How Chess Proves the Existence of God

Thesis:  The game of chess proves the existence of the self-existing Triune Christian God of the Bible.

Chess is, perhaps, the most perfect game known to man. You can learn the moves in a few short minutes and spend the rest of your life trying to understand its intricacies. It is a game so logical and orderly that we can program computers to play and defeat world champions.

I contend that the game of chess proves the existence of God, but not just any God. Chess proves the existence of the one and only self-existent Triune God that has revealed Himself in the self-authenticating Bible. When I claim chess proves God's existence, I am not talking about a general theistic "god." I am specifically referring to the one and only self-existing God who has revealed Himself as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who mediated the covenant through the Second Person of the Trinity, the God/Man Jesus Christ. 

I want to be quite clear about this point. I am not arguing that chess proves a god exists. Chess does not prove the existence of a god, such as the false god of Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, or whatever other gods you can think of. So, for the rest of this article, when I write the word "God," I am referring to the God of the Bible, and when I prove God's existence, I am demonstrating the existence of the Christian God and no one else.

Perhaps you are wondering how I can prove God's existence through chess. It is quite simple. Apart from God, chess is impossible.* What do I mean by this? Let's start with atheism. 

An atheist cannot account for the game of chess in his worldview. It is impossible because an atheistic worldview begins in chaos. In an atheistic world, there is only material randomly falling in space. There is no life. There is no meaning. There is no order. The great enigma of atheism is how we start with chaos and end up with order. Add to that the mystery of how perceiving minds can communicate with other human minds that perceived order. From where did this order and meaning come? The human mind? That begs the question, doesn’t it? How can a human mind that evolved out of chance random processes account for and explain order and meaning? It can’t, especially starting from the presuppositions of an atheistic worldview.

The atheistic worldview is entirely unable to account for the order of the universe. David Hume, the famous Scottish atheist, proved that cause and effect is impossible to prove in a chance-based universe. An atheist cannot account for science, which depends upon the repeatable observation of cause and effect. 

Nor can an atheist account for logic, those immaterial laws that order rationality. If all that exists is material, how does an atheist account for the immaterial laws of logic? This is another great conundrum of atheism.

The atheist has nothing to say in the realm of ethics either. Chance random particles falling through space have no right or wrong, nor any standard to determine what is right or wrong. For the atheist, morality is not possible. 

As a Christian, I can account for science because God has ordered all things according to the counsel of His will. (Ephesians 1:11) I can account for the laws of logic because God has revealed in the Bible that He is the God of reason and logic. (Proverbs 1, 2, and 3, Isaiah 1:18, John 1:1) I can account for morality because the holy God of the Bible is the standard by which good and evil are judged.

What does this all have to do with chess? Chess is a game founded upon the laws of logic. The squares and pieces are meaningless in and of themselves. They don't move, speak, or have personalities. You cannot have two pieces on the same square. The pawn is the only piece that cannot move backward and the only one that can turn into another piece. Knights don't move like Bishops, and Rooks don't have the same power as a Queen. The game can be won or drawn. 

If someone found a chess set, he would not ascertain the rules of chess just from looking at them. The rules are a creation of man's mind, and the function of the mind of man is created and ordered by God. The atheist cannot account for the rules of chess nor the rationality of the mind of man. But as a Christian, I can. 

Each of these aspects of the game presupposes God in order to function, not to mention accounting for the staggering mathematics behind the possible moves in chess. Mathematicians have stated that there are more variations in a chess game than atoms in the universe. I state as a theologian; there is only one Being who knows all these variations and created every one of them.

Next time you play a chess game, you are proving the existence of God; otherwise, you couldn't play. All chess players must leave whatever worldview they hold to and borrow the Christian worldview in order to make a single move, let alone play an entire game. The reason the game is possible is that God exists. 

The interaction of the pieces, the chess clock, the rules, tactical combinations, the sequence of moves, skewers, pins, forks, repetition of position, checks, perpetual checks, discovered checks, and checkmate all are possible because of the existence of God. The impossibility of chess apart from God is the most concrete proof of His existence known to man. So, when two people play chess, they are attesting to the reality of God. They borrow the Christian God to play chess.

Try cheating in chess, and you will see just how fast a person proclaims the Christian God. Chess depends upon God's moral law. Breaking the rules is strictly forbidden. Chess players do not tolerate the violation of God's law by lying, stealing, and bearing false witness. Chess is filled with morality; touch and move, no kibbitzing, no using chess computers, etc. Apart from God's existence, there is no way to account for the rules and the morality behind the rules. Nobody likes a cheater, not in chess and not in life. That’s how God made us.

The traditional proofs for the existence of God can only prove the possibility of God. Chess proves the necessity of the existence of the Christian God because, without Him, you cannot prove anything. Without Him, you cannot play chess. This proof is irrefutable.

The beauty of this proof is that as soon as someone tries to refute it, he has to assume the Christian worldview in order to refute the Christian worldview. In the words of Dr. Cornelius Van Til, “Antitheism presupposes theism.”

So next time you play chess, you are attesting to the reality of the Christian God.

*Thank you to Dr. Cornelius Van Til, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, and Dr. K. Scott Oliphint for their pioneer work on the transcendental argument for the existence of God.