I find myself wrestling with the meaning in this story of an epic struggle of worldviews.

A dispute over the existence of God between four Russians drunk on a litre of pure alcohol resulted in the death of two of the drinking buddies, news agencies reported on Monday.

The disagreement began at the weekend when the female house owner, her son, a male roommate and undisclosed male relative drank the litre of pure alcohol, “which they downed with snow,” a police investigator told RIA Novosti.

First, I’m wondering whether downing 250mL of 190 proof alcohol improves one’s philosophy, or renders it incomprehensible. That’s only an interesting question because most philosophy is incomprehensible even when sober. I’d do the experiment, except I’ve often worked with beakers full of lab alcohol, and no way are they at all tempting.

The second big question is about the outcome: the story explains that the son knifed the other two men to death, but it doesn’t mention what his position on the existence of gods was.

So did the atheist win, or the believer?

Does it even matter in a grim cold universe, where we’re all doomed to eke out a futile existence until we die, where we’re either meaningless sputterings of a few pounds of electrified meat, or the serfs of immense beings who will snuff us out painfully, slowly, eternally and with casual disregard if we fail to properly praise them incessantly? Does anything matter? The snow falls. It will cover us all.

Pass the lab alcohol, tovarisch. Budem zdorovy.