Year-end list of unfounded propositions

Here is Grow Mercy’s year-end list of 40 unfounded propositions, or, things I believe in but can’t prove: (For fun and profit, try your hand at your own.)

Time, love, touch, the efficacy of hugs;
the necessity of a Kierkegaardian leap;
that the big bang was engineered;
that there may be life on Gliese 581 C, and if so Harvey Pekar now lives there;
the existence of discrete math, quarks, other minds, certified psychics, Peter Popoff, and evil soccer-angels;
that the mind is not separate from the body;
that a sock prefers the single life;
that if scientists were mere sceptics we still wouldn’t know about the Copernican system of planetary movement;
that extraordinary claims do not immediately need extraordinary evidence;
that beauty is its own proof;
that if everything was verifiable life would cease to be;
that doubt is necessary and healthy but that the spirit of scepticism is a sickness;
that most things we hold as true are by way of other authorities;
that it was exalted certainty that sent the boxcars to Birkenau and not iffy disconsolate minds;
that to live without faith is impossible and to attempt it is a castration of life;
that there are more than a few fish swimming around with coins in their mouths;
that desire is three-sided, and its nature is mimicry;
that if and when we humans become fully real we will no longer impose ourselves upon creation but see ourselves as one aspect;
that Gary Larson is not an earthling;
that science is humble in theory but not so much in practise and that this is what it has in common with religion;
that faith needs a frame, and reason needs a trellis;
that we are not born with an existential void but develop it over time;
that the non-existence of God can be proven by symbolic logic;
that a formally valid argument can nevertheless be false; 
that the argument of infinite regression is absurd;
that the earth rests on the back of a turtle…and that there are turtles all the way down;
that positive universal claims and negative existential claims are not testable in all possible worlds;
that all crows are black, except for one or two, maybe; 
that presuppositions are held viscerally and emotionally and half-consciously;
that God is a verb and not a noun and that existence is not a property;
that the word piffle can be appropriately applied to a plethora of propositions;
that our deepest and dearest beliefs are not logically verifiable;
that miracle is still the best term to describe the origin of life;
that hope and mercy are stronger than hate and violence.

6 Comments

  1. This is lovely, thoughtul and humorous, and I think I would do well if I remembered that God will provide for us this new year, and it will probably be in an unexpected way, as he likes to do…

    “…there are more than a few fish swimming around with coins in their mouths.”

    May God bless you with just enough hunger that you long for Him, and enough fullness that you sleep in peace.
    Pam M.

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