Anyone who knows me, also knows how much I like to browse fictional bookshelves. This was not always something I would admit. There was a time when I too suffered from the mistaken notion that reading fiction was of somewhat lesser importance to reading fact.
It's now when I know better that I can say that most written material that portrays itself as fact is really fiction, and probably more fictional than those books like my own (now) that claim to be almost totally fictional. I dare anyone to find a real fact in anything I have ever read or written. No, the world of writing is almost always fictional.
That's ok! People can cope with a fictional world. There is no necessity for what you read to be fact, starting with Santa Claus! How boring would life be without this strange man or idea of a man who lives forever.
The Most Amazing Fiction:
Closer to home, we have God, the most mythical being ever and the most fictional character to be found ever. What would our world be like without God?
Even though God as a human being is fiction, we have a very strong sense that God matters, and in that sense God is very real. God is a paradox being fictional and real at the same time. Jesus as a human likewise is fictional and real at the same time.
People could argue to their death that God and Jesus do not and did not ever exist, but they would miss the point. We have the capacity and the potential for God and Jesus to exist in our mind and that is sufficient.
Others will add to the reality of God that was created in the past just as one might create a chair and add legs and cushions. We see a chair and we don't say it does not exist. We experience God and we don't experience that God does not exist. Did we create the chair any more than we created God?
Some readers are now thinking, oops blasphemy, Arthur said that God does not exist! Or, perhaps, they have moved on to another site.
Well, really does it matter what I say, even if I say God is fictional. We all know that there is no human being, God. Thus, God as a human being is entirely fictional since God is not real, reality being material.
Since the past does not now exist then God does not exist as Jesus, even if he was once a human being because Jesus no longer exists as a human being. Jesus is not material. Matter is not reality. Matter is fictional. Now is a fictional notion.
Logic as Serving an Uncertain Purpose:
Should I make my point? Well, it is that we live in a dream world. There is no proof of reality, only our speculation based on what we feel, see, hear, touch, and taste, ... or know about in other ways. God is entirely an abstraction to us. God is not real now because we don't see time as anything but a flow. There is no real present only a stream of presents that make up what we make out to be reality, but which is really fictional, like a dream!
Wait a minute! Is there a flaw in the logic of my logic? If we are not what we think we are, then God may be more real than we think. We should really know ourselves, but we don't, any more than we can claim to know God.
Ask yourself whether God existed before you existed and you will be surprised what you find out.
Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2268000
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Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.
