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 structure, 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.