Fifteen things I know about God


I’m not a big fan of people who try to argue you into believing in God. Despite a long history of really tortured attempts at a so-called ontological argument for God, which usually involve some sort of lame circular logic along the lines of “something perfect wouldn’t fail to exist, so God must exist,” logic cannot be used to prove God exists, let alone understand its full nature if it does. Hume’s argued that there’s no such thing as an a priori proof of the existence of anything.

Having said this, logic, restricted to proper domains, can still be used to make conclusions about what God cannot be. And that’s still fun, right? An example: God is not the San Diego Chicken. Proof: the San Diego Chicken was created by Ted Giannoulas, who was created by God. Something cannot create itself, thus God is not the San Diego Chicken. Quod est demonstratum. Along the same lines, here are a few more things I believe one can prove.

God is not:

  1. Angry.
  2. A Yankees fan.
  3. The kind of dude who would “choose” a group of people.
  4. At all disappointed that the Lakers lost.
  5. A man.
  6. A woman.
  7. Alanis Morrisette.
  8. Going to pay a lot for this muffler.
  9. Saying a word.
  10. Spelled with a ‘Z’.
  11. White.
  12. Wearing any pants.
  13. Up.
  14. Responsible for your touchdown.
  15. Particularly concerned with helping you avoid suffering.

Proofs are left as an exercise to the reader. A hint: first prove the lemma that God is not human, proceeding similarly to the proof for the non-divinity of the San Diego Chicken. All else follows fairly trivially from that, except maybe 13, which requires group theory.


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