Picture This

When encountering a Christian giving a mini testimonial, there are certain phrases you might hear. "Before I knew Christ...," "Before I converted...," "If I hadn't ___, then..." are a couple that come to mind. One time at Mass, one of these types of thoughts came out of nowhere to grab my attention: "If God didn't exist...." It's an interesting phrase. When it's used, the unspoken assumption tends to be that life as we know it would still be, well, as we know it. Maybe a couple specific tweaks depending on the argument, but at its core, the person speaking assumes existence. I know that approach has its place, but what if that thought is followed along the lines of what theists believe.

Theists believe that God is the creator of everything. So, if God didn't exist, nothing would exist. Close your eyes and try picturing that.

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Ok, you got your picture? I'm going to assume your first thought was like mine - I pictured darkness. Well, if nothing exists, then darkness doesn't exist. You can argue that it's the absence of light, but light is required to exist somewhere for that word to have any sort of meaning. So that's not quite right. Close your eyes and try again.

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What have you got now? Well, if you're like me and imagined a void, that still doesn't quite work. A void assumes that there is some sort of substance around it. It's close, but it still implies existence of some sort. Let's back away from the physical. Try to imagine nothing along the lines of the intangible.

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Again, I don't know what you came up with, but I can talk about what I did. What came to my mind was stagnancy. It's the best we can do to describe time not existing. However, there's another problem. Being stagnant implies a sense of place, whether that is in time or space. It also is a state or adjective. Adjectives or states can only apply to things. Thus, if nothing exists, then stagnancy also cannot exist.

Alright, I'll stop trying to hurt your brain now. What I want to get at is that we cannot actually grasp non-existence. We can try to describe it and have a feel for what it isn't, but there isn't much of anything that we can say it is. Our concept of nothingness can only be understood in the context of "somethingness."

This is the type of thought that would get me freaked out as a child. When I was in kindergarten, every once in a while I would be laying in my bed at night trying to imagine death if Heaven didn't exist. (Yes, I know, pretty morbid for a child.) Trying to imagine not existing left me pinned to my bed in fear of death. I knew that if I had this whole God thing wrong, that is what we would be left with. I am glad that we have reassurance that this is not the case (here is an example from someone who's from the Milwaukee area). So rest assured that this thought exercise is but an exercise. :)

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