For centuries, even millennia, philosophers have debated the
question, "Does God exist?" Typically, the debate goes something like
this:
Philosopher A points to any one of the approximately one billion
day-to-day empirical observations that any sensible person would say tend to
indicate that God does not exist.
Philosopher B then offers some tortured rationale explaining how God might
conceivably exist anyway, in spite of whatever piece of overwhelming evidence
to the contrary Philosopher A has just cited.
Philosopher A, with the air of a man shooting fish in a barrel, swiftly proceeds
to drive a rhetorical truck through any one of the several dozen gaping logical
holes in Philosopher B's argument.
Now, were this a debate on any other topic, that would be the
end of it. But in this case, Philosopher B has an ace in the hole, and he plays
it. In a casual, off-handed way, he mentions that-- while he's sure it won't
make any difference, and he doesn't even really know why he's bringing it up--
if God does happen to exist, Philosopher A will get a personal pipeline
to the creator of the universe, will never die, and can count on spending eternity
in a heavenly mansion with hot and cold running virgins and an unlimited supply
of free chicken fried steaks.
Philosopher A responds that this is the most idiotic thing he has ever heard.
Several years later, however, Philosopher A is diagnosed with inoperable lung
cancer. Having taken a leave of absence from his university duties to undergo
radiation treatments, he abruptly finds himself with ample free time to reconsider
Philosopher B's arguments. To his surprise, these turn out to have considerably
more merit than he had previously believed. Lo and behold, the existence of
a caring and benevolent God suddenly seems possible, even likely, and another
believer is born. Again.
***
The controversy over God's existence is unique among all philosophical
questions; it is the only such debate where everyone who participates in the
discussion has a vested personal interest in the outcome. We want there
to be a God. We all would prefer to believe that life has meaning, that
departed loved ones are not lost to us forever, and that, just possibly,
a few minutes spent kneeling at the foot of one's bed each night may possibly,
someday, yield a revelation of tomorrow's winning Powerball numbers. Which is
undoubtedly why otherwise rational and intelligent thinkers, throughout history,
have twisted themselves into such improbable shapes in their attempts to prove
a proposition which is inherently unproveable.
In fact, anecdotally at least, that proposition is proved false hundreds of
times a day. No one ever sees God. No one ever witnesses a phenomenon-- a plaid
tornado, say, or the words "I am that I am" emblazoned across the
surface of the sun-- that could only be attributed to direct action by God.
And certainly, no one has ever known God to do anything miraculous to (God forbid)
minimize evil or mitigate suffering.
As unsubstantiated hypothetical entities go, the Prime Mover runs very near
the back of the pack, well behind Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the living
Elvis, all of whom have at least been photographed. In fact, in the do-they-or-don't-they
sweepstakes, God's closest competition isn't space aliens or the lost city of
Atlantis, it's the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and most notably, Santa Claus.
(If it's any comfort to the deists among us, God is still leading unicorns by
a slight margin, since at least God is not consistently brought up in undergraduate
logic courses as the canonical example of something for which we have a name
but which doesn't exist.)
But let's return for a moment to Santa Claus-- the resemblances really are
quite striking: Men who profess to be Santa Claus typically have booming voices
and long beards; men who claim to be God also often have booming voices and
unkempt beards. No one actually believes that the man who professes to be Santa
Claus actually is Santa Claus; no one believes that the man who professes to
be God actually is God. Men who profess to be God are usually found in insane
asylums. Men who profess to be Santa Claus are found in shopping malls and department
stores around the Christmas season. Really, the only differences are that a)
parents are reluctant to allow their children to sit on a the lap of the guy
who claims to be God, and b) you don't have to wait until after you die to see
what Santa has left for you as a reward for being naughty or nice.
***
Notwithstanding all of the above, the fact is that, for someone
whose existential status is several notches below that of Big Bird's imaginary
friend, Mr. Snuffelupagus (who, to his credit, eventually did reveal
himself), God certainly has no shortage of defenders. What is striking about
this is not the fact that intelligent, rational people consistently make arguments
for God's existence, but how astonishingly weak these arguments tend to be.
Take, for example, the Ontological Proof, one of the most venerable in the God-prover's
arsenal.
According to the Ontological Proof, when we refer to "God,"
it is generally understood the we mean "a perfect, infinite being."
To speak of an imperfect God is to misunderstand the meaning of the term-- it
makes no more sense to talk about an imperfect God than it does to talk about
a four-sided triangle. Since a being who exists is obviously more perfect than
one who does not exist, God must possess the quality of existence. Hence, God
exists. Q. E. F-ing D.
So, basically, they define God as a being who exists, then assert
that He exists by definition. This is what logicians call "begging the
question," and you and I call "a load of utter bullshit." Since
when is the quality of existence an attribute of perfection? I can think of
half a dozen things that are at their most perfect when they do not exist, from
a dose of the clap to the vermouth in a dry Martini. Ask someone with a brain
tumor whether the quality of existence makes their tumor more perfect.
Or how about the First Cause proof, which propounds the notion that, since
we can't imagine what could have caused the universe to come into being out
of nothing, the thing that caused it must be God? This is a bit like saying
that, since I can't seem to figure out what I did with my wallet, it must have
been stolen by superintelligent bees.
There are hundreds of these so-called proofs, and take it from
me, they all go downhill from there. The point is, God is a phenomenon for which
there has never been a shred of evidence. The only reason anyone bothers trying
to prove this unproveable proposition, aside from sheer rhetorical masochism,
is because we'd find it very comforting if it were true. But these proofs don't
actually prove anything; the best they can do is to sketch out some unlikely
scenario in which it might be barely possible that God does exist-- even though,
in every way, He behaves exactly like any other nonexistent thing, from fairies
to vampires to talking dogs that play chess. It's all just a huge uphill battle
against the simplest, most obvious answer.
In this light, we can see how the work of theologians is not unlike the mental
exercise performed by a man whose girlfriend has just found a used condom under
his bed, even though she's on the Pill and doesn't use them: There are certainly
legitimate circumstances under which the condom could have come to be there--
what the man will soon be referring to as a "perfectly reasonable explanation,"
but none of them are remotely as likely as the theory which has sprung immediately
to the girlfriend's mind.
Really, the only conclusion a reasonable person can draw is either
that there is no God, or that if there is, He has taken incredible pains to
see to it that no one finds out. And if the latter does somehow turn out to
be true, I think the least we can do, out of respect if nothing else, is to
go along with the gag. Especially since no one has ever even provided a satisfactory
answer to the question of whether God could create a dessert so rich that not
even He could finish it.
Marty Smith is the Editor of Lime Tea. At some
point, God apparently did something that really pissed him off.
