Who believes in god because the existence of god is ridiculous?
November 30, 2014 11:33 PM   Subscribe

I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but I recently encountered the Thoughts of a Prominent Thinker who's belief in the existence of god is based, somewhat backwardsly, on the sheer ridiculousness? improbability? unlikelihood? of god's existence. I can't for the life of me track down the specific memory attached to this idea, and google only gives me a bunch of websites arguing about how to prove god does or does not exist. Help me out, friends!
posted by Grandysaur to Religion & Philosophy (9 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Are you thinking of Kierkegaard, e.g. "Where the Absurd leads to God: Introducing Kierkegaard (CultureCast 053)?"
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:38 PM on November 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Do you mean Aquinas?

The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being

There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others.

Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest).

The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.

Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
posted by HoteDoge at 11:40 PM on November 30, 2014


Best answer: I think the original of the genre is Tertulian (Wikipedia: I believe because it is absurd):

'Credo quia absurdum is a Latin phrase that means "I believe because it is absurd." It is a paraphrase of a statement in Tertullian's work De Carne Christi, "prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est", which can be translated: "it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd".'
posted by wotsac at 11:55 PM on November 30, 2014 [7 favorites]


There are discussions like that in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series at various points.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:16 AM on December 1, 2014


wotsac has it -- it's Tertullian. "And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is ridiculous. Buried, He rose again: it is certain, because it is impossible.”
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:57 AM on December 1, 2014


Hitchhiker's Guide

As far as I recall those all take the flip side position, that God's existence is impossible because it's so plausible.
posted by flabdablet at 3:46 AM on December 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


C. S. Lewis said something similar in Mere Christianity:

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.
posted by lharmon at 4:23 AM on December 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


Here is the quote from Douglas Adams (hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy):

"The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with the nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
posted by hz37 at 7:24 AM on December 1, 2014


I've heard a Catholic version of this. The Trinity exists because it is so impossible to conceive. If you can't work your mind around quantum physics, why should you believe in a God you can fit in your head?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:15 AM on December 1, 2014


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