How God Created the Universe

A Testament to the Supremacy of Identity

W A Dunkley

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Copyright © 2019 W A Dunkley

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Dedicated to the supreme power that created the universe and the hope of its acknowledgment in the mind of man

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Contents

Chapter 1: The First Principle

Chapter 2: The Monumental Denial

Chapter 3: What is the God of the Universe?

Chapter 4: Things, Time, Identity, and Change

Chapter 5: How God Created the Universe

Chapter 6: Finality and Nonlocality

Chapter 7: The God of Reason

Glossary of Terms

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#  The First Principle

Humanity seems to emerge into existence and a world, unknowing and destined to leave still to a great degree, unknowing. Much of what one encounters, from the nature of fellow humans to the structure of existence itself, serves as a cloche and barricade to ultimate reality. The smallest fraction among them will cast aside the human proclivity for fantasy and delusion, find and cling tenaciously to a single absolute. Armed with nothing but this one absolute, they assault the barriers to knowledge and understanding. They may have no academic, intellectual, or scientific status or even any allies in their quest, but it is they who are the true philosophers.

While it is said to be difficult to define, metaphysics is simply the study of existence, as such. It is a search for universal truths and a comprehensive and fundamental understanding of existence. The principle of noncontradiction, for example, is a principle of being as such. It is germane to the study of economics, but it is not a principle of economics per se; it is relevant to the study of physics, but it is not a law of physics per se. The law of noncontradiction, which states the law of identity in reverse, is a law of metaphysics, of existence as such, and is pertinent to everything.

Metaphysical study should begin with an examination of the axiom and ask the question: "What may one hold to be true of reality, by virtue of the fact that one knows that all A is A?" Obviously, metaphysical investigation should not require special knowledge, limited to a certain field and, in fact, should not constitute specialized knowledge, as it is general and applicable to all study. Today, unfortunately, metaphysical examination and pondering is most certainly an exceptional effort. Metaphysical investigation itself has become heterodox. It is entirely out of fashion.

Instead of rational metaphysical inquiry, there is metaphysical deconstructionism serving only the purposes of making meaningful philosophical thought impossible. While it deceives the practitioner into believing they are winning a debate over reason itself, it is only their own minds that they are negating. Philosophy has degenerated into the art of obscurantism. It has become a discipline worthy only of the attention of confidence men, shyster lawyers, politicians, and other professional liars. This does not refute the meaningfulness and importance of a true metaphysical inquiry and discipline.

True metaphysical investigation must begin with the axiom. It is the fountainhead of all human knowledge. It cannot be replaced with empirical science. Nor can it be replaced with religion, which is just primitive, arbitrary, and rationally unjustified metaphysics. The sad state of this noble and monumentally important pursuit of truth is exemplified by the fact that the very word "metaphysical" is now often seen as synonymous with a belief in magic. Metaphysical questions are associated with mental illness. Perhaps seen as a threat to religious fantasy, abstinence from serious metaphysical inquiry is practiced with religious devotion.

While it may be primarily used as an alternative term for metaphysics, the two fundamental branches of philosophy, metaphysics, and epistemology, the study of the means by which we acquire knowledge, may be combined and referred to as first philosophy. Metaphysical matters are inescapable. The attempt to separate epistemology from metaphysics is foolish with a predictable nihilist result because, in the end, it divorces epistemology, and therefore the very pursuit of knowledge, from reality. It is also significant to note that when the metaphysical philosopher embraces the axiom as the supreme law of existence, this constitutes a fundamental epistemological claim to knowledge. The absolute ground of existence and knowledge are discovered together, and the fact that one is discovering both must be recognized. It is not enough for the axiom to be regarded as a principle of reason. It must be recognized as metaphysical truth; it must be acknowledged as ontological or it is not meaningful as a principle of reason.

So, these branches of philosophy, metaphysics, and epistemology, in fact, must be approached together, as they are intimately related, and it would be impossible successfully to address one separate from the other. They are, in fact, founded on the same first principle. The first principle of reason is also the supreme law of existence. It could not serve as the first, without being acknowledged as the latter and the axiom could not be known as the supreme law of existence without being acknowledged as fundamental knowledge. The law of identity, standing and regarded as just a principle of reason has had a calamitous effect on philosophy and the human mind. Knowledge is grounded in a metaphysical principle, and it must be regarded as such. The absence and rejection of metaphysics make knowledge impossible.

It is an incontrovertible truth that all A is A. Things are what they are. Everything else that exists must possess self-sameness. This, the law of identity is the most basic axiom. An axiom is a self-evident truth; it proves itself. Axioms are also sometimes referred to as necessary truths because it is rationally inconceivable that they could be false.

There is an incalculable number of necessary truths, but there is only one basic axiom, the law of identity. Many commonsense assumptions are thought to be necessary truths but may, in fact, not be true at all. The failure to distinguish between self-evident truth and commonsense assumptions has contributed to the erosion of man's intellectual confidence while conversely, his worldview has become more sophisticated. The axiom is not an assumption, but when widely held commonsense assumptions turn out to be false, as they often have, the axiom is seen to have fallen.

Self-evidence declares identity. Any axiom, if indeed it is a true axiom, is such because it asserts self-sameness. This is the monistic view of axioms. The law of non-contradiction simply states the law of identity in the negative. It states there can be no non-identity. The most basic example of a contradiction may be expressed as A is not A. It is by no means trivial to point out that this is also the most basic example of a lie.

Such a blatant lie seldom stands naked, but it is the vulgar fraud that steals beneath the glorified loose-mouthed insinuation of mysticism. It is, therefore, poetic irony when the critics of non-contradiction fall back on a childish puzzle fittingly called the liar's paradox. If one wishes to understand the absolute corruption of the mysticism that grips humanity, it is found in the recognition that the embracing of contradiction is not only a lie, but that it is the fundamental falsehood that all lies mirror.

It was with profound irony when the British philosopher Bertrand Russel lamented "one of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." This same philosopher once referred to philosophy as "on the whole a rather hopeless business." Knowledge, justifiable certainty, is undoubtedly not discovered as easily as the false confidence of the fool. Humanity, nonetheless, need not be doomed to observe mindless fools follow mindless fanatics as the more intellectually talented among them stand idle and endlessly confused. This is the result of the failure of philosophy as Bertrand Russel and others seem to be implying, but never explicitly accepting blame. It is philosophy, nonetheless, that has brought this condition to humankind, and philosophers such as Russel have done little to change this. It is the failure of the philosophers, the result and perhaps the purpose of such philosophy that has turned any claim of certainty into the delusion of the feeble minded.

Once comprehended and understood, nonetheless, the real claim to, and ground of knowledge is an idea that could be grasped even by the less intellectually gifted. The self-imposed thoughtlessness and entrenched stupidity that has dominated humankind has been the result of self-deception, much more than a lack of intelligence.

It is the function of philosophy to formally and explicitly formulate the axiom and recognize its significance and meaning. Historically, philosophy has failed, and humanity is offered mindless indulgence and mystic fantasy as the only alternatives to unfulfilled, intellectual effectiveness and potency. This has constituted the most appalling and catastrophic failure in human history and experience.

At least, nonetheless, a latent, implicit acknowledgment is and must be present for humans to think. Necessary truth is implicit in any rational assessment of perceptual information. This implicit common sense has never been completely transformed into knowledge. Unable to achieve its proper status, this common sense, loathed and attacked, can only depreciate and decline. This can be seen in the horrendous intellectual environment, especially in a social or political atmosphere or controversy.

Even among those who present well-reasoned ideas and arguments, when viewed and scrutinized in the broader context of the philosophy or religiosity they embrace, would make such reason groundless and unprovable. Reason is embraced and employed in some matters while other subjects are left to fantasy and mysticism, seemingly unaware that one negates the other. For one who understands this, the abject absurdity of this compartmentalization is truly disheartening. It is not a matter of embracing the right beliefs, for it is not right to just believe. Humanity must rise above belief and discover knowledge.

Objectivity is rooted in the fact that the axiom is the most supreme law of existence. The first principle can provide us with a simple, provable concept of objective reality. The objectivity of reality simply means that things, primarily, are what they are. The objectivity of reality is grounded in the fact of identity. It is significant to note in this context that calls to accept objective reality in hard to accept circumstances, are often expressed with an axiom such as "well it is what it is."

Even if one assumed that one is in a world such as what was portrayed in the fantasy film, The Matrix, a world where all perception is somehow manipulated would not obliterate our basic metaphysical concepts. It would still be a rational world. Identity and causality would still exist. Even the concept of material objects in such a world would still have a reference to something that exists, thought something very different than what we thought. Existence nevertheless, would still be objective. If one lived in such a world, then one lives there, and that would be an objective truth. As mystics have stated with contempt, identity and the law that asserts it is immutable. This is what objective reality means within the context of the philosophy of Identism, the philosophy presented in this work, and it is the only conception of it that it embraces. Things do not exist independent of thought and feeling. Thought and feeling exist; they exist as factors.

Even the existence of subjectivity is objective. One's thoughts, hopes, or prejudices, while they may not represent the exercise of objective reasoning, are part of reality and possess identity. Whatever its causes, and effects they may have, the existence of subjectivity can only be so because its existence concurs with the fact of identity.

The formulation of the axiom is the simplest but most profound product of human creativity. That simple act of creativity provides the most basic premise of reason. It is this modest unassuming but certain truth that elevates man's notions about the world to the lofty status of knowledge (i.e., truth held with justifiable certainty.) All knowledge, even firsthand perception, is ultimately validated by this first principle and the existence of identity.

Logic and perception are both founded on the same first principle of metaphysics. Logic might be characterized as applied metaphysics, but much to the discontent of empiricist, so too, could science and the scientific method. Axioms are basic, straight on, assertions of identity, while logical truths are more complex assertions of identity. If a notion, thought to be a logical truth, cannot be reduced to an assertion of identity, then it is not a logical truth.

Identity exists, but the axiom is a human creation. It exceeds even the innovation of money, something used as a medium of exchange and store of value, as the greatest invention in human history. Without a medium of exchange, advanced civilization would be impossible, but without at least an implicit embrace of the axiom, of logical truth, no human reason is possible. Any evaluation of perceptual information involves the employment of logical truth. Interestingly, historically, necessary truth is perhaps the only thing that has been despised, scorned, and ridiculed more than money.

Criminals and mystics have managed to take both of these greatest of human values and twist, pervert, and manipulate them into weapons of control and plunder. Nonetheless, the concept of identity has been embattled by the mistakes of the well intending. Such is the case with those who have held identity to be synonymous with existence.

Defining identity as existence obliterates a critically important concept. The Identist concept of identity, the view that the axiom is ontological; that is; describes, asserts, and proves the existence of self-sameness; differs from this tragically erroneous classic conception. This view holds that A is the identity of A, that identity is another word for existence.

It has been maintained that to hold identity as a part of reality is much like seeing identity as a coat of paint applied over a house. This is not a good analogy at all for the existence of self-sameness. Identity is not an afterthought. The notion that the Identist concept of identity is Platonic, implying some sort of abstract world, is false. The concept of identity is abstract only in the same respect that all parts of existence are abstract. They are parts mentally abstracted of the totality of existence. The Platonic notion of some domain of a ghostly abstract outline of reality is particularly inapplicable to identity. There is nothing that can be abstracted from identity. Identity is irreducible. Identity exists in the only reality, the reality that it creates.

Identity is not a product of the things that possess it. The things that possess identity, everything else that exists, is ultimately a product of identity. A much better analogy than a coat of paint would be to compare identity to the atoms that comprise the house. One can strip away the paint; yet, one would still have a house. On the other hand, you could remove paint, doors, or windows, whatever parts you remove, the house would still contain atoms and so too, would the parts that you remove. Self-sameness is even more fundamental than atoms; its removal is rationally inconceivable.

The law of identity does not grant us omniscience, but it does tell us something that is true of everything. If we fail to acknowledge this, then we know nothing. Consider such a phony esoteric statement as "the law of identity breaks down at the quantum level" or "the subject transcends the naive of human reason." One could use lost socks in the washing machine as evidence of an unknowable world of contradiction, and it would be less sophisticated, but no more idiotic. This is arriving at a contradiction in one's thinking, and then blaming reality. This is the ultimate intellectual dishonesty and corruption hiding behind academic status. This is baseless arrogance more like a spoiled child than a scientist or intellectual.

The critical importance of the axiom's relationship to knowledge is stated in metaphoric eloquence with the expression "the buck stops here." However impeccable or imperfect, it does not matter if the information we acquire about reality and our world comes from the daily newspaper, the internet, firsthand perception or a little voice in one's head coming from little green men from outer space. All our knowledge and even the very concept of truth itself ultimately rest on the axiom. It is not necessary to know everything about the means by which we acquire knowledge to prove this. All that is necessary is the recognition of the immutability of the axiom and the existence of self-sameness.

To constitute an unwavering foundation for knowledge or even justified opinion, however, the axiom must be uncompromisingly acknowledged as an all-inclusive immutable absolute. The ultimate implication of just one adulterous fling with absurdity is the abdication of any claim to knowledge. Even the concept of truth itself is obliterated when the identity principle is betrayed. If one imagined a fantasy domain of non-identity, logic and mathematics would be nothing but mind games with completely arbitrary rules but also seeing would by no means justify believing. When embracing the delusion of embellished contradiction, often peddled as a limitless possibility, one possibility that must be surrendered is knowledge.

Knowledge begins when the axiom is formulated, acknowledged as incontrovertible, but also, it must be recognized that it asserts the existence of identity. If one does not acknowledge that all A is A, then one has relinquished the claim of any knowledge. Even firsthand perception becomes ambiguous when the axiom is not embraced with absolute certainty. Furthermore, it is not just knowledge in the absolute sense that will fall. Any claim of likelihood will also sink into this bog of uncertainty.

The best of Western culture brought to the world the ideals of reason, individualism, and intellectual and economic freedom, but they were never fully realized and correctly defended. Because of this failure and the natural hatred of these values among the corrupt and because these ideals stand in opposition to the ambitions of the criminality of the state, there are devious and powerful criminals working to eradicate what remains of Western culture from the planet. This could be the price of Western philosophy's failure.

Regardless of the fact that the influence of reason has been relatively brief and latent weighed against the domination of mysticism, the embracing of contradiction, its effects have been profound. While the understanding was flawed, the foundation of man's greatest achievements and the accomplishments of Western culture is the first principle and identity philosophy, philosophy that acknowledges the axiom as absolute truth and profoundly important. It is no coincidence that one preceded the other in history. This causative relation was demonstrated twice, first in ancient Greece and then in Europe, fostering the age of reason. Islam also had a brief enlightenment as it was influenced by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. Apparently, explicit identity philosophy emerged from implicit common sense that was temporarily liberated from religious superstitions.

Humanity, however, has never really discovered knowledge, for the validity of one's claim to any knowledge or even justified opinion is ultimately lost when the axiom is betrayed. All opinions become equally arbitrary and baseless. If one decides the identity principle is not true in some mystical domain, then one loses the justification for assuming self-sameness exists anywhere. This is not a hypothetical implication of failing to acknowledge that all A is A. It is a precise description of the collective state of the human mind. The originality of this writing is evidence that knowledge and comprehension of identity are not inborn. To the contrary, humanity has struggled to understand necessary truth, its meaning, and implications.

All A is A. Only a corrupt mind that is divorced from reason will fail to acknowledge that the law of identity must be universally true and all-embracing. This fact is not a meaningless truth. Philosophy's greatest historical tragedy is the failure to recognize that meaningless truth, truth with no reference to reality, is a monumental contradiction. This was the failure to recognize that the axiom is ontological.

Assertions are true in the respect that they agree with the part of reality to which they refer. Meaning, reference to reality is a prerequisite for truth. The notion that the assertion "A is A" does not state anything about "A" is shallow and false. It does not assert anything about "A" that distinguishes it from anything else because what it declares of "A" is true of all things. The identity principle asserts identity; self-sameness is the existing thing to which the axiom refers.

