Outline Of My Case Against God

1) The word “God” denotes an incomprehensible concept. A nonsensical concept. A concept as contradictory and absurd as “married bachelor” or “four-sided triangle.”

B) Terms like “all-good,” all-knowing,” and “all-powerful” describe nothing found in nature. Such terms describe nothing within the realm of human experience.They exist only as ideas in the human mind. Upon examination, these ideas not only contradict each other (as detailed in 1A), they are self-contradictory and entail paradoxes which render them absurd.

—– Consider “all-good.” What does “all-good” actually mean? Can the theist show us anything that is “all-good”? It seems that virtually everything is a mixture of good and bad, and that in practice it is a very difficult, highly subjective process to identify and separate the good elements from the bad.

Complicating matters immensely is the fact that things seem to be good or bad only within a specific context and not in and of themselves. A glass of water may seem “all-good” to people who are very thirsty after having been lost in a desert for hours. The same glass of water may seem quite evil to people who have it thrown at them as they flounder in a swimming pool on the verge of drowning. Shakespeare seems to have understood all this when he had Hamlet say, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

If goodness depends upon thought and context, it seems we must ask what context God exists in before we can determine whether or not He is good or bad. But many people claim that God is everywhere and the root cause of everything – in effect, His own context. If so, how can we possibly determine His degree of goodness? What externalstandard might we apply? The theist might claim that God needs no external standard – that He simply is “all-good.” This makes as much sense to me as someone calling God a perfect circle even as they define God as a space with no edge line to distinguish it from the greater space it exists in. But it is the edge line which determines the shape of an object. In such a situation, it makes as much sense to call God a square or a rectangle when in fact such a God cannot be labeled any shape at all. Unless standards of good and evil exist independently of God, one cannot apply them to God. Which is another way of saying we are as justified in calling God “all-evil” as “all-good” in a situation where no external standards exist.

Applying what I believe to be sound external standards to “God” as an idea presented by others, I find that idea terribly flawed. And I believe I am justified when I say that no truly “all-good” idea would inspire so much confusion about its “all-goodness.”

—– Consider “all-knowing.” Can an “all-knowing” being really know what it’s like to be eternally comatose, or to exist only as a mentally retarded child? Can an “all-knowing” being really know what it’s like to know less than everything? If yes, such a being seems to be less than “all-knowing” at least sometimes – so why not all the time? If not, then the “all-knowing” being really isn’t all-knowing, is it?

There are other basic problems and contradictions which arise from thinking of God as “all-knowing.” Would an omniscient God ever have needed to create anything? If you already know everything about everything down to the last molecule and possibility in your mind, what’s the point of creating it?

If the universe always has existed external to God and God’s omniscience merely amounts to His/Her/Their/Its knowing everything about that universe, there are other problems. “Knowledge” boils down to having a mental map inside yourself which accurately corresponds to an external reality. It would seem that a completely accurate mental map of the universe would require its complete reproduction inside God’s head. But how does that differ from the universe itself? By what process does physical reality impinge upon the consciousness of deity? What exactly conveys information about atom A to God’s mind? And does God know that process fully? And does He know that He knows? And does He know that He knows that He knows? How does He avoid an infinite regress of mapped states? How might He get around the reasonable theory that nothing is capable of ever understanding itself in its entirety? And how might He ever double-check Himself to make sure the map in His head is actually right?

And even if one grants that God might accurately know everything, why would God want to? Does He know what it feels like to be an old, psychotic woman burned at the stake as a witch? Does He know what intense and unending pain and suffering feels like? Why would He want to?

How can the theist even begin to answer any of these questions? Unless these questions are answerable at least in theory (which they don’t seem to be), why should we not reject the entire concept of an omniscient God as so much pointless nonsense? Why don’t we devote our minds to questions which actually make sense – and to finding answers which might actually make a positive difference in our lives?

—– Consider “all-powerful.” Can an “all-powerful” being do anything? Can such a being create an immovable object – then move it? Can such a being create a twin who knows more than He knows? Make 2 + 2 add up to 103,714? Both commit suicide and go on living? If so, it seems we’re basically exempting this being from all known rules and laws of logic and science. And once we do that with regard to any hypothesized being, item, or idea, what grounds do we have for saying anything at all about it? What grounds do we have for preferring one claim about such a being over any other contrary claim? Again, we are basically saying “God is incomprehensible.” And again, things that are incomprehensible are not to be believed in. They are indistinguishable from nonsense and ought to be rejected as such.

Go to Part 1C