Words Live in Hierarchies

Here's a story about Ludwig Wittgenstein, as related by Norman Malcolm, his student and friend. It's from Malcolm's book Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (1958).

On one walk he "gave" to me each tree that we passed, with the reservation that I was not to cut it down or do anything to it, or prevent the previous owners from doing anything to it: with those reservations it was henceforth mine.

What is this curious recollection doing here? To see my reason, note what Wittgenstein did: to make a point, he changed some natural everyday words. He didn't merely redefine them; he obliterated them. If you give someone something with all those conditions, then you clearly haven't given it at all, have you? If you were the "recipient" under those conditions, you could not really claim that the trees were "yours."

Concepts formed in a hierarchical context; that is, they depend logically on other concepts and fit into a structure. To understand some concepts, you have to understand logically prior concepts. (Could you understand orphan without understanding parent?) If you tear one out of its context, you are not epistemologically entitled to keep using it as if you have not done so. You start speaking gibberish.

The relevance ought to be obvious now. When people say, "God exists," they have done to exists what Wittgenstein did to give and yours/mine. (The difference is that Wittgenstein was making a point.) To exist outside of existence is not to exist. The verb exist presupposes and depends on the natural world. To use it for a supernatural realm is to speak gibberish.

Therefore, God does not exist. So much for Ray Comfort's claim that "you need total knowledge to be an atheist." (When push comes to shove, theists usually become radical skeptics.) All you need is reason and logic.