It is incontrovertibly true that a dragon is a dragon, but yet, there are no dragons. What then is the truth of the statement? The statement "dragon is dragon" does not assert and prove the existence of dragon; it asserts and proves the existence of self-sameness. Logical truths are complex assertions of identity. The mathematical statement "2 and 2 are 4" may be reduced to "1 and 1 and 1 and 1 are 1 and 1 and 1 and 1," and this asserts a truth even if you are counting dragons. The truth that it asserts is the truth of the existence of identity. Logic asserts identity. The statements 2 and 2 are 4, A is A, all logical truths and all axioms reference the same fact, the existence of identity. Their application is diverse and universal because the thing to which they refer is the essence of everything. All logical truths are complex assertions of self-sameness. It is the fact of the existence of identity that grounds logic to reality.

The law of identity is the supreme law of existence, but it does not govern the universe. It is the existent thing to which that law refers, identity, which rules the universe. Contrary to assertions such as "laws govern the universe," laws govern nothing. The apple doesn't fall from the tree because of the law of gravitation; it falls because of the existence of gravitation. Newton's law of universal gravitation is a description of something that exists; it describes gravitation. Whether it is warped space, gravitons, or something else, his law, nonetheless, refers to something that exists and so too does the law of identity. But while Newton's theory may be a flawed description of something that is complex and conditional, the law of identity is a perfect description of something that is absolutely simple and unconditional.

Once the contradiction of meaningless truth is exposed and dispensed with, it becomes clear that the identity principle proves the existence of identity. The fact of identity's existence is the fact that hinges reason to reality. The result of not acknowledging this fact is the detachment of logical truth from reality and rendering reason mute without ever having to deny its "truth."

Truth itself follows the axiom into irrelevance. This is mysticism's most devious, insidious and corrupt achievement. The failure to acknowledge that the axiom is ontological, not just a principle of reason, is catastrophic because its acknowledgment is indispensable in its role as the foundation of human knowledge. All axioms, all logical truths, ultimately reference the same monistic fact, the fact of the existence of identity.

The denial of the existence of self-sameness leaves humanity hopelessly uncertain. The postmodernist nihilist mystic seems to be fully aware of this when reason is described as "the weighing of notions against imaginary ideas." This is an attack on human knowledge of deadly sophistication, aimed at the very heart of reason. Most certainly, nonetheless, reason is not the weighing of notions against imaginary ideas. It is the weighing of ideas against the incontrovertible and universal fact that the mystic dreads, the existence of identity. The existence of self-sameness and the ultimate reality it implies is what there delusions and fantasies seek to escape.

It is the axiom itself that proves the existence of identity. This is the essential recognition that has been lacking. It is this fundamental absence that has detached the human mind from reality. It is this wanting fundamental knowledge that could unify metaphysics and epistemology and thus, reality, to the mind. The axiom provides the most basic knowledge of existence, the existence of identity. No true knowledge is possible without this foundation.

One may know nothing else about what is on the other side of the universe, but one can know with absolute certainty that whatever is out there, that is what is out there. It must possess self-sameness. In this respect knowledge is primarily  a priori . Yes, even empirical science in this fundamental regard is  a priori . Empirically derived knowledge must be founded on that which can be known, and only be known  a priori , the existence of self-sameness.

The validity of perception and the fundamental truth of reason are both founded on the first principle and what it asserts, the existence of identity. Only identity can serve as the foundation of knowledge. Any other claim of an underpinning is a fraud and any notion that knowledge does not require such a foundation is equally false. When the axiom is betrayed fundamentally, choosing consistency over inconsistency becomes an arbitrary choice. Without the underpinning of the existence of identity, logic itself will often be seen as an arbitrary choice that is inconvenient and imposing.

Empiricism cannot save the human mind from the failures of rationalism. Science and humankind cannot run from the imposing metaphysical questions, with all their social, ethical, and political implications. Such issues cannot be successfully addressed if a basic understanding of existence and the essential basis of knowledge is not comprehended. Empirical science, rational metaphysics, human freedom, and civilization with live or die together.

What social, ethical, and political system is possible and appropriate for the mindless, the blind, and the deluded? Such a humanity is just sheep for the control and slaughter of whatever criminal gang can prevail. Common sense cannot escape the creeping mysticism that demolishes and devours sensibility, scientific objectivity, and advanced views of the world and the universe.

The law of identity is the simplest of human principles, but it's true and profound meaning remains latent and undiscovered. Within this vacuum, it is the claim to human knowledge that remains concealed with this undiscovered absolute. For this absolute is the fountainhead of all else.

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#  The Monumental Denial

Proof is that which supports the truth of what one is asserting. Proof in the absolute sense is that which proves absolutely, that what one is asserting must be true because any alternative is impossible. There may be relatively little one can know with this level of certainty, but the existence of identity most certainly can be held as immutable and, as it happens, must be. Without this recognition, there is only the prospect of intellectual chaos and confusion. This is simple, basic, and incontrovertible. Notwithstanding humanity's accomplishments, the grim state of humankind, human culture, and humanity's tenuous and ultimately fraudulent claim to knowledge is a powerful and disturbing demonstration of the ultimate meaning and implication of this failure.

As this failure demonstrates, this rationally indisputable knowledge is not innate. It comes from the axiom and a recognition of its meaning, the existence of identity. Once confronted with the fact of the existence of identity, it is only by virtue of the human mind's capacity for self-deception that identity could ever be denied, and usually, this denial is implicit, not unambiguous. "Denier" has become a demonized term, but surely the failure to recognize and acknowledge the immutability of the identity principle and what it asserts is the ultimate irrational denial.

In contradistinction to the historical mistake of rationalism, however, this knowledge is not the product of some inner light or intrinsic knowledge. It is the knowledge gained from the axiom itself; it is the axiom that asserts and proves the existence of identity. No set of empirical facts can ever extrinsically prove that which is proclaimed by the axiom.

Without the fact of identity, nonetheless, there will never be confidence and justification for calling anything a fact. Contrary to the claim that the axiom is somehow supported by extrinsic facts, that we know that A is A, because we observe the structure of reality, the proof of the axiom is intrinsic. Trying to prove the axiom extrinsically puts the cart hopelessly in front of the horse. If it is not acknowledged as self-proving, then the identity principle can never be extrinsically proven. Such is the state of the human mind.

Even the truth of that which is self-evident, the very truth of self-evidence, is grounded in the axiom. Without the axiom, even self-evident perceptual evidence of all else would not constitute knowledge. Hypothetically speaking, not even empirical omniscience could extrinsically prove the axiom. If one had empirical evidence of everything, save identity, the recognition and ascendance of this information to the status of knowledge would still require the fundamental awareness of the immutability of the axiom and the existence of identity.

Perception is not the thing perceived. When dealing with the mystic's claim of some alternate form of knowledge or truth, it is important to make this distinction. If a tree falls when there is no one around, then there should be the presence of sound waves. Sound, however, as an element of consciousness would not be present if there is no one to hear. This is not negated by mind, physics indifferentism, the view that what we subjectively know as consciousness is the sum of the physics that constitutes it. The physics that constitute sound waves would be there but the physics that constitute hearing would not.

However we may obtain information, no information we may acquire about reality is exempt from the first principle. To reveal a fallacy or misconception as such, it is often necessary to examine it in a broader context. To do this, however, one must first acknowledge that existence does not contradict itself, that it possesses self-sameness. Mysticism is an attempt to escape this scrutiny.

Mysticism is a revolt against the law and concept of identity, a revolt against reality. Mysticism is the antithesis of identity philosophy and, as such, is driven to destroy its opposite. Sinking to the bottom of their sewer, beneath the embellished variations, mysticism is the embracing of contradiction, of non-identity. In an epistemological context, it refers to the notion that knowledge can be founded on something other than identity. Mysticism is a belief in non-identity. Nihilism is a kind of mysticism, for to reject the self-evident fact of perception, or at least sensation, constitutes a rejection of identity and the embracing of non-identity.

Whatever diverging, and often violently competing, fantasies embraced, the metaphysics of mysticism is the notion that existence is contradictory and irrational, that it does not correspond with the first principle. Abdicating any claim to true knowledge, mysticism must choose between nihilism or a pretentious, conjured alternative to knowledge. This fabricated claim of higher intuition feeds upon the limitations of human understanding and self-awareness.

Exemplifying the often-latent workings of the human mind, once a man was resting in bed by his wife watching television. There was an attractive young woman on the television show they were watching. She seemed familiar to him, but he couldn't place her. He could not remember whom she reminded him. His wife, also watching, made the remark that for some reason she did not like this young lady, but she did not know why. She said she was certain it was not jealousy, but there was something about her she just didn't like. Well, about that time the man realized who it was this young lady reminded him of. It was his mother-in-law. She didn't look like her; she just had a manner about her that was similar. The man, having some measure of commonsense and wisdom, never told his wife of whom this young lady reminded him.

As illustrated by this true story, the workings of the human mind are often concealed and not completely understood. One may have hunches or insights while not being explicitly aware of the reasons. In this context, it is important to note mystics do not hold a legitimate monopoly on this intuitive mode. This kind of insight is not proof or even genuine evidence of some mystic awareness outside the realm of reason or perception. If one has a feeling or intuition, it is imperative to acknowledge it as such. A rightful seeker of truth must always strive for the intellectual rigor necessary to uncover the hidden reasons behind such insight. It is by this means that one may discover whether a hunch or insight has any claim to legitimacy or rightfulness. Without such rigor, all one really has is unsubstantiated prejudice.

It is critical to our claim to knowledge that we understand the axiom is ontological. The existence of self-sameness is what the axiom tells us about reality. This, however, is all the axiom, in and of itself, tells us about existence. Identity is all it asserts and all that it accounts for. Just as necessary truth is monistic, so too is  a priori knowledge. It tells us only one thing about reality, but what it tells us is absolutely critical. Despite the monistic nature of this knowledge, its application is enormous. It is so tremendous that it is easy to be unaware that it is ultimately just one fact that is being referenced.

Knowledge without experience,  a priori , is monistic and has remained latent in the mind of humankind. Aside from the existence of identity, our awareness and understanding of the universe are ultimately derived from perception. Perception and the human mind are not infallible. A delusional mystic may really hear a voice in his head, but this does not mean he is really hearing from god or little green men. The presence of feeling, sight, sound, etc. is self-evident proof of their existence.

Perception is sensation acknowledged as information about reality. Sensation is, to the one who senses, self-evident proof of the existence of sensation. The existence of sensation is proof that something exists even if one assumes that sensation is all that exists. Common sense assumes this surely even in the mind of a child or an animal. However, this proof implies acknowledgment of the axiom and would vanish without the recognition of identity. This is exactly what has happened to the mind of humanity.

In an atmosphere of philosophically groundless chaos, relativism has emerged from the nihilism. Relativism accepts the nihilistic notion that true knowledge is impossible and attempts to replace it with some kind of intellectual elitism. Relativism is a sort of fiat reason only unlike fiat currency that is forced upon humanity by government and a financial elite, to replace real money, fiat reason is offered as a replacement for knowledge forced upon us by a bankrupt philosophy and intellectual establishment. Just as the result and design of fiat currency is manipulation and theft, so too is the result of fiat reason the manipulation and theft of intellectual potency. One establishes a false and criminal financial elite, the other a false and deceitful intellectual elite.

While relativism, which is just soft nihilism, is sold as a counter to extremism and dogmatism, the ascending of the false or unproven to the status of knowledge, it is actually the most intellectually crippling dogma of all. One may hold the notion that the world is flat, and it could be a popular and accepted view. The proponents of such an opinion may have academic status and prestige, but as long as an objective standard of proof is in place and acknowledged, such a view can be refuted.

Relativism, however, undermines any objective standard for proof and turns the battle of ideas into a popularity contest. New ideas are seldom popular and the truth even less so. Since real knowledge is regarded as impossible, only social convention controlled by elites, new ideas need not be refuted or even earnestly examined. Ideas that threaten their crippling status quo can be swept away by simply branding them as "out of the mainstream."

Ascending from an environment of relativism and intellectual elitism, acknowledging the existence of self-sameness and the immutability of the law of identity would truly be the ultimate triumph of the rule of law in the most fundamental sense, over the rule of men, and their fiat reason. This would be a precondition for such an achievement in the political realm.

Just as fiat currency appears doomed, so too, does fiat reason, Relativism appears hopelessly condemned to fall in the catastrophe it summons. It is no contradiction that while stagnating relativism dominates the intellectual establishment, it has been accompanied by head-cleaving religious fanatics who represent the extreme of the fastest growing religion in the world. Where will the "buck stop" when the promissory notes of fiat reason must "float" against the currencies of irrationality, the basest of human emotions, in the blood-drenched financial market of history? Relativism has left the wreckage of Western culture so intellectually bankrupted that against the most irrational ideologies and philosophies they can only fall back on slander and lies as a weapon and protection. The same degenerate philosophy that so stubbornly and stupidly rejects any possibility of rational certainty, so easily falls to the mindlessly faithful, so long as that faith comes from outside the culture that still holds a tenuous grip on the values that they most abhor.

A violent, aggressive Christianity swept through Europe replacing indigenous religions, and now a more passive, peaceful Christianity is under attack from a more aggressive, savage, brutal, inhumane Islam. There is a reason why the so-called "great religions" have such a violent history. It is why they became the "great religions."

If one were to invent some fantasy religion, but kept these beliefs to oneself, then that religion would die with its creator. Religions live or die by the law of the jungle as it is asserted by natural selection. Religions must survive and procreate just as living organisms. If not, they are lost and forgotten. Intellectual matters can be settled with facts and reason, but history has shown that faith is best promoted with the sword. Having faith in peace, compassion, and tolerance leaves one disarmed against those who have quite a different sort of faith.

Beliefs, groundless claims to truth, are all equally arbitrary. Faith, in itself, constitutes a violation of the absolute. It involves the contradiction, "unknown is known." If one decided to believe there is life on Mars without the justification of supporting evidence, this would remain a contradiction and, as such, an untruth even if it happened that there was actually life on Mars. Life on Mars, or not, it would be a false claim to knowledge. Guilty or innocent, a man would receive an unfair trial if he was convicted by prejudice rather than evidence. The failure to uncompromisingly acknowledge the axiom as an absolute is to lose all claim to it. This is why faith and belief sabotage all claim to any knowledge. Knowledge and faith are incompatible.

The nihilist relativist mystics of hypocrisy and disbelief have no answer for violent believers of non-identity, for this too, non-identity, is the belief of the two-faced relativist. Metaphysical issues are far more important than most would think. Humanity's quest for its metaphysical footing may be a matter of survival. It is time to look beyond the false elite's manufactured eclipse of the light of reason and look for answers that may decide human survival.

These so-called "terrorists," however, are just a tiny fraction of the forces of brutality and irrationality that are arrayed against humanity. The seldom acknowledged, but scarcely deniable fact, is that most of the terror in the world is perpetrated by the gangs of criminals called government. They are the real threat to the very survival of the human race.

Behind the embellished incantations and pretentious formality, government is nothing but the most dangerous form of organized criminality and statism is little more than the most virulent form of criminal insanity. One cannot formulate a better definition of criminal insanity that the willingness to engage in criminality while not only feeling justified but even virtuous. Underneath the varying ideological differences, this is the essence of statism. The state is nothing but the delusion of authority to commit crime. The power of this delusion is derived from the fact that most of its victims share the same delusion. It is they who must be liberated from their own delusion.

This liberation can only come about with an uncompromising commitment to reason, the first principle and the existence of identity. It must be based on that which virtually all human achievement has been grounded. Humanity must discover the shining beacon of knowledge before it can discover life and happiness giving freedom.

