Descartes “proves God,” as Samuel Beckett puts it, “by exhaustion.”  As metaphysics goes, it’s the oldest trick in the book: first you take something away, then you complain that it isn’t there, and then you invent a theory grounded in—and compensating for—its very absence.  Deleuze and Guattari call it the Theology of Lack.  A seductive ruse, to be sure: once you accept the premises, you’ve already been suckered into the conclusions.
—Steven Shaviro, Doom Patrols (1996)