What is a god?

[Purple Rabbit]

That's right EvF, you'll have to verify the meaning of the book in the real world.

Suppose there is this little book with in it just one statement. Let's say it reads "A=A". That's all.

The statement itself is valid, sound and logically true. You can't dispute it in that way. It's called the Law of Identity (LoI) in cicles of mathematics and philosophy. And maybe a religion can be build on that statement alone. Deducing the absolute truth from it.

As a matter of fact I have encountered a web community that indeed does so. They read subtle and profound meaning in this simple statement. Their point is that the statement is irrefutable. It cannot be denied, much like the christian dogma about the bible being absolute truth. They claim LoI to be absolute truth, i.e. that it applies to every possible world. And that it is beyond all logical systems invented by man, while supporting them all. In their eyes it cannot be formulated in any falsifiable way. For how can absolute truth be formulated in a falsifiable way? In their eyes it is knowledge that is beyond mathematical truth. As an example I give you a typical quote I encountered:

All things are caused, or, A=A as the basis of causality where "cause" is defined as "that which is necessary for something to exist":

Under this definition of "cause" it becomes immediately apparent that all things are caused - since any given thing requires what it is not for its existence ( its "being" is necessitated by relation to other things): those other things are necessary to its existence and are therefore causal to it. Any thing is caused by "not that thing". In many respects this is a re-stating of the above and conveys the same essential meaning. In Buddhism this is known as co-dependent origination - that things gives rise to each other due to the necessity of their relation.

So there is a relation being made to buddhism and holistic thinking. A truly new religion is born with dogma, unfalsifiable claims of absolute truth and strict interpretation of holy words.

Well, where are they wrong? The Law Of Identity is true in every sense you can think of. Or is it?

Their claim is that it applies to every possible world, so it has to apply to the world we see around us. Can we verify in the real world that A is A? Well, as a matter of fact it turns out that there are some philosophers that have pondered this seemingly futile question, among them Leibniz, Kant and G.E. Moore (the origin of LoI is possibly falsely ascribed to Aristotle though). It lead to the formulation by Leibniz of the so called Identity of Indiscernibles. In short it reads that no two objects exactly resemble each other. And this poses a serious threat on the application of A=A to our world, for it means we have to know all properties of an object A to identify it properly and to be able to equate it to an object we earlier identified as A. But at the same time we can in reality never be sure to know ALL it's properties. Because that would imply that we had access to absolute truth beforehand. In other words, there is a fundamental problem with applying A=A to our world because we have no direct access to truth. We have to observe, to measure and to assume identity. This is closely connected to the central question of epistomology: how can we know anything? It turns out that there is no shortcut to glory in the real world, no A is because A is. Only the all-knowing, if such beings exist at all, have access to absolute truth. Fallible beings need means of verification and falsification. So we arrive at the insight that verification or falsifiability is central to human knowledge.

Btw, the analogy of christian dogma with the A=A religion is not overly accurate, but not to the advantage of christianity. A=A is in itself logically sound, valid and consistent where the bible arguably fails these logical tests.

When you say that the bible is truth, it is you who is uttering the words, not a deity that has reveiled him/her/itself to everyone. Therefore you as a fallible person will be held accountable for the claim you make and the call for falsifiable and verfiable evidence is the only way in which we as fallible beings can possibly exchange information about the world that we share.