What Mário Ferreira dos Santos does in this work entitled Sobre Deus (About God) is remarkable. After a brief exposition on the scabrous subject, there follows a very high-level debate in which simply the best arguments for and against the existence of God are confronted. Mário, although he exposes his personal position on the issue beforehand, lets his opponents speak freely. The result is, above all, an enlightening work, whose outcome fatally exposes the terrible contradictions into which those who deny the existence of God throw themselves, that is, the existence of the supreme, eternal, self-sufficient, and indispensable creator. Logic dictates that we must admit it. But there is more, there is a very interesting effect resulting from Mário’s intellectual honesty and wisdom: there are no stronger, more complete and convincing arguments against the existence of God than those raised by Baron de Holbach; and these permeate the work unhindered, free to show their potency. It so happens that when confronted with the irrefutable logical proofs offered by the great scholars of the problem, the logical proofs that demand the existence of a creative principle and require of it the qualities that have generated so much controversy for so long, Holbach’s arguments lose their force, even though they are not being directly refuted. What an effect! Logic imposing itself sovereignly! Everything that could be said against God is said, and said emotively, eloquently, bringing together enough aspects to make no soul indifferent. And yet, the argument fails completely in the face of close examination…
Tag: philosophy
Hegel’s Conclusions
There are many bright spots in Hegel’s reasoning, but his conclusions always seem to fall into error. He praises renunciation and sacrifice, basing his reasoning on a mixture of logic and morality, and then proposes that both have to be done uselessly and automatically, not because of an individual manifestation of self-denial, detachment, kindness, empathy, or whatever, but because of the duty to fulfill an order of the State. What a conclusion! Following the philosopher, what is certain is that the disciple, practicing them in this way, will never know the real value of renunciation and sacrifice. It is as obvious as it is stupid to explain it: he who sacrifices a good to his neighbor when the latter is in need, is performing an action of immediate effect, and the sacrifice is therefore fruitful and virtuous; he who, on the other hand, sacrifices a good to the State, that is, to this corrupt, authoritarian, greedy and usurping organization, whose resources it plunders are largely used to maintain and expand the domination it exercises over individuals, the sacrifice is not only useless, but it also takes on the shape of an insult. How is it possible not to realize this? Not to mention that such sacrifice, in the latter case, is made by imposition, and that failure to comply with it implies punishment. Once again, since I am benevolent, I will not draw a conclusion.
The Noble Conscience
What a joy it is to accompany Hegel for hundreds of pages to then see him teach us that the noble conscience is the one that obeys, gagged and on its knees, the orders of the State. “Noble consciousness,” therefore, is the submissive consciousness, powerless before the “ruling power,” devoid of individuality, devoid, precisely, of any distinctive feature that could identify it as superior. If this is nobility, we can suppose Beauty as the aesthetics of rape and massive corruption of consciences.
The Spirit Inclined to Attachment
The spirit inclined to attachment is not prepared for this life. It will methodically be forced to swallow inevitable separations, which will less instruct it because they do not come from a conscious decision. It will be held hostage to circumstances and suffer from feeling powerless in the face of them. The ability to choose often to break up is rare, and is reserved only for those who understand and accept that everything in this world has to come to an end.