Episode 35: Arguments for the Existence of God

4S Supplemental: Why God’s Existence Doesn’t Matter

One of the Christian’s favorite questions for the atheist is some form of the following:

What would it take to get you to believe?

Already, we have a problem. When the Christian asks this, they sound like a desperate car salesman trying to get someone into a back catalog beater. Even so, it makes sense that the salesman would want you to give them information on how they can best sell you a car. We must dig deeper to expose the motives of the Christian who wants to know what it would take to get you into a god.

Does the Christian believe they are god’s instrument of bringing him souls? Are they god’s salesforce? Are they god’s advertisement and hook for getting the prospect into the store? What do they think is going on? What part of god’s plan do they believe they are fulfilling? Do they really believe that god needs them to convince atheist that he exists? Perhaps some Christian or former Christian could weigh in on this.

My guess is that the Christian has a much less noble motive. You only get this question after the Christian has lost the argument and realizes they have no ability to sway the nonbeliever. As a way of justifying their failure to themselves, they ask what it would take for the person to come to a belief in god. The answer they have in their mind is that the unbeliever is completely closed and nothing would persuade them.

The alternative is that the believer gives an answer to which the Christian would dismiss as illegitimate and the ultimate reason why god doesn’t reveal himself. In other words, the question is laced with the venom of the answer: Your unbelief is a problem of your own making and has nothing to do with the weakness of my own arguments.

To such a fundamentally dishonest question, I feel perfectly justified in cracking wise or ignoring altogether. It is the answer dishonest questions deserve. But if you really want to engage in the folly, answer the question with a question. Ask them why they want to know. Expose their motivation up front and then play the game as your time and temperament permit. Just know there will never be a productive end to chasing that particular squirrel.

Another way I have answered the question is to defang it and say a shocking and entirely true thing: I don’t care if your god exists! I promise they will not know what to do with that one. In fact, this is the way to deal with door-knockers and proselytizers of every stripe. Just interrupt their opening spiel and tell them in no uncertain terms that you don’t care if their god exists or not.

They will be at a loss for words because they assume that everyone cares whether god exists even if they don’t believe he does. Even some atheists will criticize my position on this because I am supposed to be open to the possibility of god’s existence even if I don’t believe he does. But here’s the thing: you are falling into the Christian web when you care as much about god’s existence as they do. You are assuming that the question is of grave importance. It isn’t. Here’s why:

No consequences to disbelief

I am not a proponent of Pascal’s wager. I did a show on this with Dale and a guest whose name escapes me. I believe it was Dr. Jackson. You should be able to find it on Dale’s channel if you are interested. It was a very good conversation. Despite the quality of the expert guest, she was unable to make a convincing case.

In no way shape of form do I believe in any consequences for not believing in god. This should follow logically. You would pretty much have to believe in god to believe in the consequences for not believing in god. People don’t tend to believe in hell if they don’t have a prior belief in the religious framework of such a place. Jesus describes it as a place prepared for the devil and his angels. I don’t believe in the devil or his angels. I don’t believe in the god that prepared the place. Therefore, the threat of hell is no threat to me at all.

What about annihilation? I do believe in annihilation as I suspect most atheists do. I just don’t see it as a punishment from god. Rather, it is the natural consequence of life running its course. It is something that awaits us all. That renders it equally useless as a threat.

Perhaps some great reward would do the trick. I think I wouldn’t mind giving eternal life a try. But I don’t believe in that either. I have no reason to believe that such a state is achievable by believing in god, or forfeitable by disbelieving. However, if such a state exists, I can only hope that the god who controls those lands would be merciful enough to give us a chance to earn a spot once we are free from all the things that kept us from believing in him in the first place.

What I am trying to say is that there is no consequence I believe in that would sway me to care about whether or not a god exists. If there is a god who can hand out consequences for disbelief, I suspect I’m boned anyway. If there is a god who would punish you for disbelieving in him for lack of sufficient evidence, you are not on his good side even if you do believe in him because such a monster doesn’t have a good side. So there is no benefit to giving a damn about his existence.

Love of truth

You might concede that there is no good reason to be motivated by consequences. But what about your vaunted love of the truth? Don’t you want to know as many true things as possible and let go of as many false things as possible? Or was that all just a lie?

First, I do want to know true things and release false things. But I don’t want to know every true thing. It has to be relevant in general, then relevant to me in particular. I have no curiosity at all about the number of hairs on my head or the number of sand grains on a given beach. They constitute true facts about the world. But why should I spend a lifetime trying to come up with those types of truths?

That leads us to god’s existence. Is his existence more important than the exact number of molecules in the fingernail of my left pinky? Relevance is a close cousin to consequences. Regardless of the number of molecules there are in my left pinky nail, I still don’t want to rip it off for no good reason. So knowing the number would not change anything about how I behave toward it.

