Proof Of Legitimacy Quotes

Legitimacy will come at the end of time, when the kingdom of men is assured. "The affair has only just begun, it is far from being terminated, and the world has many other things to suffer, but we shall achieve our aim, we shall be Caesar, and then we shall begin to think about universal happiness." By then the prisoner has been executed; the Grand Inquisitors reign alone, listening to "the profound spirit, the spirit of destruction and death." The Grand Inquisitors proudly refuse freedom and the bread of heaven and offer the bread of this earth without freedom. "Come down from the cross and we will believe in you," their police agents are already crying on Golgotha. But He did not come down and, even, at the most tortured moment of His agony, He protested to God at having been forsaken. There are, thus, no longer any proofs, but faith and the mystery that the rebels reject and at which the Grand Inquisitors scoff. Everything is permitted and centuries of crime are prepared in that cataclysmic moment. From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes. The unity of the world, which was not achieved with God, will henceforth be attempted in defiance of God.

The main problem lies not in the beliefs but in the conception of God. What is God? Depending on the answer to the question of what God is, our relation, not only to God but to the idea of beliefs and religions, is formed and resolved. The main obstacle to this problem comes from our concept of God and not from God or the world itself. First of all, we cannot agree on what God is. We only see, analyze, and interpret religions in their expressed forms, primarily based on revelations that serve (and must serve) as God’s given laws. In these books and “laws,” God is described, ascribed, and prescribed. As such, God is a defined and untouchable being. The status of untouchability lies in revelations by the prophets, which is to say, in “God’s own words.” That is the only legitimacy to base these laws and secure them. We have no other fact or proof except the words of the few, which we must believe and follow.

Russell’s Teapot (Celestial Teapot Analogy) We cannot equate Russell’s teapot idea with the idea of God. Although this idea is humorous, it isn't very sensible. If anybody without scientific credentials stated seriously that the teapot is circling the sun, the majority of people would think that a person stating that is either bipolar, schizophrenic, or suffers from some other mental illness. This kind of comparison is absurd. Comic and absurdist comparisons of this kind only muddy the waters. Proof or disproof of such a thing is unnecessary because almost everybody knows the teapot can't orbit the sun as freely as planets on a microcosmic or macro level. Regardless of Russel being aware that his example is nonsense, he still used it (and he states that). The point was not to prove anything but to make a funny remark to diminish the subject of the attack, God. It is a logical fallacy whenever we use such tactics or tricks because we use witty comments for lacking something more potent. If we make fun of some ideas, it does not mean they have no value. We cannot destroy an idea that has existed for millennia by witty but silly arguments. Carl Sagan made an even sillier argument about the undetectable dragon in his garage. To compare the idea of God to the teapot or a dragon in a garage is a useless way to refute an idea or argument with an “argument” (example) in the form of funny irony. I must emphasize that I admire Bertrand Russel and Carl Sagan for their ingenuity and insights. I also admire Bertrand Russell’s writing style because he could express complicated ideas and concepts in very readable and clear prose. There can be no comparison between the idea of God and a teapot floating around the Sun or between God and an unidentifiable dragon in the garage. We cannot base our arguments on the value of their wittiness because regardless of how witty the statement is, it has to stand the test of truth, not the test of wittiness. We can easily exclude the idea of a teapot floating in orbit around the sun as ridiculous. The same applies to the argument about the dragon in a garage. But can we exclude the idea of God from religious and theological thoughts and serious philosophical inquiries interested in discovering the truth about the world and God? We can easily refuse to accept a teapot or dragon in the garage arguments as serious arguments. However, we cannot a priori deny the legitimacy of the idea about God, at least not the deist one (or pantheistic).

I am speaking up now and saying there is something fundamentally wrong with an industry that has convinced investors they are entitled to $36 trillion that doesn’t exist. There is something fundamentally wrong with an industry that sells imaginary products without any proof of their legitimacy or value. And there is something fundamentally wrong with an industry that pays people unimaginable amounts of money for creating absolutely nothing.

In Rome, the person in charge of equipollenza, or training equivalency, was located at the Foreign Ministry. I got into that mass of marble by depositing my passport at the front desk, and was escorted through dimly-lit halls wearing a temporary ID badge on my lapel and clutching my little pile of documents. The diminutive official took a glance at my grimy Xeroxes and harrumphed a little laugh through his moustache. The colleague at the New York Consulate had unfortunately gotten several things wrong, he said. First a procedural error: the “authenticating” squiggles on the back of the copies were meaningless. They didn’t even vouch for the accuracy of the photocopying, much less prove the validity of the originals. All the documents would have to be sent back and scattered around the USA for proper authentication, by local Italian consulates. For example, the Italian Consul in Boston had to testify that Harvard was a degree-granting university. Second, the Consular list had omitted a crucial document, the Certificate of Existence in Life. No, the mere observation of me stamping my foot and tearing my hair was not, for the Italian government, sufficient proof that I existed. Yes, a nonexistent person was unlikely to be asking for an Italian medical license, but rules were rules. The Consulate’s final error was a bit of misinformation, bred, perhaps, of tenderheartedness. All these documents couldn’t possibly get me an Italian license. They would merely get me a toehold in the University where they might, at best, be alchemized into an Italian medical degree, but an actual license would be another and rather more difficult question. This was my first lesson in Italian bureaucracy. The Consular official in New York clearly hadn’t had the faintest idea what she was doing and no intention of trying to find out, but she had found me too simpatica to disappoint—a sentiment not strong enough to keep her from abandoning my application to gather dust. By this time various shady sources such as Italian medical professors and representatives of international foundations had suggested an alternative to my quest for the holy grail of doctorly legitimacy: just hang out a shingle and to hell with the license. Unfortunately, I’m such a coward that climbing on a bus without a ticket gives me palpitations, so practicing without a license would be a degree of “transgression” (as the Italians call it) far beyond my talents.