Introduction
The first “rule” any junior manipulator has to learn in order to do his/her job well is: “Truth and knowledge are unsellable goods.” Or, more plainly: “No one believes those who speak the truth.”
So, if they want to get somebody to pay attention to what they are saying, if they wish to “save the lost souls”, win elections, or simply, make some money, they have to adjust themselves to the level of consciousness of not so intelligent majority, fill the truth and knowledge with mysticism, change them beyond recognition… In a sentence: to turn wisdom, quality, or what- ever into bullshit. Finally, they wrap it in a shiny paper, put it on the market, and hope that nobody realizes that bullshit in a stylish package is still bullshit.
Not so long ago, while browsing the Internet, I stumbled upon a book titled God is Nothingness: Awakening to Absolute Non -Being. There were many favourable reviews. Guessing that it had something to do with Siddhārtha Gautama (Buddha) and his teaching, I started reading it. However, at page 3, I pressed the X button at the top right corner of the screen.
It took me less than a minute to see that the author of the book was/is a fraud – the Preface starts with the following sentence: “This is a book about Nothingness…” and then comes more than seventy pages of “somethingness”.
It was just another disappointing example of how a wonderful and unambiguous insight of one brilliant mind was turned into nonsense.
This “incident” was a trigger, but the real inspiration for the response in the form of The One Who is… NOT was a number of YouTube debates on God, afterlife, the origin of life… I have seen in the last couple of years. Most of them were interesting, some of them were funny, but all of them were basically meaningless or useless.
Now, was it a too presumptuous thing to say? …No, not at all. I will not get into detail now. That is what the book is about. For the moment, suffice it to say that I find it interesting (and this is an understatement) that the people who are watching or listening to these discussions fail to notice one particular thing: Essentially, there is no difference between participants of the debates. Or, to be fair, yes indeed, there is one major distinction – atheists are at least honest. But, the bottom line is this: What they do not know is exactly that what religious people do not know.
Let me explain by giving a sort of a “two-fold” example.
According to the latest statistics, about 85% of the world’s population are the people who enjoy reading stuff like this:
“To continue in atheism, I would need to believe that nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I simply didn’t have that much faith.”
And, on the other hand, there are about 15% of those who will appreciate the following “counter-proclamation”:
“To continue in theism, I would need to believe that God produces everything, God produces life, God produces fine tuning, God produces consciousness, and God produces reason… And I would still not have the slightest idea about anything.”
Is it clear? Two sides of the same coin. And again, the only distinction is that the author of the first statement thinks his words are enormous intellectual achievement or the proof of wisdom.
But they are not – in order to be a believer (or non-believer), person has to be neither curious nor talented, neither educated nor intelligent… He or she just has to adopt some information without questioning.
It is even worse if you are an individual with an academic title or someone who considers himself/herself a scientist and says things like:
- “For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… (Max Planck)
- “…at the bottom of the glass of natural sciences God is waiting for you.” (Werner Heisenberg)
Namely, even though your words sound well and appealing to religious people, and, for some vague reason, you are treated as indisputable authority on the subject, these sentences mean only one thing – your entire schooling, research, and invested effort were pointless, a waste of time. It turned out that you acquired a lot of information, made some discoveries, wrote a few books…, but, nevertheless, remained ignorant.
There is no difference between ordinary, blue-collar believers and physicists who “discover” a supernatural person or being called God at the end (?) of their quest.
…Or those who do not believe.
Anyway, the real issue here is not ignorance itself – if you do not know something, you admit it and stop talking, there is no harm done, nothing bad will happen.
Trouble arises when people start discussing things they know nothing about and yet strongly believe in what they are saying – convinced that they are right.
Trouble escalates when those who listen to such manipulators like their words and accept them as “true”. At that moment ignorance converts into “knowledge” and is rarely questioned. Eventually, hardly anyone notices anything unusual or strange when someone starts explaining nothingness; describes red colour to a blind person; writes a poem about silence; gives an account of after death experience…
In brief, that is how, perfidiously and imperceptible, without any noteworthy resistance, false knowledge pervaded every sphere of human life (science included).
Mankind has mutated into a dull-witted species addicted to emotions and illusions.
Consequently, describing things which cannot be described, or which do not exist has become perfectly normal, and taking meaningless things and ideas seriously has been a mandatory part of upbringing and education for some time now.
So, as it happens, this book simply states the obvious – that “the emperor has no clothes” and, what’s more, he is not the only one.
It exposes all aspects of false knowledge, its source(s), and brings the old good news back: it can be beaten – the truth is attainable.
Yes, it is possible to know, or, more accurately, to reach the point from which any further search is non-productive, and words stop. …Become irrelevant.
In order to know the truth, or anything else, all one has to do is to find out what it is not. There is no other effective way.
And, here is how it is done.