Neither the delusional senselessness of mysticism nor the criminal insanity of statism have really done anything positive to promote the ascent of humanity. To the contrary, they have always stood in resistance to it. As humankind has advanced, however, they have both become more dangerous, more incompatible. In the case of statism, one need only look at the trend of history to see its escalating danger, and the fantasy of mysticism can provide no protection. To the contrary, it enables it, for the state itself is nothing but a mystic hallucination.

There is one hope for the future of humanity. Mysticism and statism have risen together to dominate the mind of man, and if identity can emerge as the acknowledged absolute, they will fall together, as well. It is the periods in history in which humans came the closest to discovering knowledge that they also came the closest to liberating humanity from these monsters. If humanity does discover knowledge, with its empowering intellectual confidence, government, and religion, the two scourges of humanity should soon be thrown together on the scrapheap of history and cultural evolution.

Meanwhile, in this frighteningly paradoxical age of confusion, mysticism, statism, and nuclear weapons, a call for a gentler faith and misguided intellectual tolerance, is an attempt to evade a simple, incontrovertible truth and escape into fantasy. It is an evasion of intellectual responsibility, but there is no evading the consequences of failure. Reality and identity are most assuredly, deniable, but just as undoubtedly, can never be defied.

Fantasy cannot replace the first principle or what it asserts. It is with the reminiscence of class hatred that mystics speak of the immutable axiom and logical truth. Nevertheless, the recognition of the absolute stated by all true axioms and logical truths and its correct meaning is the true "empowerment" of the human mind. As even a latent recognition of identity degenerates, meaningful thought becomes impossible. Rational persuasion is becoming completely infeasible as subjectivity and self-deception prevail.

One need only examine the present state of culture to see that rational integrity, objectivity, and even civility are seldom to be found, especially in political and philosophical realms. In an age that knows nothing, anything can be claimed. Unfounded claims abound in an age of philosophical baselessness. Groundless, all assertions are equally arbitrary. In such a besmirched, vacuous, and intellectually confused environment, truth is the most greatly hated and most uncorroborated assertion of all. This is because knowledge and truth itself have been unsubstantiated.

Knowledge is, and must be, foundational. Knowledge cannot exist as merely relative or contextual. An idea's concurrence within a broader, comprehensive context while important in the pursuit of knowledge, ultimately accounts for nothing if the axiom is not acknowledged as immutable and ontological. This is because, it is only by virtue of the axiom, and the existence of self-sameness, that one knows there must exist such consistency.

As a means of understanding the present state of philosophy and the mind of humankind in relation to the profound importance of the axiom, one might consider what would happen to mathematics if mathematicians could not agree that two and two equal four, with conviction. This false "open-mindedness" would turn mathematics into impotent worthless chaos. Numerical computation would collapse and be abandoned. The manufactured confusion, nonetheless, would not alter the fact that mathematics is valuable and needed.

With the most supreme confidence, Identism proclaims absolute certainty of reason's most basic premise. This most certainly does not constitute a claim of omniscience or infallibility. It is positive that we cannot hope to know everything, but in grasping the axiom and what it asserts, we will know something about everything.

It is absolutely critical to understand; if we fail to embrace this, we abdicate any honest claim to know anything. This is the great denial that extinguishes human potential and threatens its survival. Truth does not come to us from mystic, psychotic belief. It comes from a rigorous examination of reality, armed ultimately, with only one incontrovertible absolute. Armed with the first principle, humanity can face with intellectual confidence, a challenging, but fundamentally rational and knowable world.

Necessary truth is so obvious that its monumental significance is ignored. The thing that the axiom refers to, identity, fails to be acknowledged not because of its subtlety or complexity, but because of its monistic simplicity and absolute bluntness. Whether ignored or denied, however, its existence is incontrovertible, and from this, it is clear that the rest must follow.

* * *

#  What is the God of the Universe?

That the universe is apparently orderly and seems to correspond to universal laws has been sighted and claimed as evidence for a creator god. Indeed, it is and must be an orderly universe, and this necessity is revealed when one acknowledges what the God of the universe must be. It is an achievement that can only come from metaphysical philosophy and an understanding of the axiom. Disorder may be a meaningful description of an adolescent's room, but in a metaphysical context, it is an atrocious concept. Existence is and must be, fundamentally rational because the first principle of reason is absolute.

One need not hope for order in the universe; one needs only to hope that one can find this order. This does not constitute faith in reason, which would actually be a contradiction and subversion of reason. Faith, of any kind, is a violation of reason's first principle. The acknowledgment that existence is non-contradictory is not faith. Rather, it is the recognition that the metaphysical foundation supplied by the axiom is an incontrovertible, immutable absolute.

Those who make the claim that order is proof of the existence of god, nonetheless, are putting the cart before the horse, as they have not discovered the ground of existence and, therefore, have no justification for claiming an orderly universe. It is the identification of the God of the universe that tells us the universe must be orderly, regardless of our shortcomings in our attempts to discover this order.

Conversely, however, when that universe fails to correspond with the principles men formulate to describe, let alone explain it, this is also used as evidence of god. When the facts as we understand them turn out to be counterintuitive, this is regarded as a failure of reason, and evidence for a mystic god and a contradictory existence, with an ultimate reality that transcends human reason and is knowable only by mystic intuition. The god of a disorderly universe would certainly be the god of the mystic. In this context, it is important to reference the calamitous effect of failing to recognize the axiom as a self-proving assertion, not an assumption eternally waiting for extrinsic validation.

As for the first principle of reason and the effort to achieve and advance a rational view of existence, it is claimed that while the law of identity may be true and useful, one cannot build anything from it. The philosophy of Identism, the ideas expounded in this work, stands in opposition to such a claim and shows that a metaphysical philosophy, and even a natural philosophy, can be constructed, primarily, from this first principle, the law of identity, and a few basic and universally experienced perceptions.

This is not to say that advanced science is not important in this regard, but much in contemporary science needs rigorous scrutiny, weighted against the axiom and the existence of identity. Indeed, the axiom is the ultimate key to, and foundation of, an understanding of ultimate reality, for the universe was constructed from the thing to which the identity principle refers. The primacy of self-sameness gives one the most basic and general understanding of ultimate reality.

While there has been some recognition among logicians and philosophers, such as the neo-Kantian philosopher, Afrikan Spir, that the identity principle must be ontological, the implications of the ontological status of the axiom have never been fully and properly formulated. Fundamentally, what Identism offers to the intellect of humanity can be stated in a simple phrase "the existence of identity." This acknowledgment can resolve so many of the critically important historical questions of philosophy.

Most importantly, it is critical to the recognition of the axiom as the absolute foundation and beginning point of knowledge. Metaphysically, it also can provide the basis for a profound understanding of the universe and the very recognition that existence is a universe, that everything is connected.

Being is not a meaningless or indefinable concept, but philosophers have tried very hard to make it so. It would seem that much of the horrid works of Nazi philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who tried to make an art form of cryptic contradiction, as well and others, amounts to a hopeless and foolish attempt to transform existence or being into some kind of part or characteristic.

An ironic tragedy in philosophy is found in the embracing of being-ness and nothingness and the denial of self-sameness. There is no such thing as being-ness, no such thing as nothingness. Such terms as nonexistence or unreal have no valid meaning in a metaphysical context. They only refer to perceptions or ideas that are out of synch with reality, such as what is implied by the statement "infinity is unreal."

Contrary to the foolish notion that the concept of existence is undefinable and invalid, the definition of existence is simple and clear. Existence is everything. Existence is not a part or characteristic; existence is the totality of everything. The failure to subsume everything into this concept is to violate the necessary truth, everything exists. Only the totality of existence itself exists independent of other things. Everything else is connected and shares the same primary part.

In the quest to answer the question of existence, while passing over identity, the thing to which the axiom refers, equity unfortunate, was the willingness to postulate the existence of some "necessary being" somehow existing causeless. The notion of some disembodied intelligence existing outside the physical world, but somehow able to affect it, is a horrendous notion from the start. With all the delusion and "flimflam" that James Randy debunked for decades notwithstanding, all known consciousness exists by virtue of some physical means. All evidence and understanding of consciousness indicate that consciousness is reducible to physics and the existence of consciousness is dependent on physical reality. Awareness cannot exist detached from the physical universe. Consciousness as we know it comes late in the hierarchy of causation.

Such a postulate as the primacy of consciousness or god really does not explain anything. One merely replaces the physical universe that one has evidence of, but cannot account for, and replaces it with something for which there is no evidence, nor can it be accounted for, nor can it be explained why it is primary and causeless.

The classical arguments for the existence of god, such as the argument from contingency, did get one thing right, nonetheless. There must be a causeless given. The infinite regression of contingent things is ridiculous and impossible. Something must be primary and causeless.

The epistemological implications of the recognition of the existence of identity are of the utmost practical importance, and given the world today could be critical to the very survival of humanity. However, the deep metaphysical implications could transform human spirituality in a profoundly positive manner as well. The metaphysical implications of the existence of identity lead unavoidably to the primacy of identity, a provable answer to what is sometimes referred to as the question of existence (i.e., why does anything exist).

In addition to being the first principle of reason and foundation of knowledge, the law of identity describes and proves something that exists and cannot not exist; it proves the causeless existence of identity. Since all A is A, all other things are in principle, reducible, (i.e., can be subdivided) to self-sameness and self-sameness is a prerequisite for the existence of all else; it is the first cause. Identity is the only given, the only primary thing. This thesis is referred to as the primacy of identity.

Given that everything is reducible to identity, one must resist the temptation to think of identity as an utterly immense number of fundamental points. Identity should not be conceived of as existing in plurality; it is irreducible and indivisible.

From the singularity of identity, it follows that all other things that exist are not just reducible to the same type of fundamental substance, but rather are reducible to the same monistic part. The idea of different, divergent, and seemingly separated things all sharing the same fundamental part runs contrary to the commonsense understanding of what constitutes a piece or component of a greater whole. Nonetheless, it does not contradict the all-embracing and monistic quality of self-sameness. This mutuality of all things sharing the same primary part is proof and confirmation that existence is a universe.

Just as the principle of self-sameness is a necessary truth, and indeed it is the necessary truth that all axioms and all logical truths mirror, identity is a necessary existent thing that requires no cause. It cannot not exist; it must be everywhere, in all other things. Its absence would contradict the necessary truth, all A is A. Once self-sameness is acknowledged as an existent part, it can be comprehended as the causeless first cause.

Identity must be the only causeless cause. Everything that exists comes from this metaphysical force, identity. Because of the uniquely primary status of identity, it must be a sufficient cause for all else. Everything must possess self-sameness; everything is contingent on the existence of identity. Nothing that identity does not cause can exist because there would be no basis for its existence. To asseverate anything but self-sameness as causeless is to assert that thing as not possessing identity and to violate the axiom.

The fact that identity is uniquely basic provides proof for determinism. Straightforwardly, indeterminism is the notion that something other than identity can constitute a first cause. There are no things in all the vastness of existence that have been conjured from nothing. This simple, but imposing logic stands in opposition to such notions as indeterminism and the prevailing metaphysical interpretation of quantum level uncertainty.

Dispensing with the classic assumptions made regarding causality (e.g., such as the assumption that all causes precede the effect in time), there are questions regarding causation to which the primacy of identity and its implications are germane. In a complex commingled world, it would seem apparent and, in fact is the case, that, as well as contingent lineage there exists fundamentally reciprocal relationship. In such a dependency, a thing may exist because of the presence of another and visa-versa. One, however, is not more basic than the other. One may observe causal relations between large composites, but identity must be the underlying cause behind all else. Fundamentally, self-sameness is causation.

In this regard, the failure to acknowledge the monistic nature of axioms might lead to the assumption that identity could exist in some reciprocal relationship with something that is equally basic. If it is acknowledged, however, that all axioms assert the same monistic thing, self-sameness, it becomes clear that identity is the only thing that exists from axiomatic necessity and is a prerequisite for the existence of everything else.

Everything else that exists must be derived from identity. To try to postulate anything else as primary is to assert that thing as not possessing self-sameness and violate the axiom, all A is A. Not gods, not matter, not consciousness, not air, not water, identity is the absolute ground of existence. Self-sameness is the first cause and the distilled essence of everything else that exists. Once the axiom is acknowledged as ontological, that identity exists, this thesis becomes simple, incontrovertible logic.

The academic establishment and the hodgepodge of delusional mystics will not accept the primacy of identity as proven because they are obstinately and dogmatically committed to perpetual uncertainty. Perhaps because of job security and the answer is not what is hoped for, they will ignore the obvious and remain committed to the rehashing of failed thinking and stale ideas. Nonetheless, while it is dogmatically insisted that the question of existence is either meaningless or unanswerable, the primacy of identity can destroy and cast aside these notions by providing a provable answer.

The question of existence may be formulated as: "What is the given?" or more profoundly as: "Why does something exist?" One should expect that an answer to the first would also answer the second, but such baseless postulates as the primacy of god or consciences do not. The primacy of identity, however, most certainly does.

Acknowledged or not, one may hold with the most supreme confidence that the identity thesis explains existence at its most fundamental ground. It answers the most basic and valid metaphysical question, the question of existence. This apparently was the very question that begot philosophy, or certainly Western philosophy. This question was the central concern of pre-Socratic philosophy. The primacy of identity stands as the ultimate validation of this profound and meaningful question.

Most historical attempts to address this question and explain the universe from a primary source or first cause did not constitute a true metaphysical explanation derived from a metaphysical premise. They were at best speculative natural philosophy based on what proved to be very limited information. Other metaphysical cosmology, such as the pathetic paradigms found in religion, is not based on anything factual at all.

While contemporary thinking may regard such metaphysical cosmology as meaningless or impossible, if there is a recognition of the ontological status of identity and the primacy of self-sameness, such thinking will become as primitive and obsolete as Thales' primacy of water.

There can be nothing outside of existence. It is a necessary truth that existence is all-inclusive. The notion that there is somehow no such totality is fundamentally ridiculous. Formulating the question of existence as the indignant believer would to the atheist: "Well then, where does everything come from?" is, of course, flawed, but not entirely meaningless.

Philosophers have tried to regard existence as a degree, or part, or characteristic. Such wrongheaded philosophers, nonetheless, cannot pin down or manufacture some sort of characteristic of being as opposed to an attribute of non-being because neither, exist. They are engaging in ontological doublethink, as on the one hand it is thought of as everything, on the other, a characteristic. A characteristic is a distinguishing part. Existence is not a characteristic, trait, or part; existence is the totality of everything. There can be nothing outside of or alternative to existence. Simply and axiomatically stated, existence is everything that exists.

If one defines existence as a characteristic, this must be maintained consistently, not interchanging one thing for another as it suits one's fancy. One may certainly define existence, or any other term, as one sees fit. However, existence defined as everything, as an all-inclusive totality is a rationally an undeniably valid and important concept. Existence, reality itself, much like identity, is a concept that mysticism would wish to see obliterated from the mind of humanity. They are succeeding in the minds of many, but whether acknowledged or not, there is a totality of reality; there is a universe. There is, also most certainly, a given. Identity is the given; existence is totality.

It is, therefore, a contradiction to look for some extrinsic cause for existence, for it contradicts the all-inclusive totality of reality. The primacy of identity thesis is not an attempt to explain existence from nonexistence. The question of existence may sometimes be miss-formulated, especially by those who don't want an answer, but this does not negate the profound meaningfulness of the question. This weighty question has a provable answer, and it is really quite incredibly simple.

The primacy of identity constitutes the recognition that identity must be the most basic part of existence and must be the only first cause, first in any order of contingency. It explains that identity must be the only causeless part of existence and the ultimate origin of contingent things, of everything else that exists.

The universe is existence, acknowledged as unified, but the term "physical universe" might be defined as all that is created, all that is caused by identity. The physical universe is founded on identity, in something metaphysical. It is more fundamental than anything tangible, anything physical.

