As long-time readers may remember, I enjoy occasionally dipping my toes into the shallower tidal pools of theology and biblical apology. Basically because I find the tortured logic, the pedantic adherence to the literal meaning of obvious metaphors, the use of dodgy word play, the reliance on tiny context-free snippets of scripture and so on, to be rather amusing. (Except the various forms of the faux-logical ontological argument. They're not amusing; they're freakin' hilarious.)
So imagine my surprise when I realised, following a brief joke on the phrase "God's not dead," that I had stumbled upon just such a tortuous argument myself. Now, you may have noticed that many of these arguments appear to begin with an unspoken assumption that God exists, and then proceed to justify that assumption. This, you might think, could pose just a tiny bit of a problem for an atheist. Fear not. For this argument to work, we first need to assume that God is non-existent. What fun. Well, I hope it's fun, 'cause I'm about to present it to you in all its glory. Here, Gentle Reader, we go…
If we assume God is existent: GoTo End, collect £200, and exit to your nearest place of worship.
Which is boring. So let's assume God is non-existent.
The question asked is, Is God dead?
If we define dead as not alive, then God, never having existed, must be dead.
If we define dead as having died, then God, never having existed, cannot be dead.
If God's not dead, then he must be alive.
Since both definitions of dead are valid, God must be both dead and alive.
Thanks to ground-breaking research by a little-known professor named Erwin Schrödinger, it is known that a being which is both alive and dead must have some chance of being either upon observation.
If God did not exist, he would have zero chance of being alive.
Therefore, God exists.
And thus ends my proof that God exists. But there's more…
Schrödinger also tells us that the only being capable of being both alive and dead at the same time is a cat in a box.
Since God exists and has created the entire universe, he must be alive and have been let out of the box in order to do so. (He has to have been freed from the box in order to have had his wave-form collapsed to the "alive" (and, per Pratchett, "bloody furious") state.)
Therefore, God is both existent and alive. And is a cat.
Supporting evidence (See! This is empirical!):
Take a good, long cynical look at the human race. Then, keeping that in mind, consider that…
We are made in God's image.
Cats are extremely self-interested little bastards who bully smaller, weaker creatures for fun. They kill when they have no need to feed. They regularly crap all over the neighbour's lawn. They often engage in claws-out, fangs-drawn, hissing stand-offs and vicious fights for no good or apparent reason.
I rest my case.
—Daz
PS: One question remains. Since Tiddles God created everything and everyone, and he had to have already been let out of the box in order to do so…
Who opened the box??
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Who opened the box??
A dog which now has multiple lacerations and claw marks on its head.
Explains everything! Cheers mate!
Pandora. Du-uh.
Wait, so it was god that barfed a hairball into my shoe yesterday? Then god owes me a new pair of shoes. How do we put him back in the box?
Shine a really big laser-pointer into it.