Scientists prove Goedel's ontological (God) theorem!?

[Adam Cormier]

Re: Scientists prove Goedel's ontological (God) theorem!?

I agree with Berkeley when he states that the ontological argument fails because we cannot have an idea (conception, whatever) of God. My personal philosophical position is that ONLY God exists. I believe in nothing else. But the problem of evil is convincing. Evil does exist, therefore an all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful God cannot exist. God, then, cannot be all of the above. As Hegel would suggest, God must therefore be an evolving Being, coming to greater self-knowledge over historical time. God, then, cannot exist outside of Time. God has a past, present and future, and is an eternally changing Being.

I do not know whether Hegel was a 1.d4 or a 1.e4 player.

That is an interesting theodicy to the problem of evil, but I'm not sure why Hegel would find the problem of evil convincing for his conception of God. The problem of evil only seems to be a logical (or evidential depending on the version used) problem for the Judeo-Christian God with very specific attributes, Hegel's God seems to be much different and therefore the problem of evil wouldn't apply to it.

[Bob Armstrong]

Re: Scientists prove Goedel's ontological (God) theorem!?

I do not know whether Hegel was a 1.d4 or a 1.e4 player.

Hi Brad:

If God doesn't know what Hegel plays, he could ask another god for advice to give to Hegel. Fischer is available. God can ask him if he still holds that 1.e4 is best ("best by test")! Then he could tell Hegel what to play to win! But not a great idea, if God is playing Black against Hegel.

Bob A

[Brad Thomson]

Re: Scientists prove Goedel's ontological (God) theorem!?

I agree with Berkeley when he states that the ontological argument fails because we cannot have an idea (conception, whatever) of God. My personal philosophical position is that ONLY God exists. I believe in nothing else. But the problem of evil is convincing. Evil does exist, therefore an all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful God cannot exist. God, then, cannot be all of the above. As Hegel would suggest, God must therefore be an evolving Being, coming to greater self-knowledge over historical time. God, then, cannot exist outside of Time. God has a past, present and future, and is an eternally changing Being.

I do not know whether Hegel was a 1.d4 or a 1.e4 player.

[Adam Cormier]

Re: Scientists prove Goedel's ontological (God) theorem!?

I think Kant's A Critique of Pure Reason is pretty decisive in refuting most formulations of the Ontological Argument which is why most Christian philosophers today use a version created by Alvin Platinga using modal logic.

On Pascal's wager, mathematically it might work if you accept several assumptions (but why you should accept this premises before accepting a religion isn't clear, which you need to show unless it simply becomes a circular argument). Such as that belief allows one to get into the good afterlife alone, that you can literally trick God in that you don't actually have any good reasons to believe in him besides the chance that humans are fallible and our reasoning could be wrong about his non-existence, or the fact that there are over 30,000 branches of just Christianity and when you get into all the other religions your chances seem very slim to get into heaven no matter what religion you follow.

[Kevin Pacey]

Here's an interesting piece of news that I haven't seen much in the media here in Canada myself, except for an article in a free newspaper last week:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/scientists-use-computer-to-mathematically-prove-goedel-god