Self-sameness cannot exist as anything but a reliant part, as all other parts of existence are contingent on the existence of identity. Identity is reliant in the respect that a cause is reliant on the existence of its effect because the absence of the effect would contradict and deny the antecedent cause. Self-sameness must exist because it's absent would constitute monumental absurdity and impossibility. All else that exists, all that identity causes, must also exist, because of the necessary existence of self-sameness. Therefore, all that exists is required and determined, but only identity is fundamentally necessary and causeless.

Identity is causeless, but it cannot exist independent of other things. The vast complex, diverse cosmos owes its existence to this fact. The axiom is comprehended as an expression of self-sameness, as a part of some, and indeed any, greater thing or whole. Identity can only be expressed and comprehended as a part. This does not contradict identity's status as the first cause. It is a rudimentary explanation of why identity is a cause.

The gods of the faithful, if described at all, beyond being indescribable and incomprehensible, are typically defined as contradictory notions with contradictory powers, such as the moronic notion of omnipotence. They clearly and absolutely cannot exist. Whatever lesser god one may try to speculate and conjure into existence with little more evidence than quantum strangeness or lost socks in the washing machine, identity is most certainly supreme and primary.

Identity is causation; identity created the universe.

Identity is the god of the universe!

* * *

#  Things, Time, Identity, and Change

For anyone who is alive and sensing, awareness is self-evident. This is true even if one assumed it is only some sort of self-awareness, trying to convince or deceive itself into thinking there must exist, an extrinsic world or universe. Presuming that perhaps, these sensations were all that really existed, would not change the fact of the existence of consciousness. Even assuming that all one knows is one's own existence does not deny the fact of the existence of consciousness, and it is self-evident that this consciousness has a multitude of components.

As consciousness is something that exists, it is also, therefore, a self-evident fact that existence, whatever it may constitute, is multifaceted. This self-evidence, again, would not be negated even if one held the Cartesian or solipsistic view that the external world cannot be proven because even one's internal world is multi-faceted as well. A multitude of sensations is self-evident proof of the fact that existence is multifaceted.

Because reality is multi-faceted, one can mentally abstract parts from this totality. The thinking of and regarding parts as separate is methodological, pertaining to epistemology and one's efforts to understand. This mental abstraction of parts is a method of comprehension; it is epistemological, not metaphysics. Everything is in some regard connected to all other things. This is proven by the primacy of identity, as all other things share the same primary part, self-sameness. Metaphysically speaking, parts are not, and cannot be wholly separate.

Apart from the totality of existence itself, entities, something existing completely by itself and independent, do not exist. The notion of entities is the mistaking of mental methodological functioning for something that is metaphysical. Parts are part of, but never apart from, existence. All things, apart from the totality of existence itself, are parts.

Of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who said "no man steps in the same river twice," the story is told that he lent a sum of money to someone. When he tried to collect on his debt, this man to whom he loaned the money, told him that he was not the same man to whom he lent the money. This story illustrates the impracticality of the philosopher's view but does little to address the apparent conflict between identity and change. Heraclitus thought everything was in constant change and that change was the only constant.

Conversely, however, the principle of self-sameness would seem to be indicating things can, in truth, never change. This view of Heraclitus cannot be reconciled with the incontrovertible truth that all A is A. Such a notion as things changing cannot be reconciled with the immutable fact of identity. The only sameness is sameness with self. The notion of things changing is to commit the metaphysical error of maintaining one thing as another.

A thing is itself; a thing is all that which constitutes its objective reality. The popular notion that a thing somehow is not the sum of its parts, not the totality of itself, is fundamentally moronic. A thing, most certainly, is the sum of its parts! A thing does not exist as a shell or abstraction of itself, and neither does the sum of its parts because that sum is the thing. If something is thought to be more than the totality of its parts, it is because all of its parts are not being accounted for. Also, one's grasp of a thing often may require that it is viewed contextually, comprehended in a broader context.

A thing can be anything and everything, as would be implied by such terms. When mentally abstracting things, there are a few things that metaphysics imposes on us. It would be false to regard identity as divisible or reducible, and false to regard existence as a part. In addition, it is a contradiction to hold one thing as another. Thomas Jefferson as a child is not Thomas Jefferson as a fifty-year-old. They are not the same thing. It is perfectly appropriate to regard those two different parts as two parts of a larger thing, Thomas Jefferson. It would also be quite appropriate for Heraclitus to hold his debtor accountable for the money owed, and yes, you can step in the same river twice.

For the most part, nonetheless, what one regards as a thing is a matter of methodology, not metaphysics. While inconsistently maintained, the concept of things being expressed here is implicitly understood and utilized in human thought.

Things and parts represent an organization of facts and constitute the means by which one comprehends reality. It is common to regard humanity as things, but also, a thing. However, if one were to regard half of humankind, love, hate, and a partridge in a pear-tree, as a thing, it would be no less a thing than humanity. This thing one has abstracted may be less cognitively useful, but it is a thing, nonetheless. This thing abstracted here did serve the cognitive purpose of demonstrating that things can and must be regarded as anything and everything.

If what one regards as a thing is a part or parts of reality, if it exists, however divergent its parts, then it is a thing. It is obvious, but significant that different things can possess mutual parts. Things are all parts and all grouping of parts including the totality of existence. Things are everything that exists.

The number one is the mathematical equivalent of a thing. The necessary truths that metaphysics imposes on what may be regarded as a thing, as well as its flexibility, also apply to the concept of one.

Much in mathematics is a matter of methodology, but with mathematics, as with all human thought, it becomes detached from reality when the axiom is violated. As all human thought, mathematics is meaningless and groundless without the axiom. There is truth in mathematics, as with all assertions, when self-sameness is declared, such as two and two are four. There are concepts in mathematics that are methodologically useful, but when taken literally or truly, would be metaphysically absurd and impossible, such as the notion of an actual infinity or zero.

One's conception of a thing may be flawed, limited, undecided and fuzzy, but yet, still methodologically useful in a given context. Things are organizations of facts, of which their usefulness depends on the cognitive function to which they are employed. It should be acknowledged, nonetheless, that this fuzziness in one's awareness is epistemological, pertaining to the limits of one's knowledge and understanding; it is not metaphysical. Failing to do this, as so often has been the case, is to embrace mysticism and literally to blame reality for one's lack of understanding. Existence is, and things are, what they are.

The number or quantity ten is the number or quantity of ten. Ten is unchanging; it cannot be added to or subtracted from. Ten is not ten plus one; ten is not ten minus one. Ten is ten. Though it may be argued that numbers are manmade, quantity most certainly is not. Existence is multi-faceted. Quantity is existence acknowledged as multi-faceted; this would be the case whether there is anyone counting or not. Quantity does not change; things do not change. Existence does not change.

Hypothetically speaking, as a way of understanding things, our abstraction of them, and its relation to comprehension, imagine a god of physics who had an omniscient understanding of the physics of the universe, but was completely ignorant of anything else. Without an acknowledgment and understanding of the metaphysical underpinning of existence, this god could not know why there is a physical universe even though he had complete information of its physics. Lacking a recognition of the existence of identity, the god of physics would not have attained knowledge in the absolute sense. This god of physics also knows nothing of consciousness, or the awareness possessed by the things of which he perceives the constituent physics.

If this god were to observe two men playing chess, although he would not comprehend it as such, he would be able to predict the moves on the chessboard. He would not understand it as moves in a chess game. He would only be aware of the position of the fundamental physical constituents that constitute the next chess piece to be moved by virtue of omniscient information of the rudimentary physics that determine the positions.

Although not understanding human consciousness or the game of chess, he would have a corresponding understanding of the incalculably complex physics that constitute the things of which he knows nothing, for he has not abstracted them as things.

There would really be no contradiction between the god of physics' understanding of the event and the human who understands it as a battle of two minds in a game of strategy. This thing abstracted, called the mind, is a large composite of enormous physical complexity. This is also the case of the players, chess board, rules of the game, and other things that constitute the human observers' understanding.

The kind of intelligence supposedly possessed by this god of physics is not credible. This little parable, though not to be taken literal, follows from the view of consciousness that holds it to be reducible to the physics that constitute it. It serves to illustrate the importance of the concept of things and their epistemological function in human comprehension. One may confront some seemingly divergent views, which are actually, very compatible, but constitute a very different organization of facts.

Divergent concepts, the abstraction of things and organization of facts, are essential to the advancement of human knowledge and comprehension. The gist of the statement "reason is the servant of creativity" is essentially true in that creativity is critical to cognitive function and advance. If a meaningful and useful definition of reason, nonetheless, embraces all human cognitive function, it should subsume human creativity.

Such a concept of reason subsumes all human faculties and refers to all functions that process perceptual information. It refers to all functions that process information and all intellectual paradigms, such as thinking in pictures. They are all permissible, but also open to the same scrutiny provided by the axiom. The detachment of logic from creativity renders it schizophrenic. In this context, it is significant to consider how stagnant and uncreative in any meaningful way most of the intellectual and artistic environment has become.

Employing logic, necessary truth, to one's thinking need not be otherwise suppressing or limiting. Flexibility and creativity are essential to breakthroughs and advances in knowledge and understanding. Ultimately, all one needs to guide one's thinking is first philosophy, which begins with the axiom. Imposing methodologies that stifle creative and divergent efforts of conception and understanding are unnecessary and destructive. Creativity is often expressed in the divergent abstraction of things not otherwise, or ever before, regarded as things.

Academics may argue over whether an entity can survive the loss of a part, but as for things, the answer is clear. Things are unchanging, and this certainly includes the totality of existence. Things are any part or grouping of parts in existence. If parts are added or subtracted, then one ceases to refer to the same thing. Parts cannot change; things cannot change. This is the simplest logic. The changing of any given selfsame thing is an absurd, contradictory impossibility. Stating this in the simplest way is the axiom itself. Things are what they are; all A is A.

What one experiences as change is the perception of differences between different parts of what one regards as the same given thing. The parts do not change, and the thing does not change. So, one might wonder: Where is the change in change? It is in the mind of the observer.

Existence is everything; it cannot be added to or subtracted from. Parts of existence are also unchanging. This indicates existence must be somehow unchanging; yet, the existence of change would seem to be and is regarded as self-evidence.

While our information regarding his ideas and views may be limited and sketchy, it was apparently the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides who first recognized the notion of a changing world was incompatible with reason, with identity. Parmenides' view that the universe must somehow be unchanging was brushed aside, nonetheless, because it was apparently contrary to self-evidence, and seemingly inconceivable that he could be right.

Four-dimensionalism, however, is a view of existence that does not contradict the perceptual evidence that we presume to be a changing existence. Four-dimensionalism is not a rejection of perception, but rather, a radical reinterpretation. Four-dimensionalism is so counterintuitive that many people have great difficulty conceiving of it. It runs counter to "nature's most powerful illusion."

Four-dimensionalism is also referred to as eternalism, as it holds that existence is an unchanging eternity. This view maintains that past, present, and future are equally real. Indeed, how could different things all be real, but not equally real?

For the alternative view, however, the ontological status of past and future is an irresolvable dilemma. They are stuck with the untenable alternative of the notion that only the present exists, or growing block theory, which holds past and present are real, but the future is not. It seems, however, that ultimately three-dimensionalism implies the present is real, the past a bit less real, and the future even lesser still. Few are prepared to completely embrace the philosophical presentist stand, that only the present is real.

In his work "The End of Time," Julian Barbour argues the past is but memory and the future is but belief, only now exists, complete and total. Contradictorily, nonetheless, he also speaks of now in plurality, of "nows." Certainly, memory, belief, or thought exist in the expanse of time and could not exist in some razor thin "snapshot" independently existing now. The physical components of that which constitutes consciousness are not momentary; they exist in the expanse of space/time. One does not perceive or comprehend instantaneously. Consciousness exists in the expanse of time, the sum of a physical process. If Barbour's independent now, which somehow cannot be conceived independently, is to be defined as existence, surely, one could gather up all these "nows" and call that existence, or super-existence. Only this existence or super-existence can be conceived as independent and is indeed, the only thing that is totally independent.

Simple logic and all empirical evidence and understanding of the world and reality would indicate the only thing that exists self-sufficiently is all existence, past, present, and future. Existence is not a degree. The question of one's notion of something being real or true is ultimately either/or. All parts of existence exist absolutely in so much as they constitute something. The future and past must be just as real as the seemingly ever-elusive now. Four-dimensionalism is the triumph of logic and objectivity, over subjective assumption and illusion. This victory has not been achieved in the minds of many.

If Thomas Jefferson is unreal, how could one make a true or false statement about him and his life? Was current humanity, which he seemed to care much about, unreal to Jefferson? Is existence relative to the time and perhaps then also the place of observation? Five seconds ago seems more real than five million years ago. Five seconds into the future seems more real than five million years into the future. An object in the room where one is sitting seems more real that something on the other side of the cosmos. The subjectivity of time and space can go on and on, but should not alter one's rational view. In respect to time, nonetheless, for three-dimensionalism, these are comically irresolvable questions. Three-dimensionalism is mired in the contradiction of past and future being unreal, yet, still having some sort of existence.

What pathetic hopelessness of such thinking; yet, it remains such a dominant view, with so few even questioning its reality. Three-dimensionalism is so laughably absurd and pathetically and miserably contradictory that it is amazing so few thinkers have struggled to formulate or embrace an alternative understanding that can withstand the scrutiny of simple logic. This surely speaks to the power of the illusion, of the passage of time, united with humanity's unfortunate proclivity for self-deception.

In addition to the ontological doublethink that three-dimensionalism leaves one with, it also makes a rational cosmological view seem impossible. The German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, argued reason compels one to reject both the view that there is a beginning of time and the universe, but, also, the view that there is no beginning. From a three-dimensional perspective, this is quite the case. The open cosmological view leaves one with the unacceptable infinite regression. The closed cosmological view seems to give one a universe coming from, and returning to, nothing. Nothing is not an alternative to existence. Nothing is not a cause. Nothing comes from nothing; everything comes from identity.

Eternalism allows for a universe that is finite, yet, eternal. An unchanging four-dimensional existence may have a beginning and an end. This does not constitute the nothingness of the three-dimensional closed cosmological model. Cosmologically as well as ontologically, three-dimensionalism is untenable. Nonetheless, despite being the conviction of the twentieth century's most celebrated natural philosopher, four-dimensionalism remains a most esoteric idea.

Disapprovingly, calling Albert Einstein, Parmenides, the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, in personal discussions with Einstein, objected to Einstein's embracing of four-dimensionalism and determinism. In his account of his discussions with Einstein, Popper seems to indicate his objections were more emotional than scientific or philosophical. Nonetheless, the principal objection and logical complaint Popper and others raised against four-dimensionalism was that it provided no accounting for the psychological experience of the passage of time.

While it is an understandable concern, it is by no means irresolvable. The accounting of the passage of time is to be found in causation. The passage of time is the result of the existence of physical causation. It is the understanding of physical causation that must be reevaluated, as it exists in an unchanging universe.

The perception of the fourth-dimension as the passage of time is inherent in the causal structure of the universe. Just as four-dimensionalism is a radical reinterpretation of perception, not a rejection, four-dimensionalism reinterprets physical causation but does not reject it. Eternalism is reconciled with the experience of the passage of time with the view and recognition of contingent physical causation as a hierarchy, not of things coming in and going out of existence. It is this hierarchical structure of existence that results in the psychological experience of the passing of time. The passage of time is caused by physical causation itself.

This idea might be metaphorically compared to a ride on an elevator in a tall building. One gets on the elevator somewhere in the building, perhaps not even knowing where. As the elevator moves up, the floor one was on vanishes, and a new one appears. One sees the floors are structured atop one another; one sees causation. One can only see the floor one is on at a given time, so one decides it is the only floor that exists.

The four-dimensional view is much like the view one would have outside, from a distance. One can see the whole building, perhaps not every part, but one sees it as a totality. One sees it is an unchanging hierarchy. The existence of a second floor is contingent on the existence of a first, and the third contingent on there being a second, etc.

