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The Origin and Significance of Knot4Prophet
The word Knot4Prophet was coined by me and has layered meanings.
Firstly, it is my moniker, the name I use to interact with the public through chatrooms, message boards or my website, Knot4Prophet.com.
The second implication of this word "knot4prophet," though rife with religious overtones, is not complex to comprehend. Just as it sounds, there is a "knot", an unanswerable enigma, a paradox for "prophets," clairvoyants. This "knot" arises out of the immiscible interplay between three contradictory Judeo-Christian philosophical tenets: Prophetization*, predetermination and free will.
Prophetization is a word also coined by me to label all things prophetic.
Predetermination is straightforward: to establish in advance. This notion of predetermination arises necessarily out of the introduction of prophetization. If we consider biblical prophecy to be true and only possibly misinterpreted, then we are agreeing that the future is known. If we agree the future is known by prophets, then surely it must be known by God. If God set everything in motion, as Christians claim, and if God sees the past, present and future simultaneously, then it stands to reason that free will does not exist for any participant in the God system.
God must know what each participant chooses before, during and after they choose. Some may argue that God "just knows" what people will choose, before they are even confronted with a choice and somehow, perhaps magically, their free will is conserved in the process.
In order to continue to believe this concept, we must believe that we are free to choose our way out of a predetermined future. Can you yet smell the fallacious aroma arising from this Christian contradiction?
The evaluational concept of attempting to choose one's way out of a predetermined future is at the nexus of the Christian conundrum of "prophecy."
It cannot be done. You cannot choose your way out of an intractable, irrevocable future.
If a prophet who tells the truth told me news of any event in my future, then there is nothing that I could do to avoid that event, which totally precludes my free will.
If any prophet sees any event that someone can not avoid, then free will is a hoax. My future cannot be both undecided and known. They are mutually exclusive events. They cannot coexist, simultaneously - like being both night and day at the same time – it is an impossibility.
A metaphorical eclipse, perhaps? We'd have to eclipse logic to maintain the Christian subversion.
(If you even attempt to argue that all prophets may not be all truthful all of the time, then I would counter that were you to disclude any prophet, you could disclude all other prophets by the same criteria. And by the same token, but singularly for prophets, if part of what any one prophet claimed was false, then all of what that prophet claimed comes under suspicion. Because of these two strictures on the scriptures no prophet can be allowed to dine from the credibility credenza.)
Two further complications of this Christian quandary must also be rationalized into negligibility.
The first of these two complications noted is a subtle one that discredits the value of prophecy from within and from without. Once a prophet has foretold of a prophecy, if no one can change such things, then of what value is knowing of an unavoidable doom? Surely knowing ahead of time of some terrible circumstance could only add to the net hysteria of the population affected by the prophecy.
Further to that, if people were to hear of a prophecy, then attempt to try and act that prophecy out, could the act of making a prophecy then be the cause what was prophesized to happen (self-fulfilling prophecy)? Either way, whether prophecy is true or false, it has very little, if any, value.
The second complication would be to consider intervention by God. The bible speaks of his myriad interventions in the actions of people. Now if God could see all things past, present and future, why would He need to repeatedly interfere with His creation? If He saw all things from the first point in time, did he see that he would need to interfere over and over again? Does that make Him inept? Indecisive? Impulsive? Was it his plan from the beginning to have to keep warning, killing and intervening in his creation?
Moreover, why would he bother sending messages through the prophets (if He were) if the fact of knowing prophecy does nothing to help anyone mitigate any disasters revealed through them?
To be a believing Christian, we must discard logic and accept that people have a future about which they can learn and do nothing to change, yet somehow still maintain free will.
We also must overlook the fact that making prophecy does nothing to help anyone, and frequently can be seen to be self-fulfilling, which isn't prophecy at all. We also must disregard God's frequent interventions into His creation whose future He saw in its totality, from the beginning.
And we must also believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent, yet somehow needs to keep interfering in a creation that His own bible admits is a failure - very few from creation are to be allowed into His kingdom of heaven.
In order to believe in free will, we cannot concurrently believe in prophecy, predetermination, or even in the edifice of Christianity, at all, unless we discard the very basis of our own intelligence: logic and reason.
The only position left to Christians, supported by logic, would be that there is no free will whatsoever, and we are merely acting out our predetermined future and free will is marginalized to a mere apparency. Is the creator of such a system worthy of any credit?
Not to this disillusioned thespian, He isn't.
Additionally, if we were to believe that free will didn't exist as logic would dictate, then the Bible lies repeatedly when it insists we have free will.
So to be Christian, we need to discard logic and reason, and believe in contradictions, or we need to believe in a book that we know has lies in it.
Christians cannot maintain even a tenuous grasp on logic, irregardless of how they attempt to rationalize the conflicting tenets of their religion.
The third implication of the word 'knot4prophet' is a homonymical pun relating specifically to freedom of speech (i.e. not for profit). Knot4Prophet, the person, the site, the organization, values freedom in all senses.
Freedom of speech was introduced and defended Voltairically by Knot4Prophet in chatrooms and message boards on the internet. Comedy, satire and parody can all be mistaken for obscenity and/or hatred. Knot4Prophet does not pretend to know the motivations or intentions of people who are merely expressing themselves through words.
Knot4Prophet values and promotes free speech, free expression and free will in general. Knot4Prophet also recognizes a limit on freedom, which applies to any type of freedom. This necessary restriction is the only one needed and it is the only precondition that preserves everyone else's freedom.
The Natural Limit of Freedom
"Your rights and abilities to exercise your freedom extend only so far as they do not inhibit or preclude anyone else's right to freedom." Knot4Prophet
This is the only law that is necessary.
That leads us to a practical definition of evil:
Evil is the expression of one's freedom at the expense of another person's freedom.
Evil is a function of freedom, was made possible by the introduction of free will itself. That doesn't mean that evil, as defined, must continue to exist.
The end product of evil is suicide.
If I restrict someone else's freedom, I can fully expect that person or their sympathizer to then restrict my own freedom, which equates to limiting my own freedom by attempting to limit someone else's.
Evil, as defined, will continue to exist only so long as people do not follow the only law necessary for perfection of creation.
Summarily speaking, then, Knot4Prophet is about Predetermination vs. Free Will. The investigation of Free Will necessarily includes elaborating on the meaning of Freedom and its limits, and a practical, obvious implication of what is and what is not evil.
© 2007 Knot4Prophet.com All Rights Reserved. (July 2007)
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