u/Fun_Transportation50

Just wrapped up the 5th book, wow, those last few chapters were wild! I got to know so much more about how Nynaeve thinks and her personality, I'm really starting to understand her more . Perrin, he barely got any spotlight in this one, aside from mentioning that there are more houses and the village in the Two Rivers is expanding. Honestly, I still think 'The Great Hunt' and 'The Shadow Rising' are the best in the series so far , but this book definitely had its moments. new characters and more depth , But why, oh why, does Asmodean have to end on a cliffhanger? At the end, he's about to grab some wine and suddenly he's dying like, seriously?!I wasn’t even saddened for Moiraine any one could have predicted that, but not Asmodean , didn't want him to go! He's one of my faves, right alongside Mat. I figured he was a forsaken who wouldn't betray Rand. The idea that you could trust someone other than yourself, especially someone bound by necessity, is such a powerful concept.
And I believed he represented in the book, that even after being cloaked in the blackest of veils, one could still wander in the light's warm grace. Plus, I just loved that he was a musical artist! I wanted to see him and Rand as best buds. Ugh, damn!

The sequence of events unfolds as follows: Rand engages Be'lal in the Heart of the Stone. During this confrontation, the Aiel launch an invasion of the Stone, resulting in skirmishes with the Defenders within the chamber, Moiraine unleashes balefire against Be'lal. It is only after the appearance of Ba'alzamon that Rand ultimately extends his hand to draw Callandor.

Currently, I’m diving into book 4, The Shadow Rising. I chose to skip book 0 to stick with the release order, and I’m really enjoying it!😁

**Introduction** (recommendation-> skip the intro ) :

The title is written this way mainly to satisfy the subreddit rules requiring a thesis statement. The post itself is broader than this single claim and is primarily about how I went from being a theist, to an atheist, and eventually back toward theism. Along the way I discuss several related ideas about logic, mathematics, axioms, freedom, and the limits of reasoning.

Some of the claims and assumptions are presented informally and without full rigor. The goal is not to provide a formal philosophical paper, but rather to share the train of thought that led me to my current position. The thesis above is one conclusion that I think follows rather naturally from that line of reasoning, although the dilemma itself is that a completely rigorous resolution may be impossible if the question concerns something defined as beyond logic.

My original title was closer to “How I Went from Theist to Atheist and Back Again.” If you are only interested in the claim stated above, feel free to focus on that. Which is a spoiler if I say, so , If you are interested in how I arrived there, then the rest of the post is for you. I leave it to the reader to decide whether the conclusions follow from the reasoning presented.

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I was born in a somewhat religious family. My parents believed in God and prayed at important moments, so I also believed in God. Though God was not a main or important part of my life, I believed in Him without questioning it.

As I grew up, I became interested in science. I was pretty good at physics growing up, so I tried to understand it more. I wanted to think about things myself rather than just read books. Like every naive person, I thought maybe I could invent something one day. So I started thinking about everything on my own, first as a child and later through high school and college. I thought about basic questions: how things work, why they work, and what everything really is.

For me, it became pretty trivial not to believe. There seemed to be so many contradictions in God’s existence, and the idea of God often stopped the process of thinking because it could be used to justify anything as a reason. To develop new theories and improve yourself, you have to remove ideas that can explain everything. Most importantly, you have to think about thinking itself.

In college, I realized that many people in the past and present had already thought deeply about these questions. So instead of reinventing everything myself, I could save time by reading their thoughts. Philosophy, mathematics, physics, biology, economics — all of it was amazing.

One thing I understood quite early was the axiomatic approach.

You can skip this part if you already know it, but I like ranting, so I’m explaining it.

The axiomatic approach is how almost anything logical is developed. In philosophy, science, economics, but most importantly in mathematics and logic.

Anyone who has studied mathematics in college knows that you have to prove everything, even the trivial stuff. In analysis, you prove things like why a + b = b + a for integers, why a negative times a negative is positive, why real numbers exist, and so on.

But every proof, even the proof of trivial things, starts from assumptions. Basic statements that are simply assumed to be true.

Often these assumptions are even more trivial than the statements we eventually prove.

There is a whole process in mathematics devoted to choosing which assumptions should be taken as fundamental. For natural numbers we have the Peano axioms. In analysis we have field axioms and other structures.

Why do we have them?

Because all of mathematics is built from them.

Suppose I prove theorem C using axiom A and axiom B.

That means that even if A, B, and C themselves may be true or false, the statement:

“If A is true and B is true, then C must be true”

is always true.

Even if we are uncertain about the individual statements, the relationship between them is certain.

This is incredibly useful. If we find a model of the real world where A and B are true, then all the conclusions we proved from them also become true within that model.

This is why science works so well.

Whenever science goes wrong, it is usually because one of the assumptions does not actually hold in reality.

