Detective Fiction

Abstract

This chapter considers the idea that God is a mystery and argues that it is not an idea at all. Basically, a mystery is something to be solved. Think, for example, about the murder mysteries of Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple or Sam Spade. Every murder mystery is a whodunit. A murder mystery—like any other mystery—presupposes the logic of cause and effect. The logic of cause and effect poses no problem for the detective; it is actually wonderful for the detective—it's the detective's best friend—because it means that every effect absolutely must be the result of some preceding cause. What makes a murder mystery mysterious is not Conceptual Impossibility or Physical Impossibility, but the fact that, for the moment, we don't have enough information. The problem with God is virtually the opposite. The problem with God is not that we don't have enough facts. The problem is that we don't have an idea at all, and so we can't even know what kind of facts we should be looking for.