Auditing God's Existence Assertion

The movie Mystery Men is underrated. It's on Netflix right now, but I prefer to watch my VHS copy because I'm a purist. It's like listening to the Bee Gees on cassette.

My second favorite mystery man is Invisible Boy because his superpower is hilarious.

Invisible Boy:    I can only become invisible when no one's watching.

The Shoveler:    So you're only invisible to yourself?

Invisible Boy:    No. If I look at myself, I become visible again.

Mr. Furious:    So you can only become invisible when absolutely nobody is watching you?

Invisible Boy:    Yes.

Blue Raja:    Do forgive our incredulity, but I'm wondering how you can be certain you've achieved transparency at all?

Invisible Boy:    Well, when you go invisible ... you can feel it.

Best idea for a superhero ever. Turns out he did have the power of invisibility, and he pretty much saves the day at the end of the movie. Regardless, when he was first introduced, he made an assertion that was (seemingly) impossible to test. The natural and understandable reaction was incredulity.

God has a similar assertion—the assertion that he exists but that he can't be perceived by the five senses. It's an existence assertion, and it can't be tested. We lack sufficient persuasive evidence of God’s existence.

Let's say you're an independent, external auditor, and you go to audit a client's inventory, but the client says that nobody’s allowed see any of their inventory until after their IPO. You've got to give an adverse opinion, and you'd probably assume fraud. (And, yes, the inventory balance is material. Those kind of questions are why people don't like us.)

God doesn’t have to be hidden—doesn’t have to be intangible. Therefore, you shouldn’t test God's existence like you'd test the existence of an intangible asset because God chooses to be hidden. He's omnipotent; he's capable of revealing his existence.

Some people believe that God keeps himself hidden because we couldn't handle it if God revealed himself to us fully—our faces would melt like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. First off, I'd be okay with a partial reveal so long as it's a persuasive partial reveal. Also, in heaven, believers will be in the direct presence of God with, presumably, unmelted faces. Whatever physics God has in heaven whereby humans and their faces can withstand the magnitude of his presence—he should be able to duplicate that on earth. Pretty much the omnipotence thing again.

Some claim that since love is a choice, God doesn't reveal himself to us because if we experienced his presence firsthand, we would be overwhelmed, and we would be coerced into loving him, but since by definition coercion robs us of our free will, it's not a choice and, therefore, it's not really love. However, if experiencing God's presence firsthand coerced us into loving God, then Satan—who was like a managing partner angel with direct access to God himself—wouldn't have fallen.

Also, just because something is so unbelievably, mind-blowingly good that only a complete dumbass, whose head is lodged deep within his butt, would reject it, doesn't not constitute coercion. I'm not coerced by Red Velvet Cheesecake, even though it's so damn good, I'd punch an old lady in the neck to get a slice. Neither is my free will infringed upon by oxygen, even though breathing it is so good I can't stop even if I wanted to.

A weird corollary of the coercion argument is the Sally Kyte Corollary. My mom never hid from me as a kid just to make sure I loved her for real. She wasn't worried that I was coerced into loving her because moms naturally have that effect on their kids. Even now that I'm a big boy, she'd be a total weirdo to hide from me to make sure I loved her. She's a weirdo for other reasons, like drinking buttermilk and referring to me as a “big boy.”

If you're a CPA, specifically and auditor, Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS) dictate the following:

• "To obtain reasonable assurance, the auditor must not be satisfied with audit evidence that is less than persuasive," (AU 326.13) And ...
• "The auditor should prepare audit documentation that is sufficient to enable an experienced auditor, having no previous connection with the audit, to understand ... the conclusions reached thereon." (AU 230.08)

The only way you can give an unqualified opinion regarding God's existence is to gather sufficient, persuasive evidence of his existence - evidence such that an experienced auditor (Goditor) would arrive at the same conclusion you did. I assert that no such sufficient, persuasive evidence exists; otherwise, everyone would be convinced of his existence.

Giving God's existence assertion an unqualified opinion without that kind of evidence is just bad GAAS. Fart joke. Classy.

I don’t require 100% assurance that God's exists. I'm just looking for an unqualified opinion.

But the converse is also true. It's impossible for me to disprove the existence of anything that's imperceptible. Therefore an imperceptible God may exist. And I may have the power of invisibility when absolutely no one is watching, even though I've never felt it.

Pascal's Wager & Risk Management: Assessing and Mitigating Hell Risk

In the risk assessment phase of comprehensive existence management, I identified eternal torment in blazing hellfire as a possible risk.

Even though I'm convinced hell doesn't exist, I'm also convinced that I could be wrong. Lots of people were convinced Enron was fraud-free.