For example, Newtonian physics effectively assumes uniform time. The model works extremely well wherever that approximation is valid. It only breaks down in situations where the assumption is not true, such as near black holes or at very high speeds.

The relationships proven inside the model are still correct. The assumptions simply stopped matching reality.

Mathematics is full of models with strange axioms that may never be useful. Perhaps there is no part of reality where those axioms hold. But if such a place exists, the model would work there because the logic is valid.

As a teenager, I found this incredibly cool.

Now, moving on to why I slowly converted back toward theism.

It started when I was thinking about the idea of freedom.

I tried to connect freedom with the ability to do things.

This is probably a trivial thought process, and many people have thought about it before, but I found it interesting.

To understand freedom, it helps to think about what freedom we do not have.

I cannot stop my eyes from drying out if I never blink.

I cannot live if I never eat.

I cannot leave a room without going through a door, a window, or some other path.

Then it gets more interesting.

I cannot be both inside a locked room and outside it at the same instant.

I cannot both leave a room and not leave it at the same instant.

I cannot both exist and not exist at the same time.

This is tied to logic itself.

When we assume a statement is true, we usually assume its negation is false.

Both cannot be true at once.

Logic places restrictions on what can be.

In a sense, we are bound by the chains of logic.

So I started wondering about logic itself.

Everything logical seems to follow certain basic principles.

Something is either true or false.

It cannot be both.

When something is true, its negation is false.

There are many other logical principles as well.

These principles are useful because they seem to work everywhere that is logical.

Physics appears logical.

Mathematics is deliberately built to be logical and free from contradictions.

But one can ask: where do these principles fail?

The first thing that came to my mind was language.

There are famous paradoxes in language.

For example, imagine writing on one side of a paper:

“The statement on the other side of this paper is false.”

Then on the other side write:

“The statement on the other side of this paper is true.”

You end up with a contradiction.

Language can create objects that do not behave logically in the same way mathematics does.

Perhaps contradictions exist only in language.

Perhaps they exist only in thought.

Perhaps they exist nowhere at all.

You can make many assumptions.

But returning to freedom, I noticed that much of what limits us comes from logic itself.

I cannot both exist and not exist.

I cannot both do something and not do it at the same time.

Many limitations seem logical rather than physical.

So I started imagining a state of maximum freedom.

A state where every limitation is removed.

If freedom is defined this way, then such a being would have to be illogical as well as logical.

It would be able to exist and not exist.

Be free and not free.

Choose and not choose.

In some sense, this sounds like God.

Ironically, the contradictions often used against an all-powerful being started making the idea more interesting to me rather than less.

A completely free being would not be bound by logic.

It could create a rock it can lift and cannot lift.

Lift it and not lift it.

Exist and not exist.

The more I thought about it, the more beautiful the idea became.

We are so used to thinking logically that it becomes difficult to even imagine something beyond logic.

But we already know that language can generate paradoxes and contradictions.

So for the sake of argument, why couldn’t something beyond logic exist as well?

And then I found myself in a strange position.

How would you prove, using logic, that something illogical cannot exist?

The moment you try, you are already assuming logic.

That was the dilemma I found myself in.

Eventually, I simply chose to believe such an entity exists.

Partly because I found the idea beautiful.

Partly because I found it interesting.

In a strange sense, I became both a theist and an atheist.

If such an entity exists, then it also does not exist.

If it chooses to exist, it also chooses not to exist.

If it acts, it also does not act.

All at the same time.

Call me crazy, but the idea that the most powerful possible being would also be the most free possible being is just too interesting for me not to believe.

_____________________________________________

Now, before someone summarizes this as “you believe because the idea is beautiful, not because it is true,” that’s not exactly my position.

The dilemma (**it’s meanly about the dilemma**) I found myself in was that logic seems unable to fully answer questions about things defined as being beyond logic. If something is genuinely illogical, then proving or disproving it using logical reasoning already assumes the very framework being questioned.

**This doesn’t matter for most practical reasoning or dare i say logical reasoning .***

Logic remains the best tool we have for mathematics, science, and everyday life. But when I reached this particular boundary, I no longer felt that logic alone could settle the question.

At that point, why not take a leap of faith?
Not because I had proven God exists, and not because I had disproven atheism, but because I found the possibility meaningful, interesting, and worth believing in. If the question cannot be settled from within the system, then choosing a side becomes less about proof and more about what assumptions you are willing to live with.
This might be the strongest argument for theism or atheism , it’s just a leap of faith for both

The main issue with a collective system is that it forces equality of outcome over fairness of effort. If you are the person who contributed 40% of the actual value , through your unique skill, your invention of the furnace, or your harder labor , you lose your individual autonomy because the community gives you the same "one vote" as the person who contributed almost nothing.