Because we are a part of this unchanging but hierarchical structure, our existence is like that of the one who rides in the elevator. It is the only perceptual perspective that is possible to us. It is only through a rational, metaphysical reinterpretation of this perception that one can comprehend this unchanging hierarchy, and conceive of it from the perspective of the one standing from a distance, outside.

So, the passage of time is more deception than illusionary. To be precise, it is the commonsense interpretation of the passage of time that is illusionary, not the experience itself. The passage of time, while psychological, has a reference to, and is the result of, something that is inherent in the structure of the physical universe. What one subjectively experiences as the passage of time is the psychological result of the hierarchical structure of the unchanging four-dimensional universe.

The acknowledgment and embracing of eternalism would imply and constitute a profoundly different view, not only of existence but also one's life. It means, for better or worse, one's life is finite but eternal. It debunks the notion of death as oblivion. As physical causation is a hierarchy and things do not really come in and go out of existence, one always exists in that part of existence, of that part of space/time, in which one exists.

It may be that an objective study into the psychological effects of such a radical view will need to wait until a more sizable number of people embrace such a view of existence if such an intellectual awakening ever really happens.

In the meantime, one can speculate on how it might affect the human attitude. It could be argued that such a view might make a person cling to life less tenaciously because one knows death does not constitute the kind of end of one's existence that three-dimensionalism implies. Nonetheless, this enlightenment need not be regarded as a threat to the natural and powerful proclivity to value life and survival.

To the contrary, one might also argue that four-dimensionalism could dissuade distraught people from taking their own lives because it would not lead to the oblivion they seek. Knowledge of the eternity of existence could motivate one to weather the emotionally hard times and complete one's life in the hope of a better future, which would also exist eternal.

Most certainly, four-dimensionalism is no reason to detach oneself from the concern for the danger that the totality of humanity now faces. The failure of humankind to realize its full intellectual, spiritual, and moral potential would be all the more tragic when one considers it is not a momentary sparkle, but an eternity of shining glory, that is at stake and would be lost.

It is stunning and inspiring to speculate about an enlightened future, where even children are taught to regard existence and life as eternal, not through some mystic means, but by virtue of the very nature of ultimate reality, an age that recognizes the supremacy of identity. This would truly be an age of reason, of enlightenment, of spirituality.

Today, even those who are familiar with this mostly obscure view, four-dimensionalism, are not prepared to take it seriously because the proof of this idea is found in metaphysics, a scorned and rejected discipline. Eternity is existence acknowledged as unchanging. Comprehending the first principle, the existence of identity and a consistent view of things and time, lead to the discovery of eternity.

Eternalism represents a radical divergence from the commonsense assumption that has dominated the human understanding of reality and life. It is, nonetheless, an intellectual and spiritual ascension, that humanity must take, if they are to come closer to ultimate reality, understanding the supremacy of identity, and a metaphysical comprehension of its implications.

* * *

#  How God Created the Universe

Once upon an imaginary time there lived a man in a magical land of fairies, disembodied spirits, and wizards who knew that everything is possible. Though not a wizard, he was very ambitious, creative, and prosperous. In fact, because this was the land of the fairies, he found himself with an infinite amount of dollars. Fiat currencies it seems, like neoliberalism, had found their rightful place in the land of the fairies.

Becoming aware that this man had been exploiting the good people of this land of fairies by giving them things they wanted and needed at the best price, the wonderful government of the land of the fairies reluctantly decided they had to intervene. The kindly and benevolent government of the land of the fairies decided it was time for this man to give back to what had really made his success possible, the people, the homeland, and of course, the glorious government.

One of the kindly and selfless leaders, as they only are in the land of the fairies, decided it would be best just to take all the infinite dollars away from the man and leave him with nothing. Infinity minus infinity leaves nothing. This sounds reasonable.

Another member of the government, however, argued it was unkind and unwise to take all he had. So, he proposed they just take away every other dollar the man had made, the second dollar, the fourth dollar, etc. However, one of the wizards who advised them pointed out, if you took away half his money, he would still be left with infinite dollars. So, this time infinity minus infinity is infinity, albeit, presumably, a smaller infinity.

Well, the benevolent leader who wanted to take all his money away, out of deep concern for the security and economic well-being of his people, shouted, "This is unacceptable. We can't leave that capitalist pig with infinite cash. Only we have the wisdom to control such wealth and power."

They argued and argued and finally, someone decided they should just count one million dollars out for him and take the rest. Others, however, though that was too much and wanted to count out a hundred thousand dollars for him, and take the rest. So, it seemed that in the land of the fairies, infinity minus infinity is nothing, or infinity, or one million, or one hundred thousand or anything you want it to be.

Someday, perhaps, the intellectual and scientific establishment will return from the land of the fairies, but, as with many other gross misunderstandings, delusions, and fantasies humanity has embraced, infinity will need to stay there.

Meanwhile, back in much scorned and jilted objective reality, where missing socks in the washing machine does not necessarily indicate a multi-dimensional experience, even central banks, try as they may, cannot create infinite currency out of thin air. However incalculable, all the currency they have and ever will create will be finite. Perhaps central banks would function better in the land of the fairies where maybe wealth springs from a printing press, but in this cold, cruel reality, some things are impossible, and infinity is most certainly one of them.

Infinity is a contradiction, an assertion of non-identity. Non-identity does not exist; the contradictory notion of infinity cannot exist. Existence, in all its components, in all respects, must be finite. Finality is, in fact, identity; Finality is self-sameness comprehended as a part of quantity. Finality may be correctly defined as the mathematical understanding of self-sameness.

A thing is not more than itself; a thing is itself. As the great philosopher of ancient Greece, Aristotle, noted, an actual infinite thing must be more than itself. Aristotle recognized the absurdity of the notion of an actual infinity but did a poor job of implementing that recognition into his metaphysical view of existence. Aristotle embraced a steady state cosmology, which clearly implies an infinite regression; it implies an infinity of prior moments. As to the question of whether there is a beginning in time or no beginning, the three-dimensional perspective makes either choice untenable.

Aristotle also maintained that matter was potentially, but not actually, infinitely divisible. Holding matter to be potentially infinitely dividable is different from the hypothetical infinity of numbers, which never constitute an actual infinity. The actual numbers that exist, all that humankind can create, are like the currency created by central banks. They may be incalculably large, but nonetheless, finite. An actual infinity of numbers is not out there.

The matter that, according to Aristotle, is supposed to be infinitely divisible is out there, and that would constitute an actual infinity, whether it is actually physically divided or not. If it were potentially infinitely divisible, it would possess infinite parts. Infinitely divisible or separable matter and for that matter, infinitely divisible space/time, is an irrational expectation. Parts, while only mentally divisible, exist and must be finite.

In quantum mechanics, one has empirically-based evidence of this. Scientists say what they are encountering on the quantum level is the ultimate graininess of reality. What this means is that the physical universe is not infinitely divisible. This is what reason was really telling us, all along.

Einstein often complained quantum theory must be missing an important element of reality, but the same could be said for the theory of relativity. The missing element of reality, missing from these theories as well as all of physics and the human mind, is finality. It is a tragedy of the human intellect that the notion of infinity has been embraced by great minds with towering intellects, for it is an idea that is far more befitting a complete fool.

In 1915, while serving in the German Army on the Russian front, Karl Schwarzschild, an apparent genius who volunteered to be used as cannon fodder, became the first to realize the theory of relativity taken to a ridiculous extreme, apparently indicated that matter could literally crush itself into oblivion. As was also the case with Einstein, the physicist, and astronomer, Schwarzschild did not think his work could correspond to anything real but did not know what force there was in the cosmos to stop it. Does not, however, such a theory proceed from the assumption that space/time is infinitely divisible? Is this not a ludicrous expectation?

The force Schwarzschild was looking for, is finality. Like black holes purported to be gateways to other worlds, infinity has been a major entryway to the ridiculousness that has become increasingly pervasive in science and the mind of humanity. The acceptance or embracing of the possibility, let alone the existence, of actual infinity, is a demonstration of the foundationless, metaphysical void that exists in science and the collective mind of humankind.

The present state of philosophy and the human mind without a first philosophy has left science groundless, in a state of metaphysical and epistemological confusion. It is significant to note in this context that many of the great and important controversies in, or about, science have been essentially metaphysical, such as the question of determinism versus indeterminism or the efforts to interpret the quantum theory. As creationists are happy to point out, natural selection, the fundamental principle of the theory of evolution, is essentially metaphysical. It is reducible to an assertion of self-sameness. The concept of natural selection is a very meaningful logical truth, not "just tautology." For one who abstains from metaphysics, however, the difference is difficult to grasp. Only in an irrational age could the fact that natural selection is simple logic be held as a claim that it is unscientific. Such irrationality is not an atmosphere that engenders objective science. The absence of a sound metaphysical ground has created an environment that is breeding corruption and is degenerating science into mysticism, dogma, and belief.

Science, like humanity itself, has never discovered its correct philosophical footing. It seems just as when social policy is divorced from ideology, statism wins by default, as science has been detached from metaphysics, mysticism has also won, by default. This has, for example, allowed the counterintuitive to become the playground of contradictory mystic interpretation and any attempt to counter such interpretations, regarded as unscientific rationalism. Failing to acquire a true and provable ground has left science accepting by evasion and nonattendance, groundless assumptions and the creeping nihilism that prevails today.

Even as empiricism has supposedly become the dominant epistemological doctrine of contemporary science, it grows increasingly detached from objective perceptual evidence. Study after study dubiously conducted and unduplicatable, with experimental designs that could not pass the scrutiny of a twelve-year-old, the very notion of the scientific method is in epistemological crisis. The scientific method cannot live in a philosophical vacuum. The scientific method is applied metaphysics to which contemporary science has lost any theoretical claim. Ethically and intellectually bankrupt, the scientific and intellectual establishment is more interested in influence and monetary gain than the advancement of scientific knowledge. Science, consequently, in its present state, metaphysically groundless, epistemologically collapsing, corrupt and politicized, must be regarded with suspicion. This is especially true when scientific claims are used to promote more power to the homicidal state.

With dubious thinking serving as blinders, the unavoidable issues that constitute metaphysics are refrained from with an almost fanatic commitment. Given what metaphysical philosophy has brought them, and the state of philosophy, this is not completely unjustified. Even as philosophically groundless technology continues to progress, metaphysical philosophy and theoretical science, for the most part, are reaching an increasingly darkening dead end. It is time to embrace an alternative path and a new light to show the way. It is the rediscovery of the first principle and to finally recognize its meaning and implications, which can constitute the new light and a new direction. This is monumentally true, not just for science, but for all human intellectual endeavors.

To take a more rationalistic method to a study or investigation is simply a matter of the degree to which one employs logic, necessary truth, in one's intellectual endeavor. It has been said that a rationalistic approach to a subject is acceptable, but only acceptable when an empirical approach is impossible. In many circumstances, however, the exact opposite is the case. The study of economics is a good example. Approaching economics as a logical discipline has proven to give a far truer and more meaningful understanding of economics than employing the methodology that prevails in a science such as physics. Austrian economist, Murray Rothbard, argued the mathematization of Austrian school economics would be a trivial endeavor, as it would diminish, not enhance, understanding.

Regarding physics, physicists have done well to provide precise mathematical models of physical factors. Nonetheless, it should not be regarded as the be-all and end-all of our understanding of the physical universe. Fraudulent claims of the emergence of some sort of "theory of everything" notwithstanding, science has left us with the impression that the physical universe is hopelessly inexplicable.

A truly explanatory theoretical physics must sit atop and be united with a metaphysical thesis, the primacy of identity. Efforts to replace metaphysics with a standalone scientific theory are hopeless from conception. Replacing this, the universe from nothing nonsense of theoretical science, with some mystic notion of god is certainly no real solution. This theological alternative explains nothing. It merely tries to fill the metaphysical void of contemporary science.

Laws of physics are manmade assertions, which one hopes correctly describe, and perhaps explain, the factors to which they refer. These manmade assertions can't create a universe. The universe was created by a factor, the most fundamental causeless factor, self-sameness. It is asserted by the most supreme metaphysical law, the law of identity. Any true explanation, any accounting of the universe, must start with this.

The primacy thesis inspires us with the knowledge that a real explanation of the physical universe is a reasonable pursuit. It is this thesis, the primacy of identity, which provides the metaphysical ground for such an explanation and would be impossible without it. Even more so than a subject such as economics, natural philosophy is intimately related to metaphysics. Failing to achieve a true metaphysical ground, physics and all of science as well as all human intellectual efforts, are doomed to failure. A true explanatory natural philosophy must be grounded in first philosophy. It is the primacy of identity thesis that provides an explanation of existence at its absolute ground. A true all-embracing and unifying physical theory must be based on this supreme metaphysical thesis. Anything else will be a hoax.

Two concepts are essential to understanding how identity created the vast complex universe such as it is. These concepts are specificity and finality. While these concepts are understood differently, by means of different logical truths, they ultimately refer to the same thing, identity. This speaks to the enormous diversity of the application of fundamentally monistic logical truth. The specificity of reality, the finality of all things, are corollaries of the self-sameness of existence.

Because these concepts ultimately refer to identity, to understand how specificity and finality crafted the universe such as it is, is to comprehend how identity created the universe. Specificity is the identity of parts. Specificity is self-sameness acknowledged as a part of all other parts. Finality is the identity of numbers. Finality is self-sameness acknowledged as a part of quantity. Consequently, the fundamental and central question of metaphysics: "What can one say is true of existence, by the fact, that one knows identity exists?" becomes for the natural philosopher: "What can one know to be true of the physical universe by the fact that one knows that specificity, the self-sameness of parts, and finality, the self-sameness of quantity, exists?"

However large or small, matter is multi-faceted; it possesses extension. As the metaphysical philosopher, G.W. Leibniz correctly reasoned, material objects must be, in principle, mentally reducible to something more fundamental. The notion that multi-faceted objects cannot be reduced to component parts is logically absurd. The existence of fundamental objects, objects with no intrinsic extension, is logically incontrovertible. Parts exist as part of and never apart from reality. No parts of existence exist independent of other things. Nonetheless, parts exist and can be mentally abstracted from reality.

Two can be mentally reduced to one. Even if the thing and the other thing that constitute two things are physically inseparable, this does not negate the fact of the existence of two things. This mental reduction requires only the recognition that there must be a multitude of things. Just as the presentist notion of a "snapshot" moment must be dependent and insufficient, as a totality, the existence of fundamental objects, in and of themselves, is most certainly incomplete. Matter is multifaceted; it constitutes more than one thing. That matter cannot be physically reducible to such fundamental objects is irrelevant to the fact of their existence, but is quite pertinent, however, to the issue of how identity created such a vast complex universe.

Identity exists, but it is more fundamental than anything tangible. Fundamental objects and relative position, space/time, are the primary constituents of tangible reality, the physical universe. Fundamental objects and relative position (i.e., space/time) are the primary links between identity and the physical universe, between the metaphysical and the physical. They are second in the order of contingency. In opposition to subjectivist, Cartesian notions, identity, and the fundamental constituents of the physical universe are a part of, but also are more fundamental than, the observer. Existence is, in this fundamental regard, clearly more and beyond the observer.

Self-sameness exists, but it is impossible and inconceivable that it could exist independently. The fundamental constituents of the physical universe mirror identity in this regard. Common sense seems to tell us relative position exists, but not in and of itself while objects have some sort of independent existence, but fundamentally, this is not the case. They are both dependent on each other. Fundamental objects are essentially points of reference in space/time. Multi-faceted material objects can be imagined independently; fundamental objects cannot.

Fundamental objects and relative position are basic, and apparently must be the only basic constituents of the physical universe. There are no other known things that are so intrinsically featureless and monistic. They are second only to identity in the order of contingency. Therefore, they should provide fundamental explanations of the universe such as it is when weighted against the demands of specificity and finality, two concepts that reveal the commands of identity, the metaphoric God that created the universe.

