Meditation 09
Article 2 - Revised
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Some of you may have noticed that Article 2 of the Articles of Faith has been amended. Article 2 used to read as follows:
2. If there is a Supreme Being, then that Being is entirely apathetic to events in our universe.
It was pointed out to me that this formulation of Article 2 claimed knowledge of the motivations of a hypothetical God - a God which according to Article 1 was unknowable. Thus our Articles of Faith contained a logical inconsistency within them. Even though I have long acknowledged this problem, I have resisted change. But our philosophy here is about truth; about what can be known and what cannot be known. Accordingly Article 2 has been reformulated as follows:
2. If there is a Supreme Being, then that Being appears to act as if entirely apathetic to events in our universe.
That's a little more wishy-washy than the earlier version, but better reflects what we can possibly know.
Addendum: Even though this change was made, I still get messages stating that Article 2 makes a claim about knowing the motivation of a hypothetical god. That is not correct. It deals with a human opinion about the apparent motivation of a hypothetical god