Illustration: David Foldvari

Over the Easter weekend, I myself was deservedly one of a party of important contemporary artists invited by Danny Boyle to a research project buried beneath the Chipping Norton triangle. Our task was to use our visionary gifts to respond creatively to a government-initiated search not for the "God particle", but for God himself.

Donning a protective helmet, I entered the metal cage of a mine shaft lift and descended with my fellow creatives – the artists Grayson Perry and Martin Creed, the novelist AL Kennedy, pop's KT Tunstall, the DJ Goldie and the children's funnyman Mr Tumble from CBeebies. Tumble, dressed as a clown, did an amusing mime indicating fear, Goldie pretended to bite at the bars of the lift with his metal mouth and Kennedy wrote something down in a Moleskine notebook, similar to one once owned by Ernest Hemingway. It was immediately clear that Boyle had chosen an inspired, if volatile, combination of personalities.

In a brightly lit subterranean chamber, we were met by a crowd of boiler-suited bigwigs including the secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, the minister for universities and science, David Willetts, and the minister for faith and communities, Baroness Warsi. Behind them, an ex-servicewoman with one leg who lived in a two-bedroom council flat in Leeds was being shot at high speed repeatedly and painfully through a 16-mile-long transparent tube, her unprotected head and limbs smashing endlessly into the curves of the structure. IDS explained the thinking behind the innovative project.

"All that stands between next week's significant shrinking of the welfare budget to a level that may be made to seem reasonable, and further shrinkage to levels that are definitely unreasonable, even to me, is the notion that to do so may in some way be fundamentally and morally wrong," he began. I looked around. Grayson Perry was already weaving a satirical tapestry and Tunstall was humming a sad melody into a Dictaphone. The battered benefits woman bounced off the cylinder walls.

"But many believe," IDS continued, "that notions of right and wrong are unimaginable without a notion of God." Baroness Warsi objected, conceding that secularists might possibly have their own morality too, but was drowned out by cries of "Calm down, dear!" and the screams of the test subject

Willetts picked up the baton: "Iain charged my department with designing a long-term science and welfare-based spectacle so cruel and gratuitous that it would surely draw any God worth his salt out into the open to use his magic to stop it. If the God does not appear, Iain feels it reasonable to press on with savings in the current welfare system without delay. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is that spectacle."

I and my fellow artists followed Willetts's pointing finger toward the apparatus, as the distressed amputee made another bruising circuit of the cylinder. I was astonished. Iain Duncan Smith and David Willetts had designed a God trap, with a hapless human as bait. Grayson Perry wove frantically in a furious rage, frightened of failing to document something significant, and Kennedy's notebook was ablaze, but Martin Creed had wandered into an empty corner of the space, where he was turning the lights on and off methodically and staring at a doorknob.

Warsi, who has been brushing up on her comparative religion since getting the faith and communities gig, objected to the pair's announcement. She said it was unreasonable to expect any god to manifest himself at Iain Duncan Smith's command. And that while Catholic belief in miracles clearly presupposed an interventionist deity, the former Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, for example, had defined the Protestant God as a kind of half-absent musical accompanist to human behaviour. Once more, the baroness was shouted down by her coalition fellows in mock Michael Winner voices and the crowd's attention was swiftly drawn back to the awkward impact squelches of the relentlessly bouncing dole scrounger.

I heard Iain Duncan Smith invoke Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill's doctrine of utilitarianism – the notion that true morality was the achievement of the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of people – and how this could be facilitated by the trickle-down effect of high spending by a wealthy minority whose capital needed to be encouraged to flow for the long-term good of everyone. But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed KT Tunstall and Mr Tumble crouched by a distant section of the tube, where it appeared, from Mr Tumble's helpful mime, that the test subject had finally run out of speed and slumped comatose to rest. My kids loved Mr Tumble but I realised that now was not the time to ask for an autograph.

"Look…" said Tunstall. I looked. It appeared, against my better judgment, that the bruised and unconscious one-legged female body behind the Perspex wall had somehow taken on the face of Christ, more Turin shroud than Robert Powell, but Christ nonetheless. Duncan Smith and Willetts had noticed the transformation, too, and Warsi was already calming them.

"Do not worry," she said. "While Catholics believe this sort of manifestation possible, the Vatican paperwork needed to verify it will take years. Anglicans will regard such an appearance merely as symbolic, irrespective of whether it happened or not. The Muslim position is that the face of God should never be seen." And at that she turned her back on the confusing scene and stared instead at the empty corner of the bunker, where Martin Creed's award-winning light-turning-on-and-off skills suddenly seemed more interesting to her than they had previously.

Kennedy and Tunstall decided that the Christ/benefits cheat hybrid needed help, but couldn't work out how to get to him/her through the walls of the cylinder. I tugged at Goldie's Edwardian cuffs and Mr Tumble mimed someone eating a massive sausage. Understanding immediately, Goldie knelt down and gnashed his way through the Perspex tube wall until he had made a fissure large enough for AL and KT to pull the workshy deity through. "This entity has been harmed by being shot repeatedly around a 16-mile tube," declared Mr Tumble, suddenly and miraculously able to speak, "and will need help reapplying for her benefits on new terms and addressing the reductions in her weekly finances caused by the spare bedroom subsidy. This must be done online, on the phone in the case of emergencies, but never in person."

Stewart Lee has curated The Alternative Comedy Experience for Comedy Central, Tuesdays at 11pm. For new live dates, go to stewartlee.co.uk