In many of my posts, I like to start with a hook and lead into the main topic. This post’s hook is about riddles. And this hook is about half of the post, which is pretty long, so if you don’t want to read it all, you can just scroll down.

These past few days, I’ve been into riddles. Not any kind of riddles. There is this specific category of riddles that I find very entertaining, and I don’t even know if this category has a name. This is how it works. The riddle-teller provides a scenario, and the audience is to discover how that scenario came to be. The audience does this by asking a series of yes-no questions, in order to discover more facts about the scenario. Slowly but surely, if the audience has the persistence, additional characters are introduced and a story unravels.

Here’s an example. Spoiler alert.

A man is lying naked in a desert with a straw in his hand. About a hundred meters away are a bunch of sandbags.

Now people can start asking yes-no questions. Facts are revealed until the story is complete. Here is a usual revealing of facts concerning this riddle.

– The man is dead.
– The man committed suicide.
– People witnessed the suicide.
– The people did not prevent his suicide.
– The people who witnessed the suicide have left the scene.
– The man lost his clothes before he died.
– The man took off his own clothes.
– The clothes are still in the desert.
– The sandbags were placed there by the man.
– The sandbags were also placed there by the other people.
– The sandbags were not used to prevent a flood.
– The man traveled to this place in the desert.
– Before he started traveling, he did not intend to suicide.
– The man traveled on an object.
– The people and the sandbags were with him on this object.
– The man traveled in the sky.
– The man did not travel on an airplane or a helicopter.
– The man traveled in a hot air balloon.
– The sandbags were tossed off the hot air balloon to lighten up the hot air balloon.
– The hot air balloon was going to crash.
– People tossed off their clothes to lighten up the hot air balloon.
– The man jumped off of the hot air balloon.
– The people in the hot air balloon also had straws.
– They did not use the straws to drink.
– They did not put the straws to their mouths.
– The straws were not identical.
– All but one of the straws were identical.
– The dead man held the different straw.
– They drew straws.
– They drew straws to see who had to jump to lighten the hot air balloon.

The final story: A group of people were going over a desert in a hot air balloon. It was going to crash, so they decided to lighten up the load by tossing their sandbags and their clothes. It was still going to crash, so they drew straws to sacrifice somebody for the rest. The man drew the shortest straw and committed suicide for the rest of the crew.

I have about a dozen of these up my sleeve now. And I absolutely enjoy telling them and hearing them. And one thing that I am noticing the more I tell these and hear these is how packed people are with assumptions. In this riddle, for example, one person would ask, “Were there people with him when he died?” And he would usually follow up with “So they killed him?” Or a  person would ask, “So all of these naked people were together?” And he would usually follow up with “They were gay?” In most cases, their assumptions would be correct. But ridiculous scenarios that are possible provide one of the few ways in which their assumptions become wrong. So I think one benefit I’m gaining from these riddles is this breaking down of assumptions. It makes me think outside of the box.

So today, after I told a riddle about a man who killed himself after waking up in the non-smoking compartment of a train, I was thinking about these assumptions. And I started to read a book for my metaphysics class, which is a collection of philosophy articles, and I come across what seemed to be a blatant assumption. Except this time, it mattered.

So the writer was talking about time, and he believed that time “passes.” There exists the past, the present, and the future. But future events, in some sense, don’t exist. Past events exist, because they have been experienced by all. But nobody has experienced anything in the future. When the future events come, then they start to exist.

So this all was very nice and cuddly in my mind. But then he randomly put God in the picture. Because the future hasn’t passed, because the future isn’t defined, because the future doesn’t exist, it isn’t knowable. And so even if God existed, he wouldn’t be able to know the future. He writes that “there are things about the future that God doesn’t yet know because they’re not yet there to be known, and to talk about knowing them is like saying that we can know falsehoods” (Some Free Thinking About Time by A.N. Prior).

So here’s the deal about assumptions. Essentially an assumption about someone parallels the thought, “People similar to you do this, so you do this, too.” And there are correct assumptions and incorrect assumptions. Examples. Humans have minds, so this human must have a mind, too. Humans have two legs, so this human must have two legs too. Rich people are snobby, so this rich person must be snobby, too. Asian people get good grades, so this Asian person must get good grades, too. Christians who smoke are nominal Christians, so this smoking Christian must be a nominal Christian, too. Christians hate gays, so this Christian must also hate gays.

No assumption is 100% accurate. But many assumptions have a high probability of being accurate. In order for an assumption to have a high probability of being accurate, it seems like two things must be true. 1) The people that the individual is being compared to actually do what is said they do. 2) This individual must be similar to that group of people. In fact, the more similar this individual to the group of people, the higher the probability the assumption is accurate. I’m gonna break this down. Skip ahead if you get it.

For example, let’s assume all rich people are snobby. There is a rich person. Therefore he is snobby. What is wrong with that? The people that the individual is being compared to don’t actually do what is said they do. Not all rich people are snobby. Premise #1 is false. Therefore, the assumption itself is wrong.

Here’s another example. Let’s assume that some Christians hate gays. There exists a man who is a Christian. Therefore he hates gays. What is wrong with that? Premise #1 is correct. Some Christians do hate gays. But the connection between the individual and that group is not strong enough. Just because this man is a Christian does not mean he is specifically the type of Christian who hates gays. The individual might not be similar enough to that group. Premise #2 is false. Therefore, the assumption itself is wrong.

Put God in the picture, and no assumption is true. Why? Because of Premise #2. Here’s the deal. God is not similar to anybody. There is no one like God. Therefore, accurate assumptions cannot be made about God, because there is no group to which he can be compared. We might compare God to hippies or to pastors or to popes or to trees or to our parents, but we will always come up dry.

And everybody makes assumptions about God. The major reason atheists don’t believe in God, the major reason Christians doubt God, is because of false assumptions about God.

If God exists, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened. If God exists, the woman who had cancer who was prayed for by her whole church wouldn’t have died. If God exists, he would reveal himself to more people. If God exists, there would be no suffering. If God exists, serving the church should be emotionally fulfilling. Those are all assumptions. They are comparing God to human fathers or to presidents or to doctors or to a collection of media depictions of deities or to Greek and Roman gods, etc. Whatever their image of God is, it is based to some extent in some way or form on fallible human beings, because those are the only intelligible beings we ever come across. Therefore, our image of God is always flawed.

We have not disproved the existence of God but the existence of our imaginary God. We have attached attributes and characteristics to God, and we are finding contradictions in those attributes and characteristics that we have attached.

How then can we accuse God? How then can we even know anything about God? One thing is for sure. If our image of God is a result of pondering with oneself, and if God is the least bit different from human beings, our image of God will be false. Statements like “I’d like to think of God as a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass” have no worth at all if they are based on pondering with oneself. And so here is the second thing that is for sure. The only way we can have any idea about God is if God chose to show who he is to us.

And thank God, the Christian faith says that he did choose to show himself to us. He came us a man and dwelt among us, and we caught glimpses of who he is. He has given us a Bible, and we catch more glimpses of who is. And one day, after we die, we will receive the full revelation of who he is. We will be stripped of all of our assumptions, and for better or for worse, we will be blown away.

– Larry