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“Do you believe in god?”
“No.”
“Well, do you believe in love?”
“Sure.”
“Then you must believe in god, as god is love”
“Wha…?”

I’ve heard the ‘god is love’ bit quite a number of times, but never as a proof for its deistic existence. When it is merely an assertion about a god already presumed to exist, it is easy enough to show that ‘god is love’ is an absolutely ludicrous notion. One merely needs to point to deeds/positions attributed to the god in question that cannot be seen as loving. In the case of christianity, the bible helps us out immensely with tales of murder, rape, slavery, genocide, and human sacrifice, all in the name of their god, to make this a very easy task. In addition, one could also point to the innumerable atrocities committed by those closest to god. Indeed, the degree of horror believers can enact seems directly related to the level of zeal they possess. Or, if one took ‘god is love’ to be a part of omni-benevolence, then one could point to the problem of evil to show how god cannot exist. But in this conversation, all this doesn’t work yet.

It doesn’t work because a particular god has not been identified. The only characteristic mentioned is that ‘god is love’. To be sure, the person who presented this argument to me had a specific god in mind. If they were to have gone so far as to start describing other attributes of their god, then the thoughts in the previous paragraph would surely destroy their position. But that’s not the point. While the posited syllogism is vague, maybe even a bit flaky, if it works, then the belief in god is validated and the little details about the surrounding nature of god (everything he is that isn’t solely love) can be hashed out later. The important thing is that god has been proven and all us atheists are just being fussy about superfluous factoids.

The thing is, the details may be superfluous, but that these details exist at all is not. If one wants to say that ‘god’ is exactly synonymous with ‘love’, then the concept of ‘god’ is completely useless. There is no reason for there to be two words when one will do. And as ‘love’ is a much more flexible term (how weird would it be -even for theists – to replace the word love and say something like “I’m deeply in god with you, darling”), the term ‘god’ ought to be discarded. Of course, the theist resists this, not only because they don’t want to give up their delusion, but also because, at some level, they are aware of the little dishonesty in the assertion ‘god is love’.

It is dishonesty in omission. No theist ever would ever say ‘god is love and only love’. If they did, as I showed last paragraph, ‘god’ would be rendered meaningless. What they are not saying is “god is love and some other things I’m trying to illegitimately sneak into this argument so I don’t have to go through the impossible task of justifying those extra attributes.” Even if the only thing they wanted to add was ‘god is love and a sentient entity that exists outside of humanity’, they would be right back where they started, with no evidence, no proof, and no reason to think that god exists. Nothing addresses always-unmentioned second half. But theists are never that honest, least of all to themselves.

But hey, I was wrong that one time before. It could happen again. What if some theist comes up with some brilliant argument that refutes what I just said, so brilliant that I cannot answer those refutations? Does ‘god is love’ work then? Not hardly. Consider an exercise in consistency.

Do you believe that the sea exits? You do? Great! That means you must believe in Poseidon, for Poseidon IS the sea. The tides reflect his breathing, the waves his mood. Thus, we can learn a lot about Poseidon just by looking at the sea. As any seafarer will tell you, conditions out on the briny sea can are uncertain at best, displaying how temperamental Poseidon is. Therefore it is always good to offer a sacrifice to Poseidon before any travel by sea, in order to secure safe passage.

Are you convinced? Will you now pray to Poseidon? Not a chance. Why? Because you just can’t attach a real life thing to an imagined being and have it pop into existence, that’s why. If this method worked, you would have to believe in Apollo because you believe in the sun, Thor because you believe in lightning, Gazunga because you believe in cheese, and Eros because you believe in love. Wait! What was that? Love was for that christian god, wasn’t it? Yup, this line of reasoning can bring into existence multiple deities for the same real life phenomenon.

In fact, it can pop into being an infinite amount of gods, an infinite amount of whom require that they be the only god. That either means that this line of reasoning is necessarily incoherent, or it shows that each god concept has an equal chance of being true, which, in this case, is literally infinitesimally small.

‘God is love’, like all such fanciful tripe (eg. ‘God is beauty’, ‘God is truth’, ‘God is justice’, etc) either renders god meaningless and the idea ought to be discarded, or it is dishonest and the idea ought to be discarded. Even on the minuscule chance that I’m wrong on this, the same method could then be used to validate an infinite number of mutually-exclusive gods and the idea ought to be discarded. No matter what, theists using this line are not being deep, spiritual, other-worldly, or mystical. They are just being wrong.