Proofs of God's existence - what are they?
They are no longer called proofs.
For example it's now the
Kalam Cosmological **ARGUMENT**
They are not proofs in the same sense as
mathematical proofs.
They don't form part of any empirical
theory, making specific claims about results
of observations or experiments.
But what they most resemble are
lawyer's briefs. That's their
epistemological status.
For example it's now the
Kalam Cosmological **ARGUMENT**
They are not proofs in the same sense as
mathematical proofs.
They don't form part of any empirical
theory, making specific claims about results
of observations or experiments.
But what they most resemble are
lawyer's briefs. That's their
epistemological status.
Comments (24)
That's because they are not proofs. A proof is sufficient evidence, or sufficient argument, for the truth of a proposition. But the "proofs" you refer to are not sufficient arguments. They are just arguments, hence called arguments.
What makes an argument sufficient for the truth of a proposition is that the argument is valid and sound. Valid means that the truth of the premises entails the truth of the conclusion, and sound means that the argument is valid and all of its premises are true.
Many arguments for the existence of God are valid. But none of them are sound. You don't get to prove anything with an argument that is valid but contains a premise which is false, nonsensical or unknown whether it is true or false.
Not so. What you are suggesting appears to be a radical form of fideism. Historic Christianity, by contrast, has always maintained that certain propositions can and should be logically proved. It's not necessary for belief in them that they be proved, of course, but doing so doesn't endanger faith as such. They are sometimes known as the "preambles of the faith." An argument for God's existence would be considered one of them. The dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary, on the other hand, is not something that can be proved and so must be taken on faith (if you're a Catholic).
The cosmological argument and every other argument that followed in it's foot steps starts with the premise that 'God exist' and then throws a lot of nonsense/red herrings in front of it to confuse people into agreeing in order so that they don't have to look dumb when having to deal with non-trivial problems they have no real idea about. Using word play and/or sleight of hand tactics tactics is not all that different than the red herrings used when trying to confuse people when creating a Chewbacca defense.
Chewbacca defense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdba9C2G14
The Chewbacca Defense 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clKi92j6eLE
Don't get me wrong: I think that proving any religious proposition is not only acceptable but also beneficial for the religion. We just need to take one look at Thomas Aquinas, who spent pretty much his whole life coming up with logical arguments for christianity. My point is that once a specific topic is proven with certainty, then faith becomes redundant. Example: it is non-sensical to say "I have faith that the earth rotates around the sun", because it has been proven to be true already.
Arguments for the existence of God are logical, but do not give certainty (none that I have heard anyways). This is why faith is still necessary along with these arguments. They help build what I have heard called 'methodical faith', which is better than mere 'blind faith'.
Haha. This is where the arguments for the religion come in. They don't give certainty, but help to think about it, and build 'methodical faith', in contrast to 'blind faith'.
Or do all you mean is to say that proofs of God are weaker than arguments which use observations and take the form of experiments?
One thing I think proofs of God are useful for is exploring argument, *especially* of the sort that doesn't rely as much upon observation. It's something that people care about so they pay attention -- and you teach them basic argument along the way. I don't think an argument needs to rely upon observation and experimentation to be worth consideration.
I don't think anyone is usually convinced by these arguments in either direction. But that's not necessarily the point.
You guys can correct me if I am wrong, but I think as a general rule, an argument is an opinion backed up by reason; and then an argument becomes a proof when it gives certainty, or close to certainty. Proofs can be scientific proofs, logical proofs or mathematical proofs. Maybe there are others too? If not a proof, then the argument gives either probability or mere plausibility.
The way these arguments have been trashed by the likes of the so-called 'New atheists' - by presenting them as kind of pseudo-scientific hypotheses, which have subsequently been debunked by 'real science' - only serves to illustrate their incomprehension of the meaning and intent behind them.
This post is not an attempt to convert. All such arguments might indeed be the delusions of a fevered imagination. But at least understand the original intent.
If you walk into a room that is clean, neat and organized we automatically think of an organizer - the agency of order. The God hypothesis is exactly the same: the order in our universe (natural laws) justifies the likelihood of a law-giver.
Note, the God I'm referring to is nothing more than a creator. Only some time later did God acquired the 3 omnipowers and it all went downhill from that point.
"Automating Godel’s Ontological Proof of God’s Existence ¨
with Higher-order Automated Theorem Provers"
http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/cbenzmueller/papers/C40.pdf
In the sense of things like paternity tests.
Scientific theories themselves are never proven. The greatest honours go to scientists who overthrow the most established theories.
That reminds me of a saying by a very well-known scientist, who whilst not conventionally religioius, believed that:
(Anyone know the provenance of the quote?)
Peirce made a distinction between an Argument as "any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief" and an Argumentation as "an Argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premisses." A proof would presumably be an instance of the latter when all of the premisses are believed to be true.
Quoting TheMadFool
That is essentially Peirce's view, as laid out in his 1908 article, "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God."
My goodness, something actually interesting! (and challenging!)
"Modal collapse" is intriguing.
Indeed, and it is related to the modal fallacy that came up a few days ago in the ongoing thread about the free will defense.
Quoting aletheist
Basically, the mistake is thinking that the actuality of P, a contingent proposition, entails the impossibility of not-P, and hence the necessity of P. However, this is not the case, unless we embrace strict determinism - which seems to be a requirement of the axioms underlying Gödel's ontological proof.
This was effectively my point. Aquinas was the one who basically created the formal distinction between preambles and articles of faith that I mentioned.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Well, inasmuch as they are deductive arguments for the existence of God, then they must be certain. You needn't be convinced of them, of course.
Deductive arguments yield to conclusions which are only as certain as their premises. I don't know of any deductive arguments for the existence of God which have certain premises. Do you know of any? As a christian, I would like to hear them.
Taking Aquinas' versions as the most well-developed example, let me meditate a bit on the "proofs of God":
1. They are not "proofs of the divine" -- they attempt to prove One God, not the existence of gods.
2. This means that they are an elaboration, a development of a prior experience, one which is not conveyed by the proof itself.
3. In other words, the goal of the proof is to effect a change in the interpretation of an experience. The proof does not and cannot work if the experience itself is not acknowledged, and much less if it is absent.
Another way to say this: proofs of God, if taken as instruments to "demonstrate to an unbeliever the existence of God", are clearly circular, since they start from premises which take for granted the numinous experience, which is precisely what is absent from the unbeliever (either because he never experienced it, or because he does not acknowledge it, or because his interpretation of it is so much at odds with the language of the proof that the work of translation remains undone).
The best possible result (and it is a clearly possible result) in a dialogue between a proponent of a Proof and an unbeliever is the demonstration that the rejection of the numinous experience leads to incongruence, in the intellectual level, and to very problematic consequences in the pragmatic level. In effect, the rejection of the core premises of the Proofs (such as, the idea that we can derive conclusions about distant causes from present effects; the idea that observation is reliable; the idea that infinite regress in its many forms is irrational) leads to problematic philosophical stances.
That is a good job for a Proof of X. But it is not the same as proving the existence of God. At best, it proves (by reductio, in a convoluted way) the existence of the numinous.
It also can be said that the most competent proponents of Proofs (incluing A & A) clearly knew about all of this.
There seem to be some humans following the same line of 'modal collapse'. Here's a paper by a guy called Kraay arguing that theists should embrace modal collapse.