# Maybe God does not exist
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [October 19, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115 "2006-10-19T17:35:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/1 "2006-10-19T17:35:53Z")
Someone jsut sent me this:
> [@](#):
>
> 1. The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.
> 2. The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.
> 3. The greater the disability or handicap of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
> 4. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
> 5. Therefore, if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator, we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.
> 6. An existing God, therefore, would not be a being than which a greater cannot be conceived, because an even more formidable and incredible creator would be a God which did not exist.
> 7. (Hence) God does not exist.
Looks pretty good. Better than my idea. Should I just give up on God? What is the point then?
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/2 "2006-10-19T17:50:37Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com]
What is the point then?
[/QUOTE]
Why does there have to be a point?
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### Author:  [@ted\_baskerville\_yahoo.com](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ted_baskerville_yahoo.com)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/3 "2006-10-19T17:53:07Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Why does there have to be a point?
[/QUOTE]
I need one.
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### Author:  [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/4 "2006-10-19T17:55:37Z")
Not to say that we can’t discuss God logically and philosophically at some level, but if God does exist, then almost by definition he exists outside of human ideas like time, space, and logic, and is not limited by what human brains can conceptualize.
Make your own decision about God based on your own knowledge and beliefs. Don’t let some glorified semantic games make the decision for you, one way or the other.
Just my $0.02.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/5 "2006-10-19T17:56:15Z")
I’m an atheist, but not because of some silly question-begging argument like the one your correspondent sent you. Trying to prove or disprove the existence of God–or anything else–by pure reason alone is a pretty futile exercise. The existence of a thing is shown by empirical evidence.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/6 "2006-10-19T17:59:02Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com]
Someone jsut sent me this:
Looks pretty good. Better than my idea. Should I just give up on God? What is the point then?
[/QUOTE]
Not to be nasty, but almost anything was better than that idea.
Weak and therefore useless faith if wordplay would cause you to lose it.
There is no reason to require a God concept for there to be “a point.” Many atheists and agnostics feel great meaning to life with embracing theism. Living a good life, improving life for others, can be its own point.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/7 "2006-10-19T18:00:18Z")
> [@](#):
>
> 1. The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.
How is that so? It’s a nice place to live and all, but the world is an insignificant part of the universe. Why is it more marvelous than trillions of other things out there?
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/8 "2006-10-19T18:00:24Z")
uh “without embracing theism” that is.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/9 "2006-10-19T18:01:52Z")
To quote Dylan, this just shows you shouldn’t give your address out to bad company.
This argument is well over a thousand years old, and is poorly stated.
If you think the creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement possible, I suggest you consider a deity who created a world without quite so many earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanos. If a god is responsible, it must be a god in the bottom 10% of his god class.
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### Author:  [@Smitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smitty)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/10 "2006-10-19T18:03:34Z")
Point number one is unproven. It assumes the world was “created”. The rest of the “points” are therefore irrelevant.
You needing there to be a point is also irrelevant. Cancer patients need a cure. That doesn’t mean that there is one.
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### Author:  [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/11 "2006-10-19T18:05:55Z")
First off, that proof against God is just as flawed as any proof FOR God’s existence. He can’t exist, because if he did actually exist, he couldn’t actually exist? Seems circular to me.
However… why would God’s lack of existence mean everything no longer has a “point”? Why do you even need a “point”? My purpose in life is to have as good a time as possible, while I’m here- and to make sure that when I’m gone, people will think of me fondly. I’d also like to have some sort of lasting, positive effect on the future (of course, the best lasting, positive effect would be for me to still be here, which is why I’d rather not die).
If God WERE to exist, your entire purpose in life would be to make sure that he feels good about himself- since, after all, he created you and wants you to worship and love him.
Why is it that making God feel good is a better purpose than making your fellow humans feel good? That’s one thing I don’t like about religion- it marginalizes humanity’s existence and achievements.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/12 "2006-10-19T18:06:16Z")
> [@](#):
>
> 1. The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.
Another set of “logical” arguments that begin with an arbitrary “axiom”. “Marvellous” is entirely a human concept; and the world itself, while pretty cool, can only be defined as “marvellous” by a sentient (in this case human) observer, and even then it is open to debate. Why the world? Why not Jupiter? The Galaxy? The Universe? My left nut?
