ourselves into thinking that the government is a “force for good”, when in reality, it can only be evil, since the means it uses (violent coercion) are evil. Legitimising the system is important for the continued survival of the concept of the state.

Without our own approval, if a truly large number of people stopped voting, this would destroy the idea that democracy is ‘government by the people for the people’. Instead, 2% of the people making the decisions for the entire government would really expose the illegitimate nature of the government.

I think the strongest argument against voting is the fact that if you think violent coercion is wrong, you are being inconsistent by voting. By voting for anybody other than an anarchist you are effectively saying to your political candidate, “Yes, I want you to use the guns, you should use violence to enforce this on everybody”.

“But the government isn’t violent towards me!”

So all my talk of government violence might be baffling you, seeing as you’ve never had the government commit violence against you. I’ll refer to parts of “A Handout for Statists” by Stefan Molyneux to explain this.

The simple reason for you not seeing the government violence is: You’re doing what it tells you. To see the violence, you actually have to disobey it first. In much the same way that a slave might have been lucky enough not to get a beating from his master, so long as he did his work. Does that mean he wasn’t actually a slave? Not really, the threat of beating still existed, which kept him in check in a fundamentally immoral way.

On the issue of “voluntarily paying taxes”, consider this: Do you find any government programs immoral? I mean anything! Most people would find the War in Iraq immoral, so lets use that as an example. You can just put whatever government program you disagree with in place of this.

If the war in Iraq is morally wrong, but it is only possible because you pay your taxes – and your taxes are not extracted from you through force – then you are voluntarily funding and enabling that which you call evil.

So your response might be that you pay your taxes because you’re a citizen of the country and that you should run for office to stop the war. Mr Molyneux produces a great analogy for this:

Molyneux: All right, if you were against child abuse, would you voluntarily fund a group dedicated to abusing children?

Statist: Of course not!

Molyneux: And if you did claim to be against child abuse, and you voluntarily funded a group dedicated to abusing children, and I said that you should stop doing that, and you replied that you would not – but that if someone did oppose this abusive group, they should try to infiltrate this group, take control of it, and somehow stop it from abusing children, would that make any sense at all?

If you think taxation is voluntary, and war is immoral, this is basically juxtaposing these 2 statements:

1. “I think war is wrong”
2. “I support my government voluntarily with my taxes, and it goes to war with this money”

How can you rationalise these two contradictory statements? The simple answer is: you can’t. On the other hand, if you:

• Shun the political process by spoiling your ballot, realising that taking part in democracy gives your approval to the immoral system and its effects
• Believe that taxation is not voluntarily paid to the government, it is paid based on the threat of future violence against your person

Then you are logically consistent in calling government programs like the Iraq War immoral.

Voting is supporting violence

Yes, I have chosen a deliberately inflammatory title, but with the Australian federal election almost upon us, I feel that it’s time to explain exactly why I think anybody civil enough to recognise the immorality of violence should abstain from voting (or spoil their ballot).

First of all, we need to realise that our rights are not subject to what the majority thinks. If 51% of people voted to murder somebody, does that make it moral? Obviously not, so when you think about it, our rights are not subject to government laws, politicians and majorities, they exist independently of these things.

Voting is committing an act of enormous presumption. You are presuming that you have the right to appoint a political ruler over other people.

The present voting system is based on the premise that fundamental rights can be gained or surrendered depending on the vote total.

If you think voting on murder still doesn’t make it alright, then I would say that you also disagree with this premise. Your rights don’t change because a certain number of people wrote numbers in boxes.

So where does the violence come in? It comes in if people were to reject the government’s authority over their person and property. For those people who don’t voluntarily submit to it, the government will have to use violence on that person to subdue them. So by voting, you are giving your approval to a system where the people who don’t comply with its laws have violence committed against them. What kind of society do we live in where we shoot/lock up people who disagree with the arbitrary use of force?

By voting, you are denying the inherent self-ownership rights that all human beings have. Instead, you’re saying “Yes, I am suggesting that this person is fit to rule over you, and if you don’t like it, he is allowed to use violence to make it so”. Democracy sucks.

For a swag of further reading for anyone interested on why not to vote, check these two lists out:
Lew Rockwell non-voting archive
Strike the Root non-voting archive

A video that will break your heart

When you salute the flag, you are standing in blood.