So, God Probably Does Not Exist

An athe­is­tic group in Canada pur­chased adver­tis­ing space on city buses with var­i­ous slo­gans. The one that I found the most para­dox­i­cal is: “God prob­a­bly does not exist. So quit wor­ry­ing and ben­e­fit from your life.” (No I am not mak­ing this up.) I won­der if they actu­ally looked care­fully at the two sen­tences. Per­son­ally, if I were caught in the cross­roads of belief and unbe­lief, I would want to know with much more cer­tainty — one way or the other. They could not hon­estly say that they know for cer­tain (beyond a shadow of a doubt) that there is no Supreme Being or Being greater than human­ity.

They used the word “prob­a­bly” (kind of wishy washy don’t you think). Prob­a­bly? Isn’t prob­a­bil­ity the very thing that the famous French math­e­mati­cian and Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist, Blaise Pas­cal, used to encour­age peo­ple to believe in God? There is prob­a­bly not a God. That is like say­ing, “I don’t think math is real.” After all, you can’t see it. Math is largely a con­struct of the imag­i­na­tion. (The next time I am stopped for speed­ing, I am going to tell the offi­cer that the dif­fer­ence between 90 miles per hour and 55 is prob­a­bly just an imag­i­na­tive dif­fer­en­tial. I am sure he (or she) will let me off with just a warn­ing and walk away with a puz­zled face — amazed at my bril­liance.)

Not!

So, there is prob­a­bly no God. Ever notice what your mind does right after you con­sider that thought. It waf­fles. It is torn by the mushi­ness of “prob­a­bly.” That tiger prob­a­bly will not bite you (assum­ing he or she just had a great big meal and you don’t look too tempt­ing). Me? I am stay­ing out of the tiger cage any­way. It is going to take some­thing a whole lot more con­vinc­ing than “prob­a­bly.”

The sec­ond thing I found amus­ing was the impli­ca­tion that if there is no God, then you can be hap­pier or receive more ben­e­fit. What kind of God do these peo­ple have in mind? So, liv­ing and dying with no ulti­mate pur­pose is nec­es­sar­ily hap­pier than liv­ing with ulti­mate hope? I thought athe­ists were keen on rea­son. Where did they get such an irra­tional for­mula? Smile, we are all suf­fer­ing prod­ucts of a mind­less process that we can­not ever know…and we all die. Smile!

There are all sorts of philo­sophic con­tra­dic­tions in their lit­tle slo­gan. “Exist” is too lim­ited a cat­e­gory for Some­thing or Some­one capa­ble of the big bang, or of speak­ing all of this into exis­tence. Also (and this is the real kicker) if there prob­a­bly is no God, then why go to the efforts of alter­na­tive per­sua­sion? If there is noth­ing per­tain­ing to Deity, then there is no rea­son that any of us have to live any par­tic­u­lar way. Why is it that some­thing at least as inno­cent as a philo­sophic art form (being a believer in God) should have to be coun­tered?

Don’t hand me “prob­a­bly” unless you expect me to hand the same “prob­a­bly” back to you with exactly the oppo­site implication.