Chapter Five
REDEFINING GOD
Shortly after the American Revolution, a Revolution was unleashed in France in the name of the Rights of Man. In contradistinction to the Revolution created in America, the French Revolution did not define individual rights as an inalienable gift of the Creator. Instead, government was proclaimed to rest solely on the will of the people. The will of the masses of people was held to be the self-evident source of Right, and a self-evident justification for government. This shift in the justification of government echoes loud in the world today.
Modern nations like China, the USSR, and myriad satellite nations, have copied the French Revolution's example and eliminated any words that refer to the plan of an out-there-somewhere Creator whose will is declared to be the source of government authority. These governments have made it appear that the purpose of government need not be defined by referring to theological concepts or ideas. But appearances can be deceiving.
Much, if not all, of the confusion about government in the minds of people today can be traced to the fact that many people have been led to believe that government can be understood without god being a factor in the equation that leads to understanding. Now it is possible to refuse to use the word "god" in justifying government but it is impossible to escape the fact that whatever word you decide to substitute in its place, you are still pointing to exactly the same things that were historically pointed at by the word "god."
Modern governments that follow the example set by the French Revolution still rely, for the foundation upon which their government is erected, on a definition of cause and effect that explains the same relationships between governed and government that was historically explained by the concept of the will of the Creator. They simply use different words to talk about the same thing. The Creator and Cause are synonymous terms that always point to precisely the same referent. When people look for the Cause of something they might mistakenly point to the wrong thing, but in their search they are looking for exactly the same thing people have historically called "the Creator". Since Government is, by definition, the instrument through which cause and effect are controlled, an analysis of government and a justification for government must inevitably rely on words that define First Cause.
For example, a simplistic understanding of the process of evolution theorizes that life began in the primordial ooze containing all the chemical elements in solution. Life originated when an unknown group of chemical elements combined in a unique way to produce a thing that could reproduce itself. This thing evolved into all the forms of life on earth today.
What "caused" those chemical elements to intermingle and produce life, some evolutionists tell us, is called Chance. Chance is the First Cause that fulfills the same function historically attributed to the Creator. Even though the same phenomenon--Cause--is being explained, the referent for the word has been changed from a Being with a Mind and a Will and a Plan to which people are subject, to a mindless force--Chance--controlled by the laws of probability--laws of probability defined by the mind of man.
Everything any person believes to be true about government is built upon what that person presumes to be the self-evident Truth about Cause. For example, in the beginning of the preceding chapter I wrote these words, "Everything is subject to government. Everything." In effect, I justified the necessity of government by presupposing that all things are governed. Since I presumed to declare that all things are governed, it logically followed that we must have government. I declared Government to be a self-evident fact of the created order that existed regardless of what people thought or wanted. The Cause of government was defined by me to be a force that existed outside ourselves that forced us to move in obedience to the will of that force. Given my presupposition, the only question remaining was what kind of government are people forced to obey. Now it is theoretically possible to deny my presupposition. But to do so would require defining all the order in the universe supposedly perceived by people throughout history as something approaching illusion. Such a theory would remove the idea of an order that had been imposed upon creation to which the mind of man is subject, and substitute in its place an idea that defines all appearance of order as a creation of the mind of man. The mind of man would then be seen to be the source or Cause of order, and if of order, of government. Since Cause is synonymous with the Creator, and since the mind of man had been defined as the Source or Cause of order, it must logically follow that the mind of man is, according to this theory, god.
Much has been written in an attempt to explain how the idea of God has been eliminated from the thought process of people on this planet. The influence of philosophers like Emmanuel Kant on the thought process of modern man has been well documented. Everything that has been written can be easily summarized: many people became convinced that there is no longer any need for the idea of an out-there somewhere Creator with a Will and a Mind and a Plan of His Own, these people became persuaded that people can explain everything in the universe without relying on that idea.
Anyone who desires to understand government as it exists on this planet today must be willing to seriously consider the fact that there are many extraordinarily gifted and learned people who firmly believe that the mind of man is the only source of order in the universe. These gifted people do not believe there is a Being outside the mind of man that man is obligated to obey. In fact they believe that anyone who believes in the actual existence of such a Being is deluded by superstition.
There are others, though, who are equally gifted and learned who believe there is a Creator out there with a mind and will of his own who has imposed an order upon the universe that people are obligated to obey.
The presence of these two diametrically opposed world views held by people who are proselytizing with all their might means that the world is being divided into two camps: one camp believes there is a creator out there somewhere with a mind and will of his or her own who created the order we see around us; the other camp believes the will of man is the only source of order on this planet. Such a drastic division of the peoples of the earth into opposing camps harbingers great dangers in an age of nuclear proliferation.
Between these two opposing camps stands a third group of people. They have viewed the dangers confronting us and have concluded that the main threat to the survival of our species comes from people who presume to be certain that they know anything well enough to call their knowledge Truth. This camp would have us believe that the search for Truth itself is the root of the problems threatening our survival. They would have us decide we can know nothing with certainty and therefore any person who imposes their will on another person is by definition certainly wrong. They would solve the problem of clashing truths between governments by convincing public opinion to abandon the search for truth.
In theory, their analysis offers some comfort to people befuddled by the amazingly complex world in which we live. In theory, the loss of certainty would be a small price to pay for the survival of our species. But some things require something approaching absolute certainty. Government is one of those things. Government is the process through which the will of one is enforced on the will of another. No power of will is present unless certainty is present. Governments do not last very long unless the people involved with those governments are very close to absolutely certain they are supposed to survive.
There has never been a period in history when the will to govern was absent on this planet. Somebody has always been willing to do the job. But whose will actually provides the force of government has undergone drastic changes throughout the course of history.
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