The best possible God: the Christian argument that unsettles atheism

The best possible God: the argument that puts atheism to the test

A man sits down to think about which God deserves to be worshipped. Not the one he was taught as a child, but the best of all possible ones. From that premise —that if there is a higher order, it is necessarily governed by maximization, just as physics seeks the least action— he draws an uncomfortable conclusion: the true God must be the optimal one, and that optimum, he argues, leads to Christianity. The thesis, defended with the conviction of someone who has spent years turning it over, opens a flank that skepticism does not always know how to close.

The rule of the best God

The approach rejects from the outset the usual caricature: that of the believer clinging to the first thing put in front of him. Whoever believes in the transcendent, the argument goes, can weigh the alternatives —atheism, Buddhism, polytheism, Gnosticism, Judaism, Sarracin— and reflect on which is superior. Hence the golden rule: if God could choose among alternatives, what ultimately prevails is the best, given the quality of the tribunal that judges.

The next step is the one that stings. If we are beings of judgment and meaning, to claim that a God who is not the best could exist is not serious. And that best God, it is asserted, manifests himself in a way no one could have invented even with paper, pencil and plenty of imagination. The reference is explicit: "when we preach Christ crucified, the Jews are scandalized and the Greeks say it is madness." A message that did not mature like wine, but burst in abruptly, and that can only be appreciated as an unrivaled work when one matures alongside it for decades.

The rebuttal: a botched, contradictory God

The counterattack is not long in coming. Some describe the God in question as a badly built, contradictory botch job, to the point that, judged by his own rules, he would go to hell. The accusation escalates: he is reproached for condemning people merely for breathing, and it is even claimed that religion is a well-made tall tale by the masters of the dung heap, on a par with official history and the thousands of years, because the more years, the more lies.

The defender of the thesis responds with cheap psychology and a bit of venom: perhaps some people need to imagine a diminished version of God because of a kind of Oedipal complex or narcissism. Calling botched someone with enough power and intellect to create life, it is said, smacks of a lack of neutrality.

Suffering as the central objection

The hardest blow comes by way of pain. It points to those who live with chronic pain without having chosen to be born, and accuses the creator of a system where that is possible. The believer's reply is an uncomfortable jab: if he is so bad, why hasn't he sent you a pain that leaves you doubled over living off licking yogurt lids? You could be a worm in a dung heap with chronic pain and yet you hurl curses at such a benefactor who allows you leisure on the internet.

The exchange remains open. Against the accusation of psychopathy, the defense appeals to the ticking clock. Against the ticking clock, the question still hangs in the air.

The God we don't need

Another current chimes in with a different proposal: the only passable God would be one who creates a world in which God is not needed. The reply comes quickly and bluntly: a world with only stones? And a final objection, of a logical bent: if he were the best, he would exist because no one would have been able to kill him; that is not the case.

The closing of the original argument does not seek consensus, but to leave the bar where it was: the best possible transcendent order resembles the principle of least action in physics, and if someone does not even accept the object of debate, there is little to dig into.