Imagine four people operating a blast furnace. You built the furnace and do the most dangerous, skilled work (40% of the total effort). The other three do basic tasks (20% each). In a communist system, if those three people vote to use the metal for something you think is a waste, they win 3-to-1. Even though you did the most work, you have the least say in your own actions. You have lost the "front-row" control over your life because the majority can outvote your expertise and effort.
The Solution Is introduction of Proportion
A truly fair system would grant say-so based on proportion. If you did 40% of the work, you should own (that’s property right ) 40% of the "say" in what happens to the product. Basically 40 percent of the company , but how do you decide what "40% of the work" actually is?
You can’t just use "hours worked." Someone could spend 10 hours lifting a rock and putting it back down , that’s back-breaking work, but it’s useless.
The Market Solution: The only way to decide "value" without a government or a collective "voting" ( because that again equal say then proportional ,) is through the Market (The Invisible Hand). In a market, value is decided by how much others actually need what you produced. If people want your steel more than someone else's rock-lifting, your "proportion" of the wealth and say-so naturally goes up. Hence you can buy or shares

While markets today have their own unfairness, the goal of "proportion" is to ensure that your individual autonomy is protected by your own output. If you produce more for society, you should have more control over the property you helped create, rather than being forced into an "equal" system that ignores your actual contribution.

The fundamental flaw of a socialist society is that it destroys individual autonomy. Even though today’s system is not working properly , as seen by the extreme wealth of a few people , a socialist society will never be fair because it directly loses the link between effort and reward.

The only choice for a fair society is one where property is individualised to its proportion through markets , that is capitalism. ( individual have the right to private property and market decides capital deployment ) Therefore, to make a fair system, we utilize capitalism and then fix the market. That is the only way to achieve fairness, so we must fix the market. How we fix it is the next question, which is not the premise of this point.

I keep seeing this claim that anarchist communism “maximises individual freedom.” It sounds good, but it only works if you distort the meaning of freedom until it doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Freedom of individual. It’s your ability to live your own life without being forced into things you didn’t agree to. The core of that is negative liberty the freedom to say no. No to demands, no to obligations, no to being used for someone else’s goals.

People confuse this with just being anti-state. But removing the state doesn’t remove coercion. It just removes one source of it. Coercion can still come from collectives, communes, or even just social pressure. If a group can override your choices, you’re not maximally free you’re just controlled in a different way.

If you are at the mercy of the mob, you are not individually free

Private property is not some random legal idea. It comes directly from human action. You act, you produce, you create , and that creates a direct connection between you and what you produced. Property rights exist to protect that.

If you make something, it’s yours. Simple.

And once that’s true, something important follows, consent becomes the only way anything changes hands. Property rights exist to protect what you produce, and only consent can transfer it to someone else.

That’s where real freedom shows up.

If you own what you produce, you can say no. You don’t have to give it up, you don’t have to accept bad deals, you don’t have to obey someone just to survive. You have independence.

That’s negative liberty in practice.

Now remove private property, and everything breaks. If “the collective” controls resources, then your access depends on them. Your ability to say no becomes conditional and divided between people and not your actions , hence giving them control of your actions , That’s not freedom.

And if you say “well there’s no state,” that still doesn’t fix it. Because if only consent is supposed to matter, then no one ,not the state, not a collective, not a mob ,should be able to impose on you at all.

Only consent should be able to change the life of another person.

That’s literally what a market is at its core: voluntary exchange. No one can take from you without agreement. No one can force terms on you. It’s all based on yes or no.

So if a system rejects private property and puts control in the hands of a group, it’s already broken that rule. It means someone else has a say over your life and your output.

You can’t claim to maximize individual liberty while removing the individual’s control over what they produce, and while making their choices dependent on others.

Being anti-state is not enough. Calling something “collective freedom” doesn’t make it individual freedom.

If you can’t truly say no, you’re not free.

I am a Libertarian, and after studying economics that degrowth is actually good not bad when used right

Libertarian hear degrowth and immediately think it means killing the economy. That’s not what it means. It just means shrinking a harmful activity so the system can grow better later.

Simple example: fishing. If everyone fishes as much as possible, fish stocks collapse and the industry dies. If you reduce fishing for a while, fish recover, and later you can catch more every year without destroying the resource. Short term degrowth, long term growth. This is basic economics.

Libertarians already accept this logic. Removing subsidies makes bad industries shrink so capital moves to better uses. Letting bubbles pop causes short term pain but avoids bigger crashes later.

Capitalists accept it too. Firms shut down unprofitable divisions to become stronger in the long run.

Liberals accept it when regulation prevents irreversible damage that would kill future growth.

Degrowth is not anti market. It is about incentives, scarcity, and long run efficiency.

What honestly scares me is that when I explain this, leftists start agreeing with me, even though they don’t understand how decentralised economy works , the argument is coming from markets and long run growth, not planning.

We should not be scared of degrowth. as we understand decentralised economy

We should be scared of protecting destructive growth just because it shows up in GDP.