Does God Exist? An Answer for Today (Existiert Gott?) was published by R. Piper & Co. Verlag in 1978 (English translation by Edward Quinn published by Doubleday in 1980). At over 800 pages in English, it is Küng’s most philosophically ambitious work — a systematic engagement with the entire tradition of modern philosophical critique of religion, from Descartes’s methodical doubt through Kant’s demolition of the traditional proofs, Feuerbach’s projection theory, Marx’s ideology critique, Freud’s illusion theory, and Nietzsche’s proclamation of God’s death.
Küng takes each critique seriously and on its own terms — he does not dismiss them as misunderstandings or bad faith — but he argues that each is ultimately insufficient. Atheism, he contends, is not the simple, obvious position it claims to be: it requires its own act of faith (the faith that reality is ultimately meaningless, that human values have no cosmic ground, that consciousness is an accident of matter). Neither theism nor atheism can be proven; both are fundamental options that cannot be demonstrated by argument but must be chosen.
Küng’s “answer for today” is not a traditional proof of God’s existence but an argument for the rational legitimacy of faith — the claim that believing in God is at least as reasonable as not believing, and that the choice between faith and unfaith is a genuine choice rather than a contest between reason and superstition.
Collecting Does God Exist?
First English edition (Doubleday, New York, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First English edition in dust jacket: $15–$35
- First German edition (Piper, 1978): $20–$50
- Paperback editions: $5–$10