Okay, hear me out. Yes, this article is not only going to speak positively about the Adult Swim show Rick and Morty, but it is going to illustrate how the show, particularly the sixth episode of Season Two (“The Ricks Must Be Crazy”) actually argues for the existence of God. Now, I am not naive to the sentiments of its creators, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland—who may or may not identify as atheists themselves (Harmon at least seems open to the numinous world)—nor to its characters’ pathos regarding God. The general contempt for God displayed by Rick, a stand-in for philosophical materialism and scientism, appears to be viewed positively since he is the brash anti-hero of the show. However, one who pays attention will see how emotionally and existentially bankrupt this philosophy leaves Rick, despite his devotion to the “truth” of his position. This does not disprove those positions, but it certainly is not a strong argument for their desirability.
If you have not seen this episode, or any episodes, of Rick and Morty, here is a brief synopsis. The battery for Rick’s spaceship is not providing power, so Rick and Morty are shrunk down to go inside and “fix” it. When they enter the battery, we find out that what has been powering it is a tiny community that Rick has created, which he calls a “Micro-verse.” The inhabitants of this Micro-verse have been conditioned to believe their purpose is to move a rudimentary pedal, which is what generates power for the battery. They see Rick as a god because he created them and gave them purpose, not questioning the triviality of said purpose. Morty, of course, objects to this situation, referring to it as “slavery but with extra steps.”
The episode seems to present the notion of God as just a bigger version of Rick, and all of us as just living in our own Micro/Mini/Teeny-verse.
Rick discovers the reason everyone has stopped pedaling and therefore stopped powering his battery. There has emerged within this community its own version of Rick, a scientist named Zeep, who has created his own battery that is powered by (you guessed it) its own smaller community called the “Mini-verse.” Now Rick, Morty, and Zeep all travel to this Mini-verse where they encounter another version of Rick/Zeep named Kyle. They discover that Kyle is on the verge of creating his own “Teeny-verse,” which will soon be the source of power for their community, continuing the chain of obsolescence.
At first glance, this appears to be a scathing indictment against God (which is likely the writers’ intentions). It seems to present the notion of God as just a bigger version of Rick, and all of us as just living in our own Micro/Mini/Teeny-verse. While this might have rhetorical appeal because it is dramatized and includes jokes, it actually does not make any argument against God’s existence. At most, it argues against God’s goodness, because it presents our purpose in life as trivial, like the inhabitants of the various verses from the episode. The lack of importance is not proven in the episode either, since proving a negative (like lack of meaning) is pretty much impossible, and how one values meaning is entirely subjective. It does, however, present two related ideas—that God is merely a “bigger being” and that meaning-in-life is foolish—in a memorable way that can play well into one’s confirmation bias.
Ironically, the movement between these verses and the fact that they all are designed with a purpose, presents two classical examples of arguments for God’s existence, as articulated by one of Christianity’s greatest teachers, Thomas Aquinas. In the first of his famous “five ways” for God’s existence found in his Summa Theologiae (part I, question 2, article 3), he gives what is called “the way of motion.”
Eventually, there has to be something outside of nature itself to account for the movement within nature.
This is actually a re-fashioning of Aristotle’s argument from motion, which states that any object in motion had to have been moved by something outside of it. Each previous mover requires more power to move all of the objects after them, similar to what we saw in Rick and Morty, where each battery powered the community above it. In order to get the “last” object, the one most present to us, there would have to be a first object that started the sequence, one that was not moved by anything before it. This Unmoved Mover would need to be all-powerful, or omnipotent, because it is moving everything after it. Classical theists, including Christians, would call this omnipotent Being “God.”
Even though the joke of the episode is that the communities keep getting smaller and smaller, this cannot go on indefinitely or there would never have been the “main” community. Without Rick, the “first mover” in this sequence, there could not have been the next and the next. It took more power to build the initial battery so that the battery could power a small part of that world, Rick’s spaceship. Even if they continued traveling down to smaller and smaller communities (insert yet another synonym for “small” here), it still took the First Mover to start the sequence. If Rick was the pseudo-god to his Micro-verse, then would it not work in the opposite direction and get bigger? If Rick was smart enough to design his battery, wouldn’t it take Something even smarter to design the world that created Rick? Eventually, there has to be something outside of nature itself to account for the movement within nature. This Something would have to be above nature, or supernatural: i.e. God.
If God loved humanity so much that he freely chose to share in that humanity, then that is not a God who determines purposes lightly.
The second argument this episode presents is Aquinas’s fifth way, sometimes called the argument from design or purpose. This argument states that everything within nature acts towards a designed end. We see this in living things that act towards nutrition and procreation, as well as in non-living things which must be moved by something intelligent from the outside. Just as in logic, if something applies to every part within a group, one can apply that principle to the group as a whole; so too is the case with nature. If everything within nature acts towards an end or purpose, then nature as a whole acts towards an end or purpose. If it must be directed towards that purpose by something outside of it, then that which directs nature must be outside of nature. The word for this is supernatural, and this classical theists and Christians would call God.
As the episode shows, one can take issue with the perceived triviality of a purpose. The true purpose of these smaller communities is hidden from the inhabitants precisely because Rick and the others know this revelation would lead to their abandonment of the work. However, this does not disprove design or purpose as such. Yes, it is nice to feel one has a deeper purpose; Christianity, by uniting one to Christ through His Body, the Church (cf. Col. 1:18), can reasonably instill this in a person, but whether one feels it or not does not undermine the reality of design or purpose in nature.
Humanity’s purpose comes from God because humanity was created in God’s “image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Maybe the ancient pagan conception of the gods saw humanity as their servants and play things, but to project that onto the Christian understanding of God shows a deep misunderstanding of Christianity and says more about the person than about God. If God loved humanity so much that he freely chose to share in that humanity, even when it meant pain and death (see Phil. 2:6), then that is not a God who determines purposes lightly, especially of those with whom He shares a nature.
I know, I know, it is a silly television show, but fiction has always been a vehicle for proposing and engaging with the deepest questions of life and reality itself. It is why this outlet exists and why gallons of ink have been spilled on the stories that have grabbed humanity’s attention for ages. As evidenced by many other episodes of the show, Harmon and Roiland take questions of reality, storytelling, and philosophy seriously. We should engage with those questions seriously as well.
