God Doesn't Exist. Therefore, God Exists.

"You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway." That's how Ricky Gervais ended a now-famous essay in the Wall Street Journal explaining why he is an atheist, and what an essay it was. Clear-headed, cogent, and tinged with just enough humor without being condescending to believers (though it was necessarily condescending to the institution of belief), it's become the nexus of interesting debate as to where faith stands as a pillar of Western society. (It reminded me instantly of a similar debate kicked off by a notable's essay, this time in the New York Times, a century ago, when Thomas Edison explained calmly and scientifically that there is no soul.)

I've been questioning my own belief actively, more or less, for the better part of a year. I was raised, and confirmed, Roman Catholic. I'm not sure where my affiliations lie at this exact moment -- though I'm fairly certain the Catholic church has accidentally lost me in its morass of immoral scandals, archaic sacramental rules, and overall well-documented tendency toward a message of joyless guilt -- but I am still certain I believe in God. An instant after reading Gervais's essay, I considered the alternative, the freeing acceptance of God's absence that would, if I could buy the essay's argument, free my mind for a pursuit of scientific truth.

But a little bit of reflection found his arguments wanting. They mainly rest on these three points:

1. There is no scientific evidence of God.
2. Various religious depictions, descriptions, and incarnations of God are ridiculously impossible and contradictory.
3. It is possible to lead a moral life without faith in God.

I agree with all of these arguments. Completely. In fact, it was my innate, soul-searching agreement with these points that made me consider whether or not I am a closet atheist. But when I stepped outside of the arguments and asked, instead, what God I believe in, I found God again.

There is a God, I believe. Furthermore, I don't believe that this God can be measured or described by science. In fact, I am weary of this false cultural dichotomy between scientific knowledge and religious knowledge. The political dispute between the two worldviews is obvious, but theologically and scientifically, why must God be a measurable force? As Gervais says, "Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know." For example, its currently acutely aware of its ignorance about several fundamental forces of physics, including the one that ties all forces together. Perhaps that's God. Perhaps God is not embedded in mathematics or physics. Science doesn't care. And that's fine: science, as a methodology, is inherently atheistic. But it's only a methodology. Writing -- as in the act of inscribing shapes to convey meaning -- is also inherently atheistic. Letters need not believe in God in order to impart meaning. They are human constructs. So I agree with Mr. Gervias that there is no scientific evidence of God, and I am sure that any evidence discovered by those means will happen quite by accident, if at all. Science is not looking for God, or, in its humility, it knows God is beyond its limits.

I should pause here to note that I use the word "God" in its capitalized form merely as a convenience, because that's how I was raised to spell God's name. I am not speaking of a specific Biblical deity, nor a Koranic one, nor any deified being from any cultural pantheon. I'll get to what I believe God is in a moment, but for now, simply insert whatever invisible force you choose into that vessel of a word. This is part of my agreement with point number two that specific Gods are easily cast aside by rational minds as impossibilities and fictions. Point taken, and granted.

Which brings us to the third point, about morality. I also agree that morality is non-religious, for several reasons beyond the simple (though potent) statistic on prisoners the essay cites. First, all religions have a moral code. They might not all agree, but the fact that every religion concerns itself with morals suggests that morals predate religion, and therefore are independent of any specific religion's God or gods or spirits. Deities are often put into the role of enforcement, particularly in the currently popular monotheistic traditions, but there are also examples of gods behaving in amoral or immoral ways, so once again we can observe that humans purchase their morals from a vendor other than religion, by and large.

I am certain there is a branch of evolutionary psychology that is divining the advantages of adapting a code of morals, and this purely anthropological search might even look like science searching for God. But since I believe point number three, I don't believe God will be found in the evolutionary justification of moral behavior. I don't believe there is any equation for God. But that doesn't mean God is non-existent. Merely indescribable.

I keep returning to the phrase "science is humble" because I believe that contains the linchpin clue to what Gervais is missing when he rests the bulk of his dismissal of God upon science. 

I believe that God is what we don't know. Some Christian traditions teach that God is, in large part, what we can't know, aside from the glimpse he gave us in the person of Jesus Christ. I'm not sure about that, but I am sure that God is what we don't know. And I don't believe that the march of human knowledge endangers God by decreasing the total unknown knowledge. Any scientist or academic will tell you, if they are honest and not blinded by their own ego, that the pursuit of knowledge usually expands the void of the unknown, rather than filling it. The more you learn, the more there is to learn. This receding finish line is God.

God is our inability to describe God, and our artistic endeavors that attempt to do so. God is the forces that aren't yet understood, and the yet-undiscovered forces behind those forces. God is the history we cannot divine that lies before the beginning of measured time. God is the future. God is death. God is life -- the existence and purpose of the mechanical reproduction we have come to describe and understand so well since Darwin's time. 

God is humankind's apparent need to have one or more gods. 

Gervais challenges a believe to prove the existence of God, arguing rightly that the burden of proof shouldn't be on the one who asserts the negative. My assertion in response is that God is the negative, God is the lack of proof. 

What, then, is the point in believing in God? Well, there is none. It's just something we do. Once you embrace God as the Unknown, several basic exercises of faith become less mysterious or ridiculous, and more human. Believers worship God; people express awe at the Unknown. It is the only appropriate response to that which is beyond us. Okay, some better ones. Believers fear God; people fear the Unknown. Believers pray to God; people ask questions of the Unknown in expectation of an answer (science, no?). 

When an atheist such as Gervais rejects God -- in his case, the Christian one, though he explicitly rejects all other organized traditions as well -- what they really reject is the specificity of religion, the set of rules and descriptions that cultures have used to harness this Unknown God and make its purpose accessible. That's perfectly fine, insofar as there is no infallible text, no 100 percent correct answer to the meaning of life. But by rejecting religion in favor of science or homegrown morality because being nice is the right thing to do, just in case, those same atheists are professing a faith in God, a faith that the Unknown is worth questioning, exploring, fearing, and being in awe of.

Gervais won't burn in hell, which, after all, is an artistic depiction of the horrors that lie in the Unknown, a worst-case scenario for the power of God that we all struggle to comprehend. But he's nice anyway. And the tone his essay ends with suggests he's not completely able to explain why. 

The only true atheist, I believe, is the one who can argue that humans know everything there is to know, or that they are capable of someday doing so. I find it rather less ridiculous to believe in God.