God as Nothing
exploring an ancient theme in the Judaeo-Christian tradition: If 'God' is the answer to the question "Why does anything exist, rather than nothing?", then the word 'God' cannot be the name of something that exists. This exploration accompanies the publication of a book, God as Nothing, available at a discount from Writing Scotland here: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/God-Nothing-Why-exist-wrong-question/32191591728/bd
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I have been thinking about grammar in Sacred Scripture. Well, why not? We think about vocabulary when we think about the Bible. We ask what this word means and that word means. We think about manuscripts, because there are thousands of variant readings in the Bible, and different manuscripts which people have made over the…
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This little thought is something I wrote for the Substack of my publisher, Darton, Longman & Todd. I share it here…. Most of the people I love are actually atheists. That’s how they see themselves. Family, friends, colleagues, comrades in politics – they will often say, with firm conviction, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ And…
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‘A picture held us captive.And we could not get outside it,for it lay in our languageand language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.’ (L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §115) When we first learned our native language, our ‘mother-tongue’, most of us learned nouns first, later progressing to verbs, prepositions, adjectives and the rest.…
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I’m very pleased to announce today the publication of the book, God as Nothing. For forty years I have been turning this one thought over and over in my mind. I wrote about it in my undergraduate dissertation in 1985, taught about it at Edinburgh University, and spent countless very enjoyable evenings discussing it with…
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One of the things that constantly draws me back to thinking about this idea of God as Nothing is the frustration of listening to so many conversations between ‘believers’ and ‘atheists’, each side digging into their respective positions, mutually uncomprehending, often mocking each other, or expressing concern for one another’s sanity or intelligence. Because it…
God as Nothing 