The Odyssey

Is it just me, or does Amy Winehouse look exactly like Casey Anthony?  Although I’ve never seen both women in the same place at the same time, I’m convinced they aren’t the same person and that they both do exist.  However, when it comes to their supposed common creator, god almighty, I’m much more sceptical.  As to the question of whether there is a god of any kind, I’m somewhat neutral, though I have my leanings.  But as far as there being a personal, loving, almighty god, as most people of faith would describe him, I’m afraid the answer is “unlikely”.  The very notion that there could be a being that is at once omnibenevolent and omnipotent immediately raises a host of irreconcilable paradoxes.  The most obvious being that such a god would be incapable of creating evil, by virtue of his benevolence, and therefore, by definition, couldn’t be omnipotent.  Another problem is that of free will.  If god were truly capable of eradicating evil then he would be compelled to do so by virtue of his benevolence.  But then that would require a mass curtailment of the free will of all would-be evildoers, which apparently is another no-no for followers of the Abrahamic faiths.

Among the first to recognize this paradox was the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who famously opined “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”  To answer questions such as these, theologians created the subdiscipline of theodicy, the study of reconciling the idea of a perfect god with the pervasive presence of evil and brutality throughout the world.

The futility of this endeavour is obvious to any observer with a perfunctory understanding of ethics.  What was once simplistically labelled as “evil” has since evolved into a complex discourse that encompasses questions of human suffering, utilitarianism, justice, cultural relativism and social constructionism.  There is simply no way to create a world in which no one experiences undeserved suffering.  But one can’t expect that the architects of religion would have had any concept of nuance, at least not the kind required to avoid the logical pitfall in which they ultimately placed themselves.

Reconciling the notion of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent god is like solving an enhanced Sudoku puzzle in which all the rules are the same, but the size of the grid has been extended to 12 x 12, you know ... just to make it interesting.  The Australian philosopher Douglas Gasking distilled this dilemma beautifully in a satirical proof developed as a refutation of the ontological argument for god’s existence.  Here’s a summarized version.

1)      The creation of the universe is the most impressive achievement possible.

2)      Any achievement is made even more impressive by the ability of the achiever to perform the task in the presence of adversity or handicap.

3)      The greatest possible handicap is non-existence.

4)      Therefore the greatest, most perfect god imaginable is one which does not exist.

5)      Therefore god does not exist.

When one takes stock of all the logical inconsistencies inherent in the concept of an all-loving, all-powerful deity, one sees that the suggestion that such a god doesn’t exist is not an insult.  Rather it is a conciliatory escape hatch that the faithful would be wise to make use of, since, I would imagine, it’s much easier to accept that ones god doesn’t exist (at least not in the form they envisioned him) than to admit the only alternative, which is that god is criminally inept.

For example, returning to the celebrity dopplegangers Casey Anthony and Amy Winehouse, why was one given her freedom after murdering her infant daughter, while the other paid the ultimate price for the victimless crime of recreational drug use?  If god does exist, either he’s got a deranged sense of justice, or his penchant for falling asleep at the wheel borders on narcoleptic.