It would be absurd to assume more complex objects might be more fundamental, coming before fundamental objects and relative position in the order of contingency, that somehow complex objects cause the existence of their constituent parts. It is fundamental objects in space/time concurring with specificity, with finality, which determines the structure of complex objects, determines what they are. Concurrence with identity, specificity/finality, does require complexity, which is why existence, is complex. The finality thesis maintains three spatial dimensions and time, the dimension of hierarchical contingency, exist because they are the minimum necessary for specificity and finite decidability.

Fundamental objects exist essentially, in synergy, in synchronization. Relative position provides this interconnectedness, this synchronization. Fundamental objects and relative position exist in mutual causation and must exist in plurality.

Identity is the ultimate irreducible "naked is," but fundamental objects in relative position are closest to identity in this regard. They are and must be, intrinsically featureless. Extrinsically, they become a feature or characteristic, by virtue of specificity, achieved only as a part of a greater whole.

Fundamental objects and relative position are physically primary and featureless, reducible only to self-sameness. The fundamental constituents of the physical universe must be intrinsically featureless, for if they were not, they would not be fundamental. Intrinsically, all that fundamental objects and relative position possess is identity, which they could not independently possess. Collectively, fundamental objects are what they are. However, in and of themselves, fundamental objects and space/time would constitute nothing. They acquire character by virtue of being parts. Without this diversity, they would possess no specificity, no identity. To exist, they must acquire extrinsic uniqueness. This constitutes the most rudimentary understanding of how identity created the universe from which the rest should follow.

To possess specificity, intrinsically featureless fundamental objects must have a distinct position. For this, a sufficient amount of complexity in the universe is necessary. A small universe would have insufficient relation; fundamental objects would be the same and indiscernible. The universe would not achieve real diversity. There would be no specificity, no identity. This most certainly is impossible. Understanding this is to clearly comprehend how identity mandates and creates a complex, diverse universe.

Consider a universe of two fundamental objects in relative positions. Conceived of from the perspective of our larger universe, the two objects would be distinct; however, lacking that broader perspective, the two objects would be indiscernible. They would, in fact, not constitute two objects. It is the broader context that gives them specificity and therefore constitutes two objects.

Fundamental objects in relative position exist from reciprocal causation. Contingent physical causation emerges as the structure of fundamental objects in relative position becomes hierarchical, an order of physical contingency, as the location of some fundamental objects can and must be determined before others, in the order of contingency. Consequently, on the quantum level, causation is mutual, but on a macro level, physical causation becomes contingent. This is to say, the four-dimensional physical universe must be hierarchical.

The universe is an unchanging hierarchical structure crafted by specificity, by finality, (i.e. by self-sameness.) Specificity mandates a more complex universe and a deterministic finality even more so. Simple aggregates sufficiently complex to possess specificity would face infinite possibilities for divergence, and therefore, undecidability. An increasingly complex system of fundamental objects in relative position would be necessary for a determined, decided universe of finite geometry.

It is this geometric undecidability that can explain the wishy-washy seemingly contradictoriness encountered at the quantum level. Such simple objects sufficiently complex to realize specificity, exist but would be, in and of themselves, incomplete. The fundamental objects that complete them must correspond with finality. They must find a specific finite position relative to other fundamental objects. Fundamental objects exist everywhere that is necessary to concur with the requirement of a complete universe of objects in a deterministic, finite, quantized, relative position.

This is the origin of a physically divergent universe as a hierarchical structure. Essentially, from a changing three-dimensional perspective, it is the evolution of simple geometrically undecided and incomplete aggregate objects toward more complex more stable, geometrically settled objects to eventual absolute stability. From the perspective of four-dimensionalism, total stability is already there, a universe total, finite, and hierarchical. Ultimately, the totality of existence is and must be absolute stability, but it requires a hierarchical structure, (i.e., contingent physical causation) to achieve it.

As one sees the impossibility of divergence without specificity, a simple universe, and how the finite structure of relative position, of space/time, crafts the universe, it is significant to remember it is the result of identity. It is self-sameness, comprehended as specificity and finality, which one is observing and comprehending. Self-sameness created the universe and whatever the limits to this explanation, this clearly must be true.

Rationality begins with identity. Infinity is fundamentally irrational. There can be no rational argument for the existence of infinity for it constitutes an assertion of non-identity. This certainly must include relative position; it must include space/time. The finality of the divisibility of relative position, quantized space/time, will affect the location of objects in relative position. This will include fundamental objects at great distances if there is direct relative position, if there is "entanglement."

What is encountered at the quantum level is the limits of the reducibility of reality, of the physical universe. The existence of fundamental objects and relative position are finite. The assumption of continuity of motion is an irrational expectation. It implies the existence of infinity, which most certainly cannot be reconciled with the axiom. Embracing infinity, as contemporary science has, is to wallow in absurdity. In this regard, it is clear that space/time must be quantized; it exists in finite constituent parts. The finality thesis shows the recognition of the finite structure of space/time can lead to an explanation of the basic forces of the physical universe.

The finality view of space/time holds that space/time is not continual and all-embracing. This view might be metaphorically compared to a roadmap. The map contains dots representing cities and lines between them representing roads that connect them. The dots may be thought of as primary objects and the roads as space/time. The empty portion of the map is only hypothetical space/time and need not concur with finite space/time. If no roads directly connect two cities, if there is no direct connection, then there is no actual space/time between them. If these to fundamental objects had acquired a direct relative position to one another, their position would be altered. The position would need to concur with the finite structure of space/time.

The finality thesis embraces the special theory of relativity; basic constituents of space/time are irreducible but measured relative to velocity. This is to say that the quantity of the irreducible parts of space/time between objects remains the same, but the perceived size of those parts would be a relative measurement.

If one had a piece of paper and decided to put dots on the paper with a pen, if one assumed space was infinite, then one could put dots anywhere. On the other hand, if one decided space had to be finite and the dots had to be positioned in a manner that did not contradict this finite geometry, then the dots could no longer be placed anywhere.

Geometric rules would emerge. The finite structure of fundamental objects in relative position affect and determine relative location. This thesis asserts the laws that emerge from the limitations of fundamental objects in finite space/time are what we know as the basic physical forces of the universe.

Illustrating the means by which space/time finality causes electromagnetic attraction, one could sit at a table with a quantity of sticks of equal length, representing the fundamental constituents of quantized space/time, and line them up, end to end, in a straight line while making another such line of sticks in a direction so they intersect. When they do intersect, it is unlikely they will come to a point in a straight line. They can, however, be made to come to a point by altering the direction of the converging sticks. As this happens, it causes space/time disparity, drawing objects closer. Gravitation is also the result of this space/time disparity resulting from the finite structure of the universe.

Significantly, on a three-dimensional level, there is a hypothetical infinity of possible positions, a circle, where a point could locate. This is the reason quantum level particles occur in "systems." This finality must be achieved within a larger composite of objects in relative position.

When an object is in motion, the motion will remain straight, unless another force acts upon it. Much as inertia, the natural direction of relative position is also straight. It will alter this as necessary to conform to the finite quantized structure of space/time. It would be expected that these bends in space/time would constitute the least amount of deviation from straight within a system of related, entangled, fundamental objects. This criterion would allow the fundamental objects in a system the ability to achieve decidability in correspondence with finality, with the geometrically finite structure of the universe.

The fundamental constituents of relative position, space/time, are straight and may change direction, but as space/time is quantized, while these changes in direction may constitute a curve, there can be no absolute curve, no absolute circle. The notion of an absolute circle or curve is an implied infinity and cannot exist. It implies infinite relative positions. Pi is an unresolvable number indicating this impossibility. An exact value cannot be found for pi because what it measures does not exist. Instead of trying to follow pi into an illusionary infinity, the real lesson to learn is the impossibility of absolute circles or curves, the impossibility of infinity.

A fundamental object must have a position relative to a multitude of objects to acquire a specific, determined, finite position. If one assumed it was an indeterministic universe, then the object could randomly land anywhere. In a deterministic reality where identity is the only first cause, its exact position must be determined. It must then achieve a relative position with a multitude of objects in a position that does not contradict finality. This ambiguity or undecidability, infinite possibilities that exist in a smaller less complex universe is the reason for the necessity of the construction of a vast universe. A universe in agreement with specificity and finality, which is to say identity, is a vast and complex universe.

The finality thesis maintains, for a fundamental object to exist, it must have a specific, finite position relative to other objects in quantized space/time. "It is only an it, when it" acquires a position that concurs with the demands of finality. Some of the fundamental objects with which a point must acquire a specific finite position can be in the future, so its position is, in part, caused by a sort of reverse causation, future causes past. This causation, however, is mutual causation, not contingent. Primary objects in relative position exist in reciprocal causation. There is a hierarchical order in which the relative position of fundamental objects are determined. Consciousness, which is a part of this hierarchical order, subjectively experiences this order as the passage of time. Future is contingent on the past but is intimately connected, thus, a hierarchical structure. Without this continuing reciprocal and contingent causation, there is no future. At the point in space/time, the end of the universe, when all systems of fundamental objects have acquired a specific relative position, there is no undecidability; the universe is complete. The ultimate system, the only complete system is the totality of the universe itself.

Some fundamental objects can and must acquire a specific, finite position relative to other fundamental objects before others in the order of contingency in the hierarchy. Such structures are decided but incomplete. This is the origin of contingent physical causation; this is why the physical universe is a hierarchy.

The totality of existence embraces all of space/time, all relative position. This totality is complete and geometrically decided. What exists at a given time is incomplete; the structures, in and of themselves, are geometrically undecided. Quantum superposition, which the finality thesis holds to be geometric undecidability, is ultimately an illusion of the three-dimensional perspective. From a three-dimensional perspective, Schrödinger's cat may seem neither dead nor alive; nonetheless, from the perspective of eternity, its fate was always definite. Geometric undecidability, quantum superposition, disappears in the four-dimensional totality.

From one's three-dimensional perspective; one cannot observe that which exists in the future, relative positions presently undecided. Nor can one directly observe geometrically decided fundamental objects of which the physics of such objects, or the physics of one's observation, have no effect. One observes the system of objects of which the fundamental objects that constitute the observer and the observed are directly a part of its finite geometry.

It is the rudimentary physics of fundamental objects acquiring a relative position in concurrence with specificity, with finality, (i.e. with identity,) that connects everything in the physical universe, and the reason for all physical causation.

This must include consciousness and observation. Observation, the physics of awareness, is part of the system of fundamental objects one observes. When one does observe, the physics of what one subjectively knows as observation becomes part of the finite geometry that determines the position of fundamental objects. Consciousness is intimately related to the synergy of fundamental objects in relative position. Consciousness is the sum result of a complex synergy system.

It is absurd and even human hubris, nonetheless, to presume this is the only means by which such finality could occur. It is not consciousness, per se, that completes the system. It is the presence of the necessary fundamental objects to achieve decidability of a given system, of which the physics of what one knows as consciousness are sometimes a part. It is the completeness, the decidability, of this finite geometry, that completes the system of fundamental objects in finite, quantized, relative position. The physics of observation must always be a part of the finite geometry of the system of which that observation is a part.

Consciousness, awareness, cannot be primary or basic; it is complex and contingent. Its existence is dependent on a substantial degree of complexity. Consciousness is created by complex composites of fundamental objects in relative position. Consciousness is the sum of this physical complexity that constitutes it. Consciousness, all known awareness, exists by physical means. It is the sum of this complex physics. While many would like to pretend otherwise, there is really no empirical or rational evidence that consciousness, or awareness, in all its various forms and mechanisms, constitutes something more than this. This does not constitute a rejection of consciousness, its self-evidence, or its importance. It simply holds that the evidence indicates consciousness is the sum of the physical means by which it exists. Holding consciousness as something else, or something more, is to conjure this other something out of nothing.

When Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1915, it was one of the greatest leaps of creativity and logic the world has ever seen. His idea of gravitation is four-dimensional in its conception. It holds that gravitation is inherent in the nature of space/time itself, that the presence of matter causes a curving of space/time essentially creating a hole in space/time. This is consistent with the finality thesis, which holds gravitation and indeed, all the forces of the universe, are the result of the finite structure of space/time.

The finality thesis embrace's the concept of gravitation provided by the general theory of relativity and provides an explanation as to why the presence of matter causes the space/time disparity, the curving of space/time, asserted by the general theory of relativity. When fundamental objects are created by achieving a relative position in concurrence with finality, with quantized space/time, space/time disparities are created caused by the bending necessary to correspond with finality.

The gravitation of matter, a given collection of fundamental objects in relative position, is equal to the sum of all the disparities caused by the bending of space/time to agree with the finite, quantized structure of space/time, the finite geometry of the universe. This is to say that the depth of the hole in space/time caused by the presence of a quantity of matter, such as the earth, is equal to the sum of all the disparities caused by all the fundamental objects that comprise this given piece of matter.

The finality thesis concurs beautifully with Einstein's conception of gravitation, providing an explanation founded on the most basic, incontrovertible fact, the existence of finality, the existence of identity.

It would follow from the finality thesis that nuclear force, the force that binds subatomic particles together in the nucleus of an atom, is the result of fundamental objects acquiring a relative position in such close proximity that they cannot move apart without contradicting quantized space/time. They essentially bind together and can only move as a unit.

What one understands as movement, from a three-dimensional perspective, is the four-dimensional series of related fundamental objects that constitute matter in motion. A nucleus is a sequence of fundamental objects in space/time bound by the finite structure of space/time and, therefore, must maintain close proximity. It is a hierarchical succession of fundamental objects maintaining a structure known as a nucleus.

Summarizing, ultimate reality is not frivolous. It is, and only can be, all that identity commands, no more and no less. The primacy of self-sameness confirms identity is the only first cause and existence is therefore deterministic. Everything else that exists must come from identity. It follows from this fact that the universe, however vast and complex, must constitute the simplest universe possible, for a less simple existence would constitute arbitrary, indeterministic chance. There is only one existence possible—the universe created by identity.

All these ideas ultimately come from a principle of which it is claimed, by the shallowest of minds, to be meaningless. This work is one of metaphysical philosophy and presented as such. From metaphysics, nonetheless, an explanatory natural philosophy can emerge. Acknowledged or not, an explanatory theory of the universe is, fundamentally, an achievement of metaphysical inquiry, and a testament to the supremacy of identity.

* * *

#  Finality and Nonlocality

In 1935, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published the "EPR papers" which described, using a thought experiment, the nonlocality implied by quantum theory.

Nonlocality refers to the capacity of objects to instantaneously interact even as they are separated by large distances. This apparently contradicts the "principle of locality," the concept that an object is only directly influenced by its immediate environment. Einstein referred to the principle of locality as an axiom, and it may have been a reasonably justified assumption. It is not, nonetheless, an axiom as the concept is defined in this writing. It is not a necessary truth; it is not a self-proving assertion of identity.

Contradictory notion, or not, Einstein never accepted the existence of nonlocality and regarded it as evidence that quantum theory was false or at least incomplete. It was Einstein's abhorrence of nonlocality that supplied the motivation for his radical conception of gravitation, as he held that Newton's concept of gravitation violated the principle of locality.

In 1972, however, an actual experiment was conducted by John Clauser and Stuart Freedman. Despite Clauser's sympathy with Einstein's position, the experiments confirmed the existence of this action at a distance.

However, is this so-called nonlocality really so inexplicable? Space/time is the relative position of fundamental objects. It exists in mutual causation with the fundamental objects it unites. It is not just out there, existing in and of itself. There may, or may not, be a direct space/time connection between two fundamental objects. If there is such a direct relative position between fundamental objects, then they are "entangled." This, according to finite geometry theory, is what is known as entanglement. If fundamental objects are entangled, it is the finite, quantized, structure of space/time that provides the mechanism for what Einstein referred to as "spooky action from a distance." It can provide a simple, straightforward, non-mystical, explanation of so-called nonlocality. It is really, not "spooky" at all.

