A recent post at Evolutionary Middleman posited the question (paraphrased): Given the choice between believing in God and being given a nice shiny penny, which would you choose? Belief in God would guarantee you a ticket to Heaven (in the event that such a place exists), so surely that gamble has to be worth more than a penny? John Evo agrees, but I and several other commentators went for the penny, and here’s why.

Atheists often put forth the argument that there is no evidence for God. On this basis, it makes sense to take the ticket to Heaven. If there’s no evidence of something, but its existence is possible, then it would be sensible to gamble a penny on the matter. For example, had I lived in the Middle Ages and been asked to gamble a penny against the possibility that black swans existed, I might have taken the bet. I’ve not seen every swan, and there’s no reason that a black one might not be around somewhere – and as it turns out, I would have been right. Admittedly, a penny back in those days would probably have paid for a massive fuck-off castle, with enough spare change for a slap-up meal at McChaucer’s, but you get the gist.

The problem with applying the same logic to God, however, is that not only is there no evidence for his existence, but there are also good reasons to believe he doesn’t exist. The problem of evil has been dragged over the coals on several of my favourite blogs recently (here, here, here and here, for example), so I’m not going to trot it out again, but it does show that God’s very attributes are self-contradictory. He can’t be 3-omni (to use Phillychief’s delightful phrase) and the creator of the earth as we know it.

Other reasons exist for disbelieving the biblical god. The omnipotence problem seems like a bit of metaphysical slight-of-hand, but it holds true nonetheless: In order for God to be omnipotent, he must be infinitely powerful, therefore have infinite energy. The universe, however, is finite, and cannot therefore contain an infinite amount of energy. In the event that God exists, he cannot therefore exist inside the universe we inhabit. He becomes an “absentee landlord” (best repeated in a sneering Al Pacino voice whilst surrounded by fire), with no power or control over our world. Obviously, such a God is not the God of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. Omniscience poses difficulties as well. If God knows everything that ever happens, he must therefore know the future. If he knows the future, then it must be set, written in stone, as it were. This, however, contradicts the doctrine that we have free will, since if God knows my decision before I make it, how is it a free choice? God already knows whether I am going to take the penny bet, and nothing I can do will change the outcome. Choosing to believe in an omniscient god means accepting the loss of free will. This, however, goes against omnibenevolence, since if free will cannot exist, God is basically toying with us; damning us to hell for infractions which he always knew we would commit.

Once you strip away omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence, you are left with a god who does not correspond to the god of the Bible (or Qur’an, or Tanakh). The Bible, therefore, cannot be relied upon to present an accurate picture of God. If it cannot do this, it cannot pretend to be the Word of God, so arguments from the Bible prove false as well. The biblical god is a logical nightmare, and cannot exist by His very definition.

Other gods might be possible – the god outside the universe that I posited earlier, for example, or the limited gods of Norse or Greek mythology. The concept of these deities is not inherently self-contradictory: like the medieval swans, they could exist, they just have not been observed. I do not have to search hard to find evidence against the god of the Bible, though, since His very nature denies His existence.

Betting on things that cannot exist is a sure-fire route to poverty, and that is why I will gladly take Mr Evo’s penny. If anyone else would like to offer me this bet, I’ll take you up on it – I could really use the cash.