God is the best of all possible gods

Whoever believes in a higher order does not cling to the first thing they find: they can compare alternatives and choose the one they consider best. The argument of the "best possible God" holds that, if a divine order exists, what prevails is necessarily the optimal one.

There is a recurring accusation against those who believe in something transcendent: that one religion would be as good as another for them, that they simply settle for whatever is put in front of them. The image of the credulous believer, unable to tell one system from another, serves as a shortcut to dismiss without arguing. The problem is that this caricature does not stand up to contact with the reality of many people who have thought through their faith.

## A criterion for comparing supernatural orders

Whoever takes the question of the transcendent seriously does not start from scratch. Over a lifetime, one can come across very different alternatives: atheism, Buddhism, polytheism, Gnosticism, Judaism, Sarracin or Christianity. They are not the same, nor do they say the same things about God, the world or the human being. And they can be compared.

From this arises a rule of discernment we might call the best God rule. If a higher order exists and that order had alternatives before it, what ultimately prevailed would be the best of those alternatives. Not by an arbitrary act, but because of the quality of the judge that decides. A God who was not the best of the possible would not be serious as an object of faith.

## Why Christianity fits this criterion

Applying that yardstick, Christianity presents a distinguishing antiestéticature: the crucifixion. A God who becomes man and dies on a cross is not the kind of deity one would invent with pen and paper. It is a scandal to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek, as the Pauline tradition puts it. Precisely for that reason, it is hard to make up.

The message did not mature like wine. It appeared suddenly, as an abrupt novelty, and only over time —sometimes decades— is its quality appreciated. Human beings, by contrast, rarely produce something overnight that takes so long to be valued. That asymmetry is, for those who hold this position, a sign that we are not dealing with a human invention.

## The charge of credulity, revisited

Infantilizing those who think differently has a deeper problem: it turns a difference in conclusions into a difference in ability. The other is assigned a mental age of five in order to win the argument without ever engaging in it. But having reflected on Buddhism, polytheism or Gnosticism and rejected them is not the same as never having heard of them.

This does not prove that Christianity is true. It shows that the believer can have judgment and have exercised it. The serious discussion begins when that judgment is examined, not when the interlocutor is assumed to lack one.

## Key points

- The "best God" rule holds that, if God had alternatives, what prevailed is the best of them.
- Christianity stands out for the crucifixion, a antiestéticature the Pauline tradition calls a scandal to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek.
- The Christian message presents itself as an abrupt novelty, not as the product of gradual human maturation.
- Those who raise these comparisons may have considered atheism, Buddhism, polytheism, Gnosticism, Judaism, Sarracin and Christianity.