The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson [57]
Everything is caused by another thing.
A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
There must be a first cause.
The first cause had no cause.
Spaghetti is the only thing that can have no cause, thus must be the first cause.
QED, bitches.
A Twenty-first-Century Ontological Argument
Kevin Heinright
A classic argument for the existence of god is known as the ontological argument (henceforth OA). This argument was developed by Saint Anselm in the eleventh century, but has been greatly improved upon in the ensuing years. The argument, in a nutshell, is that a perfect being must necessarily exist. It is part of the very nature of a perfect being to be real—all beings that do not exist are by definition imperfect. This is because it is better to exist than to not exist (that is, to exist brings you closer to perfection). So if we can merely conceive of a perfect being, then it must, on pain of contradiction, be real.
In a popular formulation of the OA, we are asked to imagine a being of which no greater can be conceived. One might motivate this process by creating a list of perfections. Reasonably, such a list would include omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence, being the creator of all of reality, and so on. We are then asked to compare this list with one in which the characteristic of “actual existence” has been added. Obviously the second list describes a more perfect being. It is clear then that the first list was not a description of a being of which no greater can be conceived. No matter what characteristics we have imagined, actual existence would be an improvement. Hence whatever characteristics we attribute to our perfect being, existence must be one of them.
While there have been many criticisms of the OA, from Kantian metaphysics to modern quantificational logic, we believe all such challenges can be answered. However, we do not have time to review the nuances of this debate. For more detailed information, please see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/.
Traditionally it has been argued (to be frank, it has generally only been assumed) that the necessarily existent perfect being fits comfortably into the Judeo-Christian mold. Now surely any perfect being has the characteristics listed above: it is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, and the creator of all reality. Here we have no quarrel with tradition. However, we will soon see that there are several other characteristics that have been overlooked (or suppressed) by philosophers and theologians during the last millennium. We propose that a careful review of the reasoning behind the OA will indicate that rather than the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the OA indicates the existence of a mass of starchy substance capable of gravity resistance. Such a being must necessarily be, and so all denials of its existence involve blatant logical contradiction.
We will begin our argument with an experience most people can share. When a young person moves away from home and goes to college, he finds himself confronted for the first time with the task of providing himself with the necessities of life. For many a college freshman, this proves a nearly unsurmountable task. While one can survive without paying the gas, electric, and phone bills, all living things require sustenance in order to continue to live. And what is the staple diet of the impoverished student? Ramen noodles, macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti. But it is not merely college students in first-world nations who subsist on this food. The staple diet of a large portion of humanity is starchy noodles. The unique properties of this foodstuff make it the most popular form of subsistence in all of recorded history. Noodles are high in caloric content, they are nutritious, and they are simple and easy to produce. Clearly, then, noodles are an objectively superior food. Indeed, noodles are the perfect food.
We will demonstrate that our perfect being must be made of the most perfect food. Before we continue, however, a potentially serious objection must