To this:

God has one saving grace, non existence. Test it and you will discover that that parsimonious attribute explains _everything_ with _all_ the good/evil problems.

My friend Chris responded:

OK. But first you need to define existence.

Now that is not easy. Objects (like tables, animals, rocks) can exist, and their existence can easily be proved.

Ideas can exist, like the earth is round, or the table is flat, and there are scientific methods to prove those ideas.

Other ideas are less easy to prove. I have the idea that Mozart wrote good music, and many others will agree, but I cannot prove that idea no matter how hard I try because there is no objective measure of good music.

Now what about the laws of physics? Do they exist? How do I prove gravity exists as a universal law? Or the laws of logic? How do I prove those exist? There are some things you just must take on faith, and I think that includes the whole concept of existence (aka The Matrix).

For instance, prove to me that you exist. I put it to you that you cannot. If that is true, then any debate about the existence of God is meaningless because you cannot prove the existence of anything, even yourself.

Remember that there is an interesting scientific conjecture around at the moment that simulations should vastly outnumber reality, so that probabilistically, we are all in a simulation. The only argument that I have seen against that theory is that the person who created the simulation would have to be a heartless bastard to create such suffering, just the same argument many atheists have against a good God.

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