It is ultimately the assumption that two objects in direct relative position are disengaged that is irrational because it implies infinite divisibility of space/time. Since the finality explanation of interaction at a distance maintains that it is the specific constituent parts of quantized space/time that are in proximity with the fundamental objects interacting that causes the interaction, one can maintain that it conserves Einstein's cherished principle of locality.

The finite structure of space/time provide the means of interaction and so-called spin. As spin down is weightier, it should have the greater space/time disparity. What is known as weight or gravitation is the result of the space/time disparities that result from fundamental objects in relative position concurring with finality. Quantum theory indicates how interconnected the universe is on a fundamental level; the finality thesis, the finite geometric structure of the universe, explains why this is the case.

* * *

#  The God of Reason

As identity is the only first cause, the universe, therefore, must be deterministic. Essentially, indeterminism is a claim that something other than identity can exist primary and causeless. As the primacy of identity proves, this violates the axiom all A is A. Nothing is exempt from causation; nothing is exempt from identity. Fundamentally, identity is causation.

Properly defined, this does not mean humanity is without volition. Humankind has the ability to make choices, but this capacity is not indeterministic. There is really no contradiction between determinism and volition unless volition is transformed into a mystic notion, regarded to be exempt from causation, exempt from identity.

Determinism is certainly no reason to regard individuals as not responsible or accountable for their actions. To the contrary, it is precisely why they must be held accountable. The failure to do this is to reward immorality at the expense of the ethical with destructive social consequences. Reality will hold such a foolish society responsible with unattractive results. Nature itself most certainly has and will hold individuals and humanity accountable for their choices and will pass the coldest judgment.

Volition, the capacity to make choices, is an immense factor in determining human survival and well-being. It is the human mind that must exercise volition, and it should be guided by facts and reason, but the fundamental basis for the choices one makes will ultimately fall back on basic convictions or beliefs. These could be notions derived from whim, religious fantasy, or some other irrational "belief system," or they could be ideas and principles founded on intellectual rigor. They could be factually and rationally justified convictions. It is only a first philosophy that can supply the necessary foundation for the later.

Philosophy is monumentally important to everyone, as it is essential to the proper function of the human mind in its relation to reality, and a recognition of the means by which humanity may live together in an ethical, beneficial, prosperous, and happy social environment. These significant examples certainly represent only a small sample of the diverse and important issues and questions that belong in the province of philosophy. Other disciplines can contribute too many issues that philosophy addresses, but should do so in a secondary manner. Even when philosophy is brought to bear on subjects that are not philosophy per se, it performs a foundational function.

For the ones who are driven to question and pursue ultimate reality, it is both astonishing and tragic that so many live their lives in a state of abject philosophic ignorance. Many otherwise educated and intellectually capable people give very little priority to philosophy and acquiring any kind of metaphysical perspective. Others dogmatically cling to the demonstrably false mystic paradigms provided by religion and statist propaganda.

Human efforts in the realm of philosophy historically and the state of academic philosophy today are certainly, to a great degree, responsible for the general philosophical vacuum that exists among non-academics. This alone does not explain the apathy that exists in most people, for such important matters that, as Socrates said, to ignore is to make one's life scarcely worth living.

The practical necessity of philosophy, the importance of commonsense rationality being ascended to metaphysical knowledge, the very achievement of knowledge itself, is seldom recognized. Most people, in consequence, are willing to surrender their yearning for metaphysical knowledge, to fantasy and delusion.

Usually, when philosophy does emerge from outside the academic establishment, it is every bit as horrendous as what the establishment offers. In many cases, it is much worse. Be it, intentional or not, irrational ideas coming from outside the established mainstream serve as "strawman" arguments for the establishment.

First philosophy, by its very nature, should be universally relatable. True first philosophy must begin with the self-evident and self-proving axiom of identity, and the most basic rudimentary facts that should be universally acceptable, as self-evident. Reading a philosophical work should not be like reading a technology journal, filled with concepts that reference specialized knowledge with which many are unfamiliar. True first philosophy is fundamental and should be comprehensible to the intelligent layperson.

The fundamentals of Identism are easy to understand, and to one who is intellectually honest, easily regarded as provable. This basic principle that it is initiated, and concepts that follow, nonetheless, lead to ideas and stunning revelations that are deep and, in some regards, counterintuitive, constituting a very different view of existence, the world, and the ultimate nature of one's life. In this regard, it may emerge as a metaphysical view that is for many, challenging to comprehend fully.

A true and well comprehended metaphysical philosophy and reason grounded in an unshakable recognition of knowledge must prevail over mysticism, debilitating relativist dogma and pseudoscience parading as objective research before mankind can realize his true intellectual potential. Metaphorically speaking, first and foremost, humanity must discover the God of reason.

Identism is a philosophy centered on the supremacy of the axiom and the primacy of identity. In a meaningful, but only metaphoric sense, identity is the God of the philosophy of Identism. There are interesting parallels between the Identist conception of identity and the mystic notion of god. As the creator gods of the faithful are generally envisioned, identity is the primary thing from which all other contingent things derive their existence. The law that asserts identity, the principle of self-sameness, is the supreme law of existence. This mirrors the notion that the creator gods of religion are the ultimate authority.

When a believer is called upon to justify their mystical belief system, they will usually fall back on the words of some ancient text that is claimed to be divine. In parallel to this, it is the axiom formulated with words that describes, asserts, and proves the existence of identity, the metaphoric God of reason. Religion claims great harm in failing to acknowledge the existence of their gods, but it is the failure to acknowledge the existence of identity, the God of reason, which has created great harm to human intellectual potency.

Religions claim their god is the path to salvation, but it is the God of reason, that stands as the only hope of saving humanity from these destructive and debilitating gods of the mystic. Much as the gods of faith are jealous gods, the God of reason must be worshiped uncompromisingly to constitute an incontrovertible claim to knowledge.

In addition to parallels between the God of reason and the mystic gods of faith, there are diametric opposites. First and foremost, ultimately the belief in the gods of faith is a belief in non-identity. The gods of the mystic as they are generally defined, when their believers can be imposed upon for a definition, are contradictory, non-identity, which cannot be reconciled with the fact of the existence of self-sameness and can only be accepted on faith, on self-deception. The embracing of identity, contrariwise, constitutes a rejection of faith, a rejection of belief. While the gods of faith sabotage any honest claim to knowledge, the God of reason and knowledge are discovered together. The God of reason is the certain immutable ground and starting point of knowledge.

Faith is a delusion, falsely ascended to the status of virtue. The gods of faith are fought for, with the weapons of murder, in the horrendous battlefields of the holy wars of human carnage and sacrifice. Aside from psychological ploys aimed at human self-deception, this is the only means by which such gods can be established. Conversely, reason soundly founded on the absolute is the only weapon required by the worshipers of identity, the God of reason.

For the worshipers of the God of reason, there is to be found an element of revenge, and yet, transcendence and forgiveness, for the little lying blasphemers can only be exactly what that which they deny has made them. For many, their whole intellectual life, and consequent efforts are wasted in a pathetic attempt to evade and deny the absolute. What they embrace, however, the imaginary non-identity, in all its embellished and gilded variations of self-deception, is destroying the world. Therefore, the liars must be confronted, and human knowledge must prevail.

To embrace the gods of faith, non-identity, is to abdicate any honest claim to knowledge. Conversely, the embracing of the God of reason, identity, is the only means by which one acquires knowledge. Embracing identity is to acquire the power of knowledge. It is a power that has escaped humanity with catastrophic results.

Unlike the mystic gods of faith, the God of reason does not ask for victims or sacrifice, does not ask for blood. It does not demand that its proponents drag victims to the top of pyramids so their hearts can be ripped from their bodies. It makes no demand that innocent children must beg for forgiveness. While it is the ultimate root of the grief, suffering, and misery in the world, as it is the cause of everything, it is the one god that perhaps we can forgive and accept.

This is the spirituality the God of reason offers. It is the only spirituality worth possessing because the price is much too high for the fraudulent "spirituality" offered by the mystic, for it demands the surrender of the mind, of knowledge. It is a sellout to the worst kind of insidious evil. The price that has been paid for this false delusion of happiness is an incalculable failure, suffering, pain, and guilt. Religions cannot conjure the gods or heavens they hallucinate, but they certainly can manufacture the mystics' hell on earth.

The embracing of the God of reason does not contradict real human needs. It does not stand in antagonism to the very values required for human survival. It is a spirituality grounded in the very source of human power, survival, and well-being. Conversely, the gods of faith and their fraudulent "spirituality" and "religious experience" are the principal threat to the existence of humankind.

Throughout history, humanity has been dominated by the gods of faith and the monstrous delusions they bring forth, greatest and most hideous of which, is the state. The emergence of humankind, nonetheless, has been the result of the latent effect of the god of reason, of the intellectual power it brings to humanity. The incompatibility of human progress, and the primitive monster that has been dragged along, is reaching a monumental crisis and potential catastrophe beyond anything in human history. When Patrick Henry stated, "give me liberty or give me death," it was, at the time, a declaration of defiance. Today, however, those words convey a grim statement of fact. This is the alternative humanity may well be facing.

Groundless and floating, human advance itself becomes a source of prodigious danger, concern, and crisis. In the face of human achievement, mysticism and statism become more and more, deadly anachronisms. Human reason has created technology of incredible power and potential, while human irrationality and propensity for self-deception has placed it in the hands of monstrous criminals.

Truth, it has been said, "needs no protection," but lies have always enjoyed the protection of the state, as the state has enjoyed the protection of lies. It is, therefore, the state from which the truth must be liberated and protected. Statism has always been poisonous to scientific objectivity and honest metaphysical inquiry. Politicized and intellectually corrupted science at its worst can replace religious mysticism as the enablers of the criminality of the state. Such "science" has deteriorated to the level of mysticism. This certainly, is also true of tainted, dishonest, or wrongheaded philosophy.

Regardless of whether it is called science, religion, or philosophy, lies and self-deception are the vices that enable and perpetuate the state. From the most primitive social orders forward, religion, mysticism, and pseudoscience have formed alliances with the violent oppressors, and their fraudulent claim to authority that are now known as government and the state. Only reason founded on identity truly stands in antagonism to this evil alliance.

Money, it is claimed, "is the root of all evil," but it is its fraudulent replacement, fiat currency, that has brought so much evil into the world. It has enabled the growth of tyrannical statism and horrendous wars. This, nonetheless, is just one example of the foundational vice that is threatening humanity. The corruption of civilization creating money, statism, mass murder, and war are the products of mysticism, delusion, and self-deception.

Soon, humankind will need to face the choice of dying with their fantasies or living with reason and reality. The likelihood of their choosing the later seems remote at this point. People are not very honest, especially when it comes to acknowledging reality over what they want to believe. The most dangerous, crippling, and entrenched lies are the lies one tells oneself. Humans have always adhered stubbornly to their vice of delusion, and their mystic masters have generally demanded that they kill and die for these delusions.

Now, the whole of humanity faces a premature grave, all for a malicious, ugly, and horrific lie. It is no less a lie today than for the aboriginal who was sacrificed to some primitive god. However unworldly or sophisticated, the embracing of contradiction is, and always has been, the ground and essence of delusion. It is called faith; it is called patriotism. It is called courage and loyalty and even honesty, but what it is, is a lie.

It is an age of misology, the hatred of reason. This hatred goes hand in hand with mysticism. Misology is the natural result of embracing notions that cannot withstand the scrutiny of rigorous rational critique. "Hatred" has become a demonized term as "hate speech" has become a euphemism used for the call for censorship, but certainly, the hatred of reason exemplifies the most destructive of all forms of hate, as it ultimately constitutes hatred of humanity and the most important of human values.

While governments invent threatening "evil" to gather support for their crimes and usurp ever-increasing power, statism and mysticism is the real axis of evil. The criminal insanity that is statism is in fact, the most brutal, murderous, and dangerous form of mysticism.

As human society has been dominated by the criminality of the state, the human mind and spirituality have been dominated by the mysticism of religions and belief systems. Humanity must claim their minds and lives from the contradictory, non-identity worship that is mysticism before they can claim their freedom from the brutal criminals who are called government.

Statism is a merger of mysticism and criminality, creating a criminal insanity that has been responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of millions of people. It is now poised with the capacity to exterminate the entire human race. Arguably, it may even have the potential to destroy the planet, making it unable to support life. In the face of this grim reality, it is a sick irony that environmental fools, with a mystic notion of nature, use the well-being of the planet as a pretense for giving more power to this monstrous homicidal criminality.

Everything exists; even illusions exist as such. As such, however, they have proven to be the most powerful and destructive force in the human condition. Delusion, by its very nature, is the most harmful factor in the mind of humankind. The delusion of the state, and the criminally motivated liars, are the most menacing of all weapons arrayed against humanity and yet all that would be necessary to destroy this malevolence would be to examine it in the light of reason, to weigh it against the fact of identity, void of intellectual corruption and the self-deception that is prevalent.

Humans are the possessors of two basic and diametrically opposed mental abilities, the capacity for truth and the capacity for self-deception. The effects of these two contrary abilities pervade our cultures and human history.

The essential product of human capacity for truth is reason, necessary truth, logical truth, and identity philosophy. Identity philosophy refers to the acknowledgment of identity. In this psychological context, it refers to the implicit acknowledgment of necessary truth, which is essential to the psychology of truth and antithetical to the psychology of self-deception.

The essential product of self-deception is mysticism, its most harmful and ugliest form being statism. Ultimately, identity philosophy and mysticism represent the two opposing metaphysical views of existence. For the most part, mysticism has been the dominant metaphysical force in the mind of man with all its corrupting influence.

In both epistemological and metaphysical realms and in all its embellished variations, mysticism is a revolt against humanity's most important value. It is a revolt against the fountainhead of man's capacity for truth, the law of identity. Mysticism has not succeeded in the complete obliteration of the law and the concept of identity. Nonetheless, it has succeeded in placing things and subjects outside the realm of reason and necessary truth. This has succeeded in placing vitally important subjects outside the realm of the psychology of truth and into the dishonest, corrupt realm of the psychology of self-deception.

This is exemplified by the compartmentalization of the human mind and the divergent values found in human culture. Never in history has the contrast been so stark. The product of these opposite psychologies, nonetheless, can be so intertwined that isolating the different factors can be very difficult. Mysticism and statism both employ the products of a mindset and epistemology, the capacity for truth, which is diametrically opposed to what created them, yet, will often seek credit for its achievements. No amount of rationalization and fraudulent evidence can ever fully hide the ugly lie that steals beneath.

Common Sense is not a match for the devious mystic, which inherently seeks to expand its influence and domain, especially if the intellectual domain represents a threat to the criminality for which it shills. As mysticism and statism proliferate, compartmentalization deteriorates, diminishes, and fades. As the claim to knowledge is exposed as false and elusive, morality and ideology become the arbitrary choices of psychopathic lunatics.

The implication of the failure to establish identity as the immutable foundation of knowledge is that contextual consistency may be regarded as meaningless. This can be seen in scientists' and intellectuals' willingness to ignore inconsistency when it suits them. Consistency may be regarded as significant when found, but just an ignorable nuisance when it eludes them. Logical principles are regarded, much like constitutional law, as not to be taken too literally. Consistency, non-contradiction is thought to be a mere principle of flawed and limited human reason, an imaginary idea.

Humanity's tenuous hold on reality continually weakens. As our capacity for truth literally lifts humanity to the stars, the unwillingness to embrace the first principle, reason, and reality, is leading us to intellectual, moral, and social crisis and catastrophe. Self-deception, the embracing of non-identity, is the real pollutant that threatens human well-being and statism is its most toxic product.

The philosophy expounded in this work embraces mind, physics indifferentism, which holds that what one subjectively experiences as mind or consciousness is the totality of the physics that constitute it. Such concepts as soul, spirit, or spirituality as parts or aspects of consciousness, nonetheless, may be meaningfully defined and such concepts need not contradict mind, physics indifferentism.