Pascal's Wager is a decision theory device to reduce or avoid hell risk. If you're not familiar, here's how it works. If Christianity is true, the Christian will spend forever in the eternal bliss of heaven, and the atheist gets eternal torment in blazing hellfire. If atheism is true, both the Christian and the atheist cease to exist. The best possible outcome for the atheist is the worst possible outcome for the Christian. Decision theory (or simply not having you head in your ass) dictates that if there's even a tiny chance that Christianity is true, we should choose Christianity over atheism.

But that's just Christianity versus atheism. You can extend Pascal's Wager into a head-to-head metaphysical death match of religious belief:

Christianity vs. Hinduism
Everyone gets reincarnated in Hinduism - Christianity wins!

Christianity vs. Buddhism
Buddhists believe in reincarnation, too - Christianity wins!

Christianity vs. Judaism
This is tougher because Jewish beliefs regarding the afterlife vary. Some Jews believe there's no afterlife - Christianity wins! Some Jews believe our admission into heaven or hell is based on proper action (orhtopraxy) rather than proper belief (orthodoxy). If you're a Christian with a kosher meal pan - Christianity wins!

Christianity vs. Islam
This is also tough because salvation is Islam requires a combination of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. If you take Ephesians 2:8,9 at face value ("It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.") then Christianity only requires orthodoxy. The risk of hell exists in both cases, but the risk is reduced with Christianity because the requirements are less stringent - Christianity wins!

Christianity vs. Unitarianism
Unitarians? Whatever - Christianity wins!

We don't need to line up Taoists, Sihks, Mormons, Baha'is or miscellaneous because hell plus Ephesians 2:8 gives Christianity the unbeatable Tekken combo of the Pascal's Wager Thunderdome. (Two religions enter! One religion leaves! Not as a result of syncretism!)

Pascal's Wager is an incredibly powerful and logical way to approach religion. It helped me stay committed to Jesus for years despite serious doubts. I found the extended version so compelling that I thought it was the silver bullet of faith: Christianity is the right choice as long as you are aware of your own mortality and recognize even a remote possibility of the existence of hell risk.

The problem with Pascal's Wager is that it's impracticable.

Let's say I choose to be a Christian based on Pascal's Wager, even though I'm convinced intellectually that it's not true. What does that mean? What does it look like? Does it mean that I simply hold myself out as a Christian? Or do I need to live like a Christian?

I could get some Vistaprint business cards that say, "Gregory M. Kyte, Christian," but never pray or worship or align my behavior with the Bible's teachings - say I'm a Christian but have no love of God nor fear of God. People who do this give religion a bad name, and nobody contends this empty choice is "saving faith." There's no Form 8832 for religious belief.

You can't fake it 'til you make it on this. You can't love or fear a God that you don't really believe in, nor can you sincerely worship or pray to a God that you don't think exists. I did that for as long as I could; but eventually, trying to love a God you don't believe in, feels like a lie - like you're lying about being a disciple of a God who commands you not to lie.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but despite the powerful argument in Pascal's Wager, "maximizing afterlife value" doesn't seem to be a tenable purpose or core ideology.

Built to Last vs. Survival of the Fittest

Jim Collins is the pope of business management. His pronouncements are infallible, and if he kisses a baby, it gets into Harvard Business School.

Jim Collins (and Jerry Porras, the Garfunkle of Built to Last) said that visionary companies preserve their core ideologies and stimulate progress. This implies (and Collins explicitly states) that "a core ideology [is] a primary element in ... visionary companies." And he explains that core ideologies have two parts: (1) core values and (2) purpose.

Fundamentalist Collinsian teachings indicate that making shit-tons of money is not a good enough purpose (which pretty much makes Milton Friedman the Satan of business management). You've got to come up with something better.

"Profitability is a necessary condition for existence and a means to more important ends, but it is not the end in itself for many of the visionary companies. Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life." (Built to Last, p. 55)

If your customers, management and employees get excited about your company's compelling purpose, then your company will blow people's minds. In Table 3.1 of Built to Last, Collins lists the mind-blowing core ideologies of the visionary companies that he's identified.

Here's the problem: if you're an atheist or agnostic, what's a compelling purpose? Without both God and an afterlife, any imputed purpose collapses into meaninglessness.

When I say I'm an agnostic what I mean is that I'm convinced that God doesn't exist, but I'm also keenly aware that I could be wrong. By "agnostic" I mean "doubting atheist."

I arrived at my agnosticism against my will - you know, the heart cannot embrace what the mind rejects as false - and I've noticed that I half-subconsciously avoid thinking about the ramifications of my agnosticism because the general lack of purpose is depressing and the effort required trying to discover or create purpose is exhausting.

One thing that binds atheists and agnostics together is our reliance on evolution. Natural selection imprints purpose into our genetic code, a  purpose that is not philosophical or emotional, but primal. That purpose is to survive and reproduce; unfortunately, "fucking and not dying" isn't anywhere on Table 3.1.