Knowing that there is a god doesn’t seem to change much of anything for anyone. Believers have as much divorce, drug addiction, and infidelity. They are mostly just as humanist as unbelievers. They demonstrate no moral superiority and they shown no greater courage when facing the storms of life. Yet they claim to know that there is a god. So how would knowing the fact help me anymore than it helps them now? Having once believed in god, I can say definitively that holding such a belief didn’t help me at all. Your mileage may vary.

God doesn’t want to be known by me

If god wanted me to know he existed, I would know he existed. Instead, god has turned his existence into a game. I have got to encounter and hold the right philosophical propositions in my head. I also have to be smart enough and raised in the right society. Once I do have some form of belief, I have to carefully guard it against the mountain of things that can oppose and destroy my faith. Why is this hard-won faith so fragile and easy to destroy? Why is is so much easier for things to destroy that faith than it is to obtain it in the first place?

If what god wanted was for everyone to believe he existed, he would have made it a lot easier for us to know it. I can only conclude that he does want me to know he exists. Rather, he wants me to climb faith mountain. In order to make that climb, you have to be somewhere on it in the first place. Otherwise, why would a person who has no faith in god ever want to embark upon the search in the first place. We should be able to stumble and fumble our way into discovering god. It should be the work of a few seconds rather than the work of a lifetime.

To date, no Christian has been able to offer a satisfactory answer as to why we should have to work for the knowledge of god’s existence. Why is the right path the narrow one that is hard to find? The path to destruction is broad and easy to find. Shouldn’t those things be reversed? Finding god should not be as easy and appealing as a kid gravitating to candy. It should be like trying to get a kid to eat her veggies. If god isn’t courteous enough to make it easy to find him, I see no compelling reason why I should be the one making the effort.

I tried

In a continuation from the last point, it is not like I didn’t try. I put all my effort into trying. When Christians hear this, their response is usually something on the lines of disbelief. They believe that there is a guarantee from god that those who seek will find. So if you never find, it is because you were never a real seeker in the first place. I can only respond to this accusation with the strongest possible FU in my vocabulary.

It is not like I never cared about whether or not he existed. I did. It is just that I no longer care. If I could give my past self one piece of advice, it would be to stop wasting your life caring about god one way or the other. While caring about god presented me with some opportunities, it cheated me out of others. I know a great deal about a thing that doesn’t matter.

Even when I cared about god’s existence, he didn’t reward that caring with so much as a single hallucination. I was surely worthy of a vision. So I give you the same advice that I give my past self: Don’t waste your time even caring about god’s existence. Rather, lend your efforts of caring to the people whose existence is without question.

Conclusion: An unchanged life

People are always talking about the changed lives of the people who encountered god. I can match those stories with the changed lives of people who encountered aliens from space. I can also match their stories a hundredfold with stories of unchanged lives of the people who believe in god. As I said before, it doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other.

Having been on both sides of the fence, I can tell you that my life is unchanged by no longer believing and no longer caring about belief. It is unchanged with regard to how I live my life. I do exactly the same amount of drinking, drugging, fornicating, cheating, stealing, and murdering as I did when I was a Christian.

If anything, I am a better person now. I abstain from certain behaviors for better reasons. When I give charitably, it is not because I am seeking or expecting a later and larger reward. I do not abstain from things I consider bad because I am trying to avoid eternal punishment.

No inhabiting or invading spirit gets the credit or blame for what I do. I made the hard choices and fought the hard battles to the extent that determinism allows. So if there is a god, it doesn’t seem to matter. But let’s say I was to discover that there was a god. Would I fall on my face and worship him? Why should I?

If he would send me to hell for not believing, I don’t think he is the kind of guy I would want to be around for all eternity anyway. If he would accept me into heaven anyway, then I needn’t do anything differently. I suppose I would try to get to know him if he wants to be known. But I don’t know how I would go about that in some way that I haven’t tried.

Let’s flip the question a bit: If you definitely discovered there were advanced aliens with the power of what we might think of as a god, would you do anything differently? What exactly would you do that you aren’t already doing? Would you start worshipping them? Why? Would you start praying to them? Why? Would you go back to school and study astrophysics? Why?

Now that you know the aliens exist, you find there is not a damn thing you can do about it except continue living your life and hope they don’t decide you are a good source of food. If they wanted to talk to you, they would have done so. If they wanted us to know they existed, we would know it. So if they are there and give us no more evidence of their existence than god has given us, what’s the point of wasting our time? I don’t know either.

See you in the comments…

David Johnson

Worst arguments for god’s existence ever!