God’s Signature

Kurt Godel was killed by a paradox.  Not many people can say that or perhaps all of us can.  If you read my stuff then you know that paradoxes fascinate me.  (Something that looks contradictory, defies common sense and yet it may be true.)  That Jesus was both finite man and infinite God simultaneously is a paradox.  The existence of such things in an otherwise logical universe is a sign.  Actually the existence of mathematics is a sign.  Why should the universe be mathematically consistent?  Math works.  Everywhere. Should it?  How did it happen that math evolved with the universe?  It didn’t.  It couldn’t.  Math just is. It’s as if it were imposed on the universe by a very ordered, brilliant mind.

Godel showed that for any system or algorithm, there will be indisputable truths about the numbers within that cannot be proven.  There are limits to what we can prove.  His arguments were called the “Incompleteness Theorems.”  It was a breakthrough in logic that still is important today.  Probably the best way to express what he said in layman’s language is there are things that are “true but undecidable.”

An example is the famous paradox, “I am lying.”  If that is true then it’s false.  If it’s false then it’s true.  In other words, if I really am lying then the statement is true but then I am not lying so it’s false. If I am not lying then the statement is false but then I am lying so it’s true.  How can a single statement be both true and false at the same time?  True but undecidable.  It is one of the things that Math cannot describe and there are not very many things like that in the cosmos.

My life is filled with things like this.  I have the results of choices I have made which pummel me for having made the choice and this is alongside events that happen to me but which I did nothing to cause.  Happy’s car battery died (entropy…it happens) and it took me two hours to remove the old one and install a new one  (incompetence…I’m not sure how that happened.)  We all live rather casually with things that happen TO us alongside the things that happen BECAUSE of us.  We blame God for both of those when things go bad and take full credit when things go well.  Am I the captain of my fate or is fate the captain of me?  Yes.

I believe that God has placed the paradoxes here and forced us to live with them.  He did this to serve notice that He exists.  Math exists and works when there is no reason it should.  Man looks at it and says “math happens.”  God says, “No.  I designed it.  Any numbskull can see that.”

Kurt Godel dissolved into paranoia.  He became convinced that someone was poisoning his food in order to kill him.  So he didn’t eat, which killed him.  A contradiction killed him.  It defies common sense not to eat but then IF his food was poisoned, he shouldn’t eat it so that he would not die.  Yet if he did not eat, he WOULD die.  Killed by a paradox.  They are everywhere and so is God.  They are His signature.

Romans 120 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

2 thoughts on “God’s Signature

    • You and I are on the same page. It seems like I discover a new paradox every month but I forget to write them down…

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