Nothing Is The Answer

A riddle is making the rounds through e-mail. You may have already seen it, but if you haven’t, I think you’ll enjoy it. It is said that when asked this riddle, 80% of the kindergarten students got the answer, compared to 17% Stanford university seniors. Here’s the riddle:

What is greater than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it, the rich want it, and if you’ll eat it, you’ll die?

The answer is “nothing.”


Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than devil, the poor have nothing, the rich want nothing, and if you eat nothing you will die! It seems so obvious. Maybe that’s why younger children have an easier time answering it than educated adults. As we get more educated and more sophisticated, we look for deeper answers. But no matter how much we learn, the question, “What is greater than God?” (Anything else attached to it) will always have the same answer.