Opening Statement by Cheetah:
It is just right after Christmas, some of us still might be counting his presents. I know many of us have children and no doubt we told our story
about Santa and his reindeers delivering Christmas presents to all children all over the globe.
Every adult would say it is impossible.
Santa and all his reindeers would burn if they would go with the speed that necessary for such mammoth task. Not to mention that a few reindeers won’t
be able to move all the presents which would fill a spaceship rather than a cart. Yet, knowing all this, we are just happy to tell the story of Santa
to our children and when they ask whether Santa exist most of us would answer in all honesty: „yes he does”.
Does he?
Does the honest affirmative answer of a few adults and the honest belief of millions of children is a sufficient proof for the existence of Santa? We
know it is not. After all we buy the presents; we sneak the presents under the tree. Besides, we know that the existence of Santa would be impossible,
it would defy all the laws of physics. Before and after Christmas we never have any problems admitting it, we just playing along for a few days. After
all, what is the harm in that? Sure when the children grow up they will realise that it is just a tale.
The same parents probably tell their children about Jesus Christ and God, and when they ask whether god exist most of us would answer in all honesty:
„yes he does”.
Does he?
Does the honest affirmative answer of a few adults and the honest belief of millions of adults is a sufficient proof for the existence of god? We know
it is not. Besides, we know that it would be impossible, it would defy all the laws of physics and not just the laws of physics but everything we know
about biology, computational science or societies. Yet we do have problems admitting that god does not exist and many of us would vigorously defend
his existence. When will we grow up and realise that it is just a tale?
What is the difference between Santa and god? Why does Santa exist only for a day while god can exist all year? Why is it that that adults are most
willing to admit that Santa does not exist (at least to each other) yet most of them would defend the existence of god?
Note the difference cannot be the fact that only children believe in Santa while mature, educated, clever adults believe in god. Mature, educated and
clever adults once believed that the earth is flat, that dragons exist and that 2000 will be the end of human kind. None of this is true.
Simple belief proves nothing. Though one have to note that there has to be a reason for this mass belief.
The answer is simple: god is lot more useful than Santa. Immensely more useful. He is so useful that we are willing to put up all the physical, moral
and biological impossibilities that his existence implies and most of us are happy to play along all year.
I do not want to give a list of god’s usefulness here. It is not my task and it would fill pages. What is important to realise that god works the same
way as Santa. The only difference is that he is immensely more useful, so useful that many of us are willing to sincerely believe (i.e. not just to
pretend play) that he exist.
Once we see that they work the same way it is very easy to see that god cannot exist. Just as Santa’s existence is a physical impossibility god’s
existence is a physical impossibility too. Besides it is a perceptual, a biological, a computational, and a moral impossibility.
I do not have the room for a detailed argument here I only give a short list:
Physical impossibility I.: Where is he? In which corner of the universe is he hiding? What form he has? What particles is he made of? How is it that
we have not discovered any physical trace of such an important being?
Physical impossibility II.: how does he interact with his environment? What kind of interactions are these? Electromagnetic, gravitational, weak,
strong forces? How is that we have not discovered any traces of these all important interactions?
Perceptual impossibility: how is he supposed to be able to know about everything? How can he process all the incoming information? After all he is
supposed to know about all living and non-living things. How can he solve the correspondence problem between visual, audio, tactile information? How
many input channels does he have? Does he have an input channel for each object, being? That would practically require a parallel universe. If not how
can he short it out? How can he cope with noise?
Computational impossibility: how can he process all the incoming information? How large is his brain? How can he parallel process all the incoming
information (assuming that he knows everything about everyone) and make judgements, act at the same time? Just processing all the information about
the entire universe would require a parallel universe itself.
Biological impossibility: how does he come to being? He must be incredibly complex. The only explanation that we know that can explain the origin of
complex beings is evolution by means of natural selection. However it requires space, time, a population of beings, reproduction, heritability,
variability and competition. Where is the population of gods? Is he the lone survivor? That surely means extinction for them. What did they compete
for? What kind of information storage system do they have? Do they have DNA? How long is that?
Moral impossibility: (i) where did god get his morals from? Did he just invent it out of scratch? (ii) Why did he invent several hundreds (thousands)
of often competing and diametrically opposed religions? Which one is „god’s true religion”? Why did he make religions competing with each other if
all? Who will decide which one if only one of them? Why did he let people slaughter each other in the name of god if all? Why does he let his own
people slaughtered if only one?
Clearly if we know anything about the universe then it is impossible for god to exist. The situation is very simple: either we know something (and I
am not claiming that all our theories are correct, but at least some) and then god cannot exist; or god exists but then all we know is wrong.
Make your choice.
The concept of god is one of the most useful concept of human kind. That is why „he” and thus religions will be around for a long time. However,
usefulness does not mean that he actually exists. The usefulness of Santa on Christmas does not mean that he exists. Just like Santa, God is a
creation of the human mind and most of us are willing to play along exactly because of his usefulness. This usefulness makes us to ignore that fact
that the existence of god, just like the existence of Santa is clearly impossible.
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