Unlike the 500 students who helped promote the evangelical ministry at the Cox Communications Center last Thursday, I don’t agree with Critter.God is logically impossible and thus cannot exist.This column is not written for committed theists. If you think it is a “cardinal virtue” to proclaim belief in the unbelievable, you have excused yourself from intellectual discussion. There is nothing to say to those who proclaim faith to be a virtue.But for those outside the cult, a rational discussion of God’s existence can help us bury one of humanity’s oldest, most destructive fantasies.The scientific method is the only reliable way to separate truth from fiction. If another method arose, it would demonstrate its reliability through repeated tests and falsifiable claims.Reason validates itself. Others can — at best — use reason to validate themselves.For a theory to be considered valid, it must be logically consistent and empirically verifiable. First, it must make sense and then fit the facts.If God is logically consistent but remains unseen, then we can remain agnostic until an amputee is healed.But if God is logically inconsistent by definition, then he is as fictional as a square circle.The Bible defines God as an omniscient, omnipotent entity — a definition with which any Christian, and most monotheists, would agree.By definition, this God would know everything, including its future actions. But if it knows its future actions, it is powerless to change them and thus not all-powerful.Therefore an all-knowing, all-powerful entity is a square circle.An all-powerful being would — by definition — be capable of doing anything. There would be no lock it couldn’t pick.By definition, an all-powerful being could create absolutely anything — including a lock even it could not pick.To avoid this conundrum, there must be limits on what it could create or what it could do with its creations.Either way, an all-powerful entity is a married bachelor.It is theoretically possible gods exist outside the universe in a fantastic, undiscoverable realm where 2 + 2 = 5, existence equals nonexistence and error equals non-error.But this is a God that would be completely unknowable to humans. Divorced from our realm of reason, He could not perform miracles, care about your prayers or send His son to be brutally killed on a cross to cleanse you of a sin you never committed.And any person who claimed knowledge of Him would be as mistaken as Muslims, Mormons, Scientologists, high priests of Tenochtitlan or the devotees of any of the other 10,000 gods humanity has invented throughout its history.At best, God is an absolutely unknowable figure the intellectually honest cannot comprehend and thus cannot speak of.When we subject our beliefs to reason and evidence, intellectual discourse and growth become possible.When we assert nonfalsifiable opinions out of the necessity of a false virtue, we can only change the minds of others through propaganda.The inspiration, explanation, consolation and exhortation-based morality people value in religion has secular counterparts based on reality. Science, philosophy and psychology have advanced far since the Bible was penned, and the confidence we place in the false certainty of our priests has shielded society from these advances like amber shielding a prehistoric mosquito.Step outside of your cultural religion and view the world with curious rationality.After all, it is only through reality we connect with others.In fantasy, we are left within the lonely confines of our own imaginations.Daniel Morgan is a 21-year-old economics junior from Baton Rouge.–Contact Daniel Morgan at [email protected]