(October 31, 2010 at 7:53 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: I believe everything exists.
I don't believe God exists. I don't believe miracles exist. I don't believe magic exists.
How is this not a contradiction?
Because I don't believe God, miracles or magic are things. That's why they don't exist.
Everything exists because there's no such thing as a non-existent thing. Because to exist, is to be something, is to be a thing.
That sounds a lot like Ludwig Wittgenstein. To quote from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
Quote:1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.
2 What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of affairs.
2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things).
2.011 It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs.
2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the
state of affairs must be written into the thing itself