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/13 "2006-10-19T18:08:01Z")
Hello again, **ted**. I am theistic, as are many other people on this board (although if we’re a majority, it’s not the huge whopping taken-for-granted majority you’ll find in most public venues).
If you’re going to be theistic, you may as well be clear in your own mind about _why_ you are, and what it means to you to harbor those beliefs…indeed, what the three-letter word “God” means to you and why you think it means the same thing to you that it means to other folks who use it.
If you believe in God on the basis of logical constructs, as in “Oh, that’s a really compelling philosophical argument, and on the basis of that argument I am convinced that ‘God’ is a useful construct”, it is good for you in every possible way to question and test those constructs, and, if they are found faulty, to cast them aside.
If you are left with an unhappy feeling when you do so, perhaps it is because you harbor some God-beliefs for reasons other than having been convinced by a logical philosophical argument. _That hardly puts you in scant or bad company_.
While no one appointed me spokesperson for the Believers in God or anything, I think you’ll find, if you ask people and listen to them, that most people who use ‘God’ to refer to something they regard as real in their lives do so because:
• there is something in or about life itself, and our experience of it, that is important to them and yet abstract enough that there’s no sufficiently accurate, utilitarian “mundane” word that expresses that _something_ to their satisfaction; and
• there is something in the huge mass of things other folks have said, utilizing the term and concept ‘God’, that convinces them that their _something_ is what at least a significant number of those other people were talking about when they said ‘God’.
Be that as it may, you may instead discover that, to your satisfaction, you can identify and express all that is of importance and relevance in life in nontheistic terms, without leaving anything of signficance out, and unless you are willing to explore that possibility your theology is always going to be on the defensive. Atheism can’t deprive you of anything; if there’s an “anything” you’d be without as a consequence of atheism, and that something is of quality, of beauty, of realness and importance, then there’s still something real to you that you can’t put into words without utilizing theistic words and concepts, and therefore you remain a theist.
If, on the other hand, there’s no “there there” (and you find, after communicating and sharing with them, that the atheists appreciate all the things that ‘matter in life’ much as you do, and their terms suit you just fine while the connotations and practices of religion start to disturb you), then embracing atheism can only make you happier and more fulfilled.
Either way, you owe it to yourself to find out.
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### Author:  [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/14 "2006-10-19T18:08:16Z")
First, whoever sent you that “list” you should immediately block them from your email account. That list is something a first year philosophy student might put together. It has some big words, but makes no sense;
> [@](#):
>
> 1. The greater the disability or handicap of the creator, the more impressive the achievement
So if I am in a wheelchair and I make a birdhouse, the birdhouse becomes more impressive than if I had the use of both my legs? Huh?
I could refute each one individually, but why bother? The whole thing is crap and doesn’t prove or disprove God in anyway.
> [@](#):
>
> Should I just give up on God? What is the point then?
Give up? Why exactly? Because you can’t prove he exists on a message board?
I believe in God, He is as real to me as my own arm. And I have no idea what the “point” is, but I am sure one day I will find out.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/15 "2006-10-19T18:12:22Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com]
I need one.
[/QUOTE]
This is starting to look more like therapy than a debate.
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### Author:  [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/16 "2006-10-19T18:16:07Z")
Great post, **AHunter**.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/17 "2006-10-19T18:20:20Z")
[QUOTE=Lightnin’]
Why is it that making God feel good is a better purpose than making your fellow humans feel good? That’s one thing I don’t like about religion- it marginalizes humanity’s existence and achievements.
[/QUOTE]
It seems to me that the god described in the Bible, the one that sets up a mindfuck game where you are supposed to believe in him without proof under threat of unspeakable punishment and demands regular, if not constant, obeisance, and sincere _adoration_ (again, under the threat of punishment) is a distinctly _evil_ god. What would you think of a _person_ with this attitude?
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/18 "2006-10-19T18:23:46Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray]
It seems to me that the god described in the Bible
[/quote]
I should say, “in some parts of the Bible.”
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### Author:  [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/19 "2006-10-19T19:24:23Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com]
1. The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.
[/QUOTE]
An alternate view:
“In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move” Douglas Adams
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2006, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/maybe-god-does-not-exist/377115/20 "2006-10-19T19:30:04Z")
[QUOTE=ted\_baskerville@yahoo.com]
I need one.
[/QUOTE]
Have you tried sex? Works for me.
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