Philosophy is Bunk, and I Can Prove It.

Originally published in The Gonzaga Bulletin, Fall 1999.

Philosophy is bunk, and I can prove it. You see, I have a real problem feeling subordinate to those hailed as "great thinkers" when all they really did was lie, both to themselves and to others.

How is it that someone comes to be dubbed a "great thinker"? How can someone be better at thinking than someone else? Who decides this anyway? If it were up to me, I would consider the majority of philosophers to be the absolute worst thinkers of all time simply because they waste so much time "pondering" subjects that by their very nature have little or no chance of having any resolution whatsoever.

Ultimately, all these "thinkers" do is start century-long arguments that have no right or wrong answers. A good balance of these arguments are nothing but a colossal waste of thought-- and my mama always said never to waste my thoughts. The analogy she always used, which I thought was brilliant, was to compare knowledge to a tube of toothpaste. She would say, "Son, if this tube of paste was your brain, and you wanted to squeeze all that goo out of it that you could, would you just squeeze from any old place on the tube? Of course you wouldn't. You would start from the bottom, and press all of that stuff out to the top until it was plum empty." Someone should give her some kind of an award for that one.

Consider this: The only proof we have that we exist is that we think. Some philosopher said that once. He was just as wrong as all the rest of them, and I can prove it. You see, to say thinking causes existence, we first have to decide what has the capacity for thought. For example, what if something didn’t exist, but still thought? Would that mean we don’t exist? It's like asking how many babies can fit in an elevator on an abnormally humid day between July and November. What's the point? It could go on forever.

Kermit the frog says it's not easy being green, but who's to say he's really a frog, and aren't there plenty of frogs that aren't green? Isn't it harder for these un-green frogs to live than the green frogs? I mean, at least the green frogs have something in common with each other. These un-green frogs face ridicule and oppression wherever they go because it's like, "Hey, you're not a frog. Stop hopping around like that."

Put yourself in a philosopher's shoes for a moment. You have to ask yourself a couple of questions: Why do you have so much free time on your hands, and what happened to all of your friends? You've got to be able to admit that you might not know something.

Have a look at the sciences. They aren't afraid to admit when something cannot be explained. If they have an idea that they can't prove, they simply say, "It has yet to be proven." They don’t end up huddled in a ball in the corner rocking back and forth crying over it either. They move on, and they don't worry if someone thinks otherwise. They don't need to play logic games and have intense dialogues. Just show them a picture of it and they'll be happy. Tell a philosopher about a discovery of some sort, and you start getting questions like, "Can we really believe what we perceive," or "Is something real because it's what we feel," and other rhyming nonsense of cheerleading caliber.

I think it is really a matter of faith, and I can prove it. The essence of faith is that you believe something that you can't possibly prove. If you can prove it then you don't need to believe it because it already is, and therefore requires no effort on your part to believe that it is true. The big problem, the one that everyone thinks they have an answer to, is how to prove God exists.

Let's take a look at how many philosophers have claimed that they could prove God existed. Well, that would be work, so let's just say there have been a lot. To my knowledge, only a few have stood up and said, "You know what, you just can't prove God exists." I think that it is a weak, shallow person that needs everything to be proven for them to believe it. Faith means so much more when what you believe can never be proven.

Ontological discussion aside, I think that it's better to believe in something even if only because you believe in it, not because a million other people have agreed with you. I feel sorry for all of the people who drool on themselves when they watch a movie like "The Matrix" and whine things like, "we were right, we were right-- the world really is fabricated and true reality exists outside the realm of sense and perception! Ha ha, log on so we can chat about it!" I don't feel sorry because they are wrong, but I feel sorry because they paid seven bucks to let Hollywood boost their self-esteem a little.

So what it comes down to is the amount of proof required by the average idiot to believe in something. My mama always said that the proof is in the puddin'. Well my tapioca reserves are going dry, and despite what Bill Cosby says, there's not much more room left in this world for J-E-L-L-O, and I can prove it.

Only two things need to happen before I believe in something. The first is that I have to think of it myself, and the second is that there has to be no way on earth to prove it. Then and only then will I lend credence to a theory. Wait a minute, that almost sounds like a philosophy. I better revise: If I believe in something, I don't have to tell you why, and in fact, I will never tell you why. How's that?

Proof shouldn't have anything to do with it. One of my favorite lines from the movie "Contact" is when Matthew McConaughy says to Jodie Foster, "Do you love your dad," and she says, "Yes," and he says, "Prove it." She knows she loves her Dad better than you do. Are you going to tell her she's crazy? I'm not.

Having to prove such abstractions of thought and emotion is ludicrous. Are you going to ask Jesus to prove that he loves you? I'm not. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. That's all the proof I need. No wasted thought here.

You can go ahead and question such things until your head spins. But I will tell you this, I'm not going to be there to catch you when you hit the cold, hard, concrete floor known to the rest of us as "reality". Did I mention I can prove it?

Copyright 1999 The Gonzaga Bulletin