The absurd need for logical proofs for God
November 22, 2020 at 2:04 pm
(This post was last modified: November 22, 2020 at 2:04 pm by R00tKiT.)
Hi there,
One objection nonreligious people usually raise is why a deity would communicate through prophets altogether, or just leave signs. And at face value the objection looks serious, a supposed deity knows epistemology and, a fortiori, what would convince each and every individual to follow some doctrine. But further thought reveals that this is exactly what we have. People are generally more convinced and emotionally moved by models, idols, celebrities, than by dry, heavy readings. A human model is more appealing to human beings than, say, the most impressive fossil finding supporting the occurence of some miracle. And this is exactly what we have, human models throughout history guiding human beings on the right path.
When an atheist asks about evidence, his question entails that all what surrounds him and all what he heard about, like the existence of claims of prophecy throughout history, are not evidence. And when he asks about a logical proof, he ignores the fact that logical proofs in this context only make sense to talk about in some universally valid system of axioms, which doesn't exist. To clarify that, an impressive result in Euclidian geometry, say, for example, the Pythagorean theorem, entails less truths than the five postulates of Euclid. Namely, you can't reach Euclid's postulates based on the Pythagorean theorem.
Therefore, it's not a problem that there is no watertight, universally valid deductive proof for God. The underlying intuition is that God is "too much" to be deduced from a fixed set of axioms chosen by human brains. The only possible evidence for God is of inferential value. Inference by definition seeks the bigger scheme of things based on a small sample, while deduction starts by an already complete list of axioms, choices, hypotheses, etc.
And it's clear that one cannot prepare an exhaustive, universally agreed-upon list of independent axioms, the coherence of which is verifiable, to deduce the most complete being conceivable.
On a side note I would like to hear someone's thoughts on the equivalence between the existence of other minds and the existence of God. A result established recently by Plantinga and others. If one has enough "belief" to think there is an outside world and creatures like himself, this exact inference from a sample of the size of a singleton (only himself) to the entire human population is what he should apply to the orderly things around him to reach a supreme being.
And if one is stubborn enough to reject any inferential value from what we see, then he must accept the unbearable cost: either deny the existence of other minds altogether, i.e. endorse hard solipsism just to deny the existence of God. Or hypocritically acknowledge other minds while rejecting the existence of God.
One objection nonreligious people usually raise is why a deity would communicate through prophets altogether, or just leave signs. And at face value the objection looks serious, a supposed deity knows epistemology and, a fortiori, what would convince each and every individual to follow some doctrine. But further thought reveals that this is exactly what we have. People are generally more convinced and emotionally moved by models, idols, celebrities, than by dry, heavy readings. A human model is more appealing to human beings than, say, the most impressive fossil finding supporting the occurence of some miracle. And this is exactly what we have, human models throughout history guiding human beings on the right path.
When an atheist asks about evidence, his question entails that all what surrounds him and all what he heard about, like the existence of claims of prophecy throughout history, are not evidence. And when he asks about a logical proof, he ignores the fact that logical proofs in this context only make sense to talk about in some universally valid system of axioms, which doesn't exist. To clarify that, an impressive result in Euclidian geometry, say, for example, the Pythagorean theorem, entails less truths than the five postulates of Euclid. Namely, you can't reach Euclid's postulates based on the Pythagorean theorem.
Therefore, it's not a problem that there is no watertight, universally valid deductive proof for God. The underlying intuition is that God is "too much" to be deduced from a fixed set of axioms chosen by human brains. The only possible evidence for God is of inferential value. Inference by definition seeks the bigger scheme of things based on a small sample, while deduction starts by an already complete list of axioms, choices, hypotheses, etc.
And it's clear that one cannot prepare an exhaustive, universally agreed-upon list of independent axioms, the coherence of which is verifiable, to deduce the most complete being conceivable.
On a side note I would like to hear someone's thoughts on the equivalence between the existence of other minds and the existence of God. A result established recently by Plantinga and others. If one has enough "belief" to think there is an outside world and creatures like himself, this exact inference from a sample of the size of a singleton (only himself) to the entire human population is what he should apply to the orderly things around him to reach a supreme being.
And if one is stubborn enough to reject any inferential value from what we see, then he must accept the unbearable cost: either deny the existence of other minds altogether, i.e. endorse hard solipsism just to deny the existence of God. Or hypocritically acknowledge other minds while rejecting the existence of God.