Spirituality may be defined as a harmonious, non-contradictory relationship with the totality of existence. It refers to how one sees oneself in relation to the world and the universe. Spirituality can also refer to congruence, harmony within the mind, a spirit free of internal contradiction. A mind lacking in spirituality, a mind with disharmony within, at odds with the facts of reality and particularly the facts that one must encounter, is a painful and destructive internal condition. It is also disappointingly prevalent in the deteriorating culture of escalating lies.

This internal condition breeds hatred, misology, and anti-intellectualism; mysticism begets more mysticism. It creates more sacrificial lambs for the slaughter. More myrmidons for the grand crusades against any last reminiscence of rational man, and the free, advanced, prosperous, and successful culture he creates. Spirituality is the last thing the deceitful mystic and the brutal, enslaving statist want to see achieved in the mind of humanity. This is because true spirituality is a mind that has found knowledge and the true freedom and intellectual confidence that it brings.

Historically, empiricists and rationalists have argued over the nature of knowledge and the means by which it is achieved. The ultimate battle for the mind of man, nonetheless, will be between those who seek the truth and those who seek to evade truth and reality and delve into fantasy and lies.

As they always have, the criminals who wish to rule and subjugate humanity will side with the evaders, with the liars. Reason that has discovered knowledge is the fundamental enemy of such criminality. Truth, reason, the first principle, and identity are the values of non-aggressive, productive, creative, and ethical humans. Men of reason would require and demand a free, voluntary world. A rational humanity that has found knowledge and the intellectual confidence that it engenders cannot be ruled.

The greatest enemy of a free rational humanity is the conniving mystic who claims to be a proponent of freedom. Their threat is not diminished, when they themselves are unaware of their own inner contradictions, and the incompatibility of reason and freedom, with the religiosity and belief they embrace.

True spirituality is the product of knowledge, of reason. Spirituality clearly lies in the realm of the human capacity for truth and must be founded on the recognition of identity. To embrace contradiction is to create disharmony in the spirit, conflict in one's mind. True spirituality cannot be founded on mysticism; it cannot be derived from a premise that would destroy the very concept of truth.

When the mystic peddles something called spirituality, it is really its antithesis that he offers, self-deception, delusion, and mendacity. It is blindness, ignorance and above all, lies; it is contradiction that divorces one's mind from existence, the world, and ourselves. Spirituality, like knowledge and truth, can only be founded on the law of identity. Of the grand achievements that the principle of self-sameness makes possible, and can only make possible, spirituality most certainly is one of them.

There is much more at stake, nevertheless, than mental tranquility. It is a quest to make a claim to the very means of human survival; it is a claim of the power and competency of the human mind. This serves as the only true basis of one's claim to natural rights, to the natural freedoms humanity possesses unobstructed by criminality. To refer to such freedoms as right is to make the moral claim that it is right that humans possess such freedom. It is a moral claim that is rendered mute if humanity is to degenerate into vacuous, mindless, sacrificial animals.

The recognition of natural rights is an intellectual achievement that cannot be grounded in faith or mysticism. It can only come through knowledge, which is only achieved by embracing the axiom and the existence of identity.

Faith never has, and never will, serve as a successful basis for the advocacy of freedom because it extinguishes the very thing that makes freedom an indispensable requirement for human survival and well-being. The blind, ignorant mystic has abdicated his claim to freedom and natural rights.

It is certainly true that one possesses natural rights by virtue of being human, but a mass murderer such as Stalin could hardly make a claim to the right to life. To relinquish reason and the human capacity for knowledge is to abdicate not only rights but ones very humanity. It is one's humanity on which the claim to rights is hinged.

To embrace natural rights is to embrace a moral obligation. It is a contract between fellow rational humans that can only be comprehended by reason. Rights, morality, and rationality must stand together. They are the only basis for civilization. They are the only foundation for humans living as humans.

The only alternative to a society ruled by natural rights would be the criminality of government or the law of the jungle anarchy, the organized, institutionalized violence if the state or disorganized violence of mindless chaos. The proponents of such lawless chaos, knowingly or unknowingly, are little more than shills and patsies of the state.

While advocating politico/economic systems that have led to the greatest tyranny and mass murder in human history and can only be implemented and maintained by brutal statism and even then, they soon fail and collapse, they claim to be advocates for a stateless society. They are frauds advocating collectivist and economically implausible systems that could never exist without the state; they are anarchist "strawmen," either wrongheaded to the point of being complete fools or delusional mystics in search of a fanciful contradiction. Anarchist communism is a contradiction in terms; it is a circle/square.

Free, voluntary interactions and free markets secretly emerge, under the most brutal tyrannies. It is an absurd expectation to think such values would not prevail in a world liberated by the most powerful of criminals and the delusion that empowers them.

The true anarchists, the advocates of a stateless society and a politico/economic system that is compatible, therefore, are the advocates for a free and voluntary civilization. Anarchy need not, and cannot for long, be lawless. Such lawless chaos would only function as a placeholder, breeding ground, or power vacuum for the next tyrant. To the contrary, anarchy can provide the condition by which the rule of law can emerge over the rule of criminals and reason prevail over violence. A voluntary world can emerge from, and only from, a stateless society, an enlightened culture free from the mystic delusion of authority to engage in criminality.

As the great social philosopher, Murray Rothbard, alluded to when he said, "true anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism," "anarcho/capitalism" is ultimately tautological. This is a tautology, a logical truth, which constitutes a discovery even more profoundly important than Darwin's natural selection, also a logic truth. Anarchy and a free market are two sets of aspects of humanity living free from rulers, free from the criminality of the state but not without law.

It is actually the idea of a government that is limited to the protection of rights and never violates them that is a logical impossibility. Once a government is defanged to this degree, it ceases to be a government. It becomes a private security provider that no longer has the power to force you to support it or stop you from looking elsewhere for protection. A truly voluntary society is a stateless civilization, free from subjugating criminality. This is a logical truth ultimately reducible to the axiom; freedom is freedom.

This, however, can only come about if there is intellectual enlightenment that must begin with first philosophy. It cannot be achieved on floating claims to rights and freedom. Such claims, when confronted by mindless brutality, are as helpless as relativism is to religious fanaticism.

When the discovery of knowledge is accomplished, the achievement of these values will be possible. Until this is achieved, nonetheless, it will remain quite elusive and impossible. The very idea of a truly voluntary society is, and will remain, marginal.

The relationship between self-deception, irrationality, and criminality is certainly logical, but there is a multitude of sociological and historical evidence as well. It is a relationship that has been a common theme throughout history and across divergent cultures.

When Cortez landed in Mexico in 1519 and confronted the Aztecs, it was a meeting of two cultures that could hardly have been more divergent and foreign. They did, nonetheless, have two significant things in common. They both valued gold, and with both, there was an intimate relationship between the mystic paradigm they embraced and the power structure they accepted.

Both were factors that played an important role in the demise of the Aztecs. The Aztecs had gold, and the Spanish wanted it, exemplifying the universal value held for gold. Just as universal, nonetheless, is the relationship between belief, self-deception, and the fraudulent claim of criminal authority. The vicious brutality of the mystic belief that the Aztecs embraced allowed Cortez to acquire the assistance of other indigenous Mexicans.

Fraudulent claims of those who try to reconcile reason and faith notwithstanding, the fundamental enemy of freedom and humanity is mysticism, the psychology of self-deception. The historical function of religion, faith, and mysticism have virtually always been an antithesis to freedom. It has served as the justification of rulers and the brutal criminality of government. They are accessories to the mass murder, economic devastation, misery, and suffering that the criminality of the state has perpetrated on humanity.

Liars without followers leave nothing behind. Perhaps as a result of evolutionary forces, it seems a liar must seek the company of the obedient, and the more blatant and corrupt the lies, the more demanding of fanatical obedience the liar must become. The emergence of the "great religions" and brutal conquest go hand and hand. Whether it is a literal religion such as Christianity or Islam, or a sick degenerate mystic paradigm in the guise of ideology, such as communism or neoliberalism, it is a liar's crusade. Truth can live on in the minds of a small minority, but lies have an ever-unsatisfied covetousness for evermore faithful followers and cohorts.

The axiom is incontrovertibly true and of unparalleled importance, and its denial is the implicit underpinning of all human corruption, depravity, and intellectual dishonesty. If humanity is to shed itself from the evil and brutality of the state, of the criminal gangs that are called government, it most certainly must include liberation from that which has sanctioned and enabled this atrocity. This must be achieved uncompromisingly and foundationally, not through the psychology of compartmentalization. It is desperately time for humankind to come of age and mature. His rationality must catch up with his destructive capacity.

Rights are moral principles that define the parameters of human interaction; they assert and protect the natural freedoms one possesses free of the interference of others, the intrusion of criminality. Humans do not live alone; nor does it constitute an ideal or appropriate condition. Nonetheless, thinking of oneself alone in the wilderness or a deserted island does give us an understanding of the basic freedom to which rights refer. Also, most importantly, it allows one to comprehend the vital importance of such freedom to one's well-being and even our very survival.

The rightfulness of such freedom, natural freedoms acknowledged as natural rights, is purely academic when one is by oneself, with no potential violators. It is when we must live and wish to interact with others that this understanding becomes critical.

The individualist need not live as a recluse. To be a true individualist, one only needs to take on the responsibility of thinking for oneself and take fundamental responsibility for one's survival and well-being, to embrace self-ownership. This does not mean declining the benefits of interaction with others.

As being together is the natural state of humanity, it is critical to human understanding that such an ideology and social philosophy emerge to the forefront. This ideology must be grounded, however, and it is the underpinning of first philosophy that has remained elusive. It is this absence that has allowed for human progress in this understanding to be corrupted and allowed for a continuation and escalation of the criminality called government.

The notion that there can be some sort of authority to violate such principles and engage in criminality is more a testament to the fact that people can be made to believe most anything than it is to the credibility of such an argument. It puts into question the average human's, especially contemporary mankind's, capacity for rationality.

Given the general ignorance of the average man, especially today, it is essential that a "natural aristocracy" of intellectual virtue emerge to challenge and replace the thieving and murderous statist criminals and their fraudulent, deceitful, loose-mouthed intellectual enablers. It is they who must become first and foremost, the guardians of knowledge before they can become the advocates and protectors of freedom. Humanity's claim to freedom wavers as humankind's claim to knowledge fails because of the lack of recognition of the absolute on which it must be grounded.

Knowledge is an undiscovered country. This country must be revealed and claimed to replace the fraud and depravity that dominates the human mind, and sanctions and empowers humanity's subjugation. This undiscovered country is the only land of opportunity that remains for humanity; there is nowhere left to run. The battle for the human mind has become global and universal.

Knowledge, reason, logic, critical and rigorous evaluation of facts, and even strong memory of past events are all enemies of the state. The homicidal state and the elitist criminals that control and benefit from it have a strong interest in, and value for, vacuous human stupidity. A culture of metaphysical, ideological, and moral enlightenment is not in their criminal interest.

While these false elites who control the imaginary, delusional state are as philosophically lost as their victims, they have an intellectual and technical sophistication that makes them all the more dangerous and entrenched. While cunning and sophisticated, they are stupid and psychotic enough to bring the world, and themselves, to the brink of extermination.

They have an entrenched intellectual establishment, armed with a relativist philosophy that literally replaces knowledge with themselves. When they attack the last embattled vestiges of objective truth, they are making themselves the contemporary equivalent of the primitive holy man or witch doctor, immune from the scrutiny of lowly impotent human reason. This false intellectual elitism functions to keep humanity in a philosophical dark age, and at the disposal of the criminal insanity, they protect. Even for the few who have some understanding of all this, there is really no total escape from the horror that human culture has become.

For a multitude of reasons, but first and foremost the state of philosophy, this is an age of diminishing human intellect and understanding. Nonetheless, there remains, especially in the uncorrupted young, a wealth of intellectual talent and thirst for truth and knowledge. It is this sincere and innocent wondering that must be claimed from the overwhelming corruption and intellectual degeneracy that is pervasive in the ruins of Western culture and the world. They must be taught that it is more heroic to create and live for a truth than to kill and die for a lie, even if one stands alone and demonized. This is the courage that embracing the God of reason demands.

Mysticism has always been the scourge of humanity. It is the human mind that mysticism seeks to destroy and then dominate what remains. If anything remains in the coming devastation, the hold this malevolence will have on humanity will likely be far greater than ever before.

The supremacy of identity, cold objective ultimate reality, is a most unwelcome stranger in a world of deceit and delusion. Historically, the forces of irrationality and brutality have always held an upper hand, as knowledge and its metaphysical underpinning has remained elusive. The mind is empowered by a single incontrovertible absolute. The battle for humanity, the battle for human survival, is a struggle for this absolute in the mind and soul of man. Whatever remains after defeat, absolute destruction, or complete dehumanizing slavery, it is this fundamental intellectual battle where humankind will be won or lost.

Man's greatest ability and value is his capacity for knowledge and truth. It must be explicitly acknowledged and understood; knowledge is achieved from the accepting and embracing of identity, the God of reason. From the totality of the cosmos to humankind's achievement and happiness, or failure and destruction, everything comes from this primal force, self-sameness.

Reason must find its God. If humanity truly strives for the attainment of a meaningful "salvation" there is but one God that can provide this value, if only humanity can discover the God of reason, that which created the universe. It is not human reason that is failing. It is humanity failing reason, the best within them, by refusing to grasp and embrace the God of reason.

All A is A!

* * *

#  Glossary of Terms

The axiom is a self-proving assertion of identity, such as "all A is A."

Identity is the existent thing asserted by the axiom.

Self-sameness is identity recognized as ontological and acknowledged as a part of all else.

Specificity is identity acknowledged as a part of all other parts.

Finality is identity recognized as a part of quantity, the self-sameness of numbers.

Quantity is existence acknowledged as multi-faceted. A given quantity is a given thing. In this regard quantities are things.

Existence is everything. The failure to acknowledge this is to violate the necessary truth; everything, if it truly is, exists. Existence cannot be added to or subtracted from; existence is unchanging.

Reality is existence. The term is often used in the recognition that existence may, or may not be, correctly perceived or comprehended.

The universe is existence understood by the primacy of self-sameness to be united by a mutual part, identity. Everything is connected.

Knowledge in the absolute sense is truth held with justifiable certainty. However sophisticated one's information about existence, without this ground of absolute certainty, one's very grip on reality is tenuous. This is stunningly and disturbingly illustrated by the present state of humanity and the condition of the collective human mind. Knowledge can only be achieved by the recognition of the immutability of the axiom and the existence of identity.

Belief is an unjustified claim to knowledge.

Mysticism is the deliberate embracing of contradiction. Epistemologically, it is the notion that something other than the axiom can serve as the basis of knowledge. It is an attempt to exclude delusion from the scrutiny of the principle of self-sameness.

Fundamental objects are objects with no intrinsic extension. They are what material objects, multi-faceted reality, most certainly must be reducible.

Ultimate reality is centrally and fundamentally the supremacy of identity. Metaphysics is an examination of this supremacy.

Finite geometry is the geometry of fundamental objects in finite quantized space/time.

Geometric undecidability is when, at a given time, there is an insufficient relation, other fundamental objects in direct relative position, for a fundamental object to achieve a specific determined position in concurrence with finite geometry.

Quantized or finite space/time is space/time acknowledged as not infinitely divisible.
  1. How God Created the Universe(Smashwords) (1) (1)-1 (1) (1)\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml)
  2. The First Principle\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml#)
  3. The Monumental Denial\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml#)
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  6. How God Created the Universe\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml#)
  7. Finality and Nonlocality\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml#)
  8. The God of Reason\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml#)
  9. Glossary of Terms\(1\)\(1\)1\(1\)\(1\).xhtml#)

