Define God in such a way that it's impossible for him not to exist
You’d be forgiven for thinking I believe in the flying spaghetti monster. I don’t. Or rather, my official position is that it’s impossible to disprove the existence of such a monster. My god hardly comes with a definition at all. My god is the unknown itself, and this god is the best god to believe in.
You think I’m playing word games, but I’m serious.
People often start with a definition of God and then ask whether this god exists, or can exist. Lots of religious people start with definitions and then try to prove that such a God must exist. If you’re an atheist, you’re frustrated with the mental gymnastics involved. They’ll say “imagine a perfect being”. Then they say “now wouldn’t this perfect being be even more perfect if he actually existed?”. QED, God exists. We’re done here.
Ugh.
That’s not what I’m doing. You see, you think I’m starting with a definition like “creator of the universe” or some all-knowing and all-seeing god. Nope. I’m starting with “I don’t know”. Not, “I don’t know if there’s a god”. I’m actually starting with gaps in our knowledge and placing this at the center of my epistemology. Hell, I’m not even doing anything particularly new. Didn’t Socrates say:
“The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and I am no quite sure that I know that.”
— Socrates
Good luck trying to build something on this pristine foundation, right? But I think it’s the best place to start. Instead of using god as an explanation for the unknown, I simply define the unknown as my god. It makes more sense that way.
I’ll leave you with this: does dark matter exist? It’s merely a placeholder for an answer. That’s what my god is, and it’s worthy or worship.