“putting a name to [the] lack of an answer”

In a discussion of the origins of religion, and what religion does for us, Jared Diamond remembers a professor:

[T]he great theologian Paul Tillich def[ied] his class of hyper-rational undergraduates to come up with a scientific answer to his simple question: ‘Why is there something, when there could have been nothing?’ None of my classmates majoring in the sciences could give Tillich any answer. But they in turn would have objected that Tillich’s own answer ‘God’ consisted merely of putting a name on his lack of an answer.

If there had been nothing, nobody could have asked any questions, not even why there was nothing rather than something. Thus, in order to ask the question, let alone come up with an answer, there has to be something.

Why is there God when there could have been no God? What would Paul Tillich have thought of someone asking students to answer that one scientifically? Or, why is there no God? And could there ever have been one? 

Silly stuff. But millions have been tortured and murdered in the name of God. So, not silly. 

source: The World Until Yesterday: what can we learn from traditional societies?

by Jared Diamond

2012. Viking / Penguin, New York