THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST GOD
A battered case with a tag hat reads : “God, c/o Nth East Tower, 19th arrondissement,Paris”
‘In 1898, a case was delivered to the operator of the East leg lift
tower of the then new Eiffel Tower in Paris, addressed for collection
by God, instructions being left to determine the identity of any
claimant.
It had been supposed that, if God was anywhere, He would
be in Paris, and He would certainly want to see the view from the East
Side of the s
tructure, Nietzsche’s favourite aspect..
If it was claimed, then this would, it was postulated, constitute a case for God.
The case remained in the lift cage there for years, uncollected
,possibly because God knew it was a trap- a well-founded suspicion as
Nietzsche had some years before attempted to assassinate God in
‘Operation Zarathustra’.
Generations of lift operators kept up
the tradition, but the case remained unclaimed until in 1939 a young
Austrian on holiday named Ludwig Wittgenstein was given it.
When
Bertrand Russell, the finest philosophical mind of the time heard
this, he demanded to know why the case had been handed over to a nobody,
and a kraut at that.
Lord Russell was informed that Wittgenstein
had told the lift operator (who, it was later discovered, was in fact
Samuel Beckett on a working holiday) that the case for God was not in
fact a case at all, and that the only valid case was the world, which
was all that was the case. Not only that, he said, but even if the case,
while it remained uncollected, constituted a case against God, the case
for God and the case against God would be in fact the same case. When
Lord Russell heard this, he remarked : ‘What he said is enough for a
doctoral dissertation.’
Wittgenstein wrote back to Lord Russell: ‘Do
you understand what I did? I made a pun on the word ‘case’ and you
mistook it for a profound insight. You English Dons are all Buffoons,
dullards and idiots. Not only that, but all so-called philosophical and
religious disputes have all been nothing but disputes around Language,
and, as such, have no truth value beyond word play.’
Upon reading this, Lord Russell sent word to Wittgenstein:
“We are offering you your own chair in Philosophy at Cambridge if you can make a case for that proposition. “
Soon after, he received a small package which when unwrapped, revealed a
small well crafted snuff box stamped with the Wittgenstein family coat
of arms. Inside was a piece of stretched vellum which had written on
it:
‘The only case I can make with certainty is that you English dons are all buffoons, dullards and idiots.’
Lord Rusell’s reply was swift and uncompromising:
”Which wing of All Souls would you like to teach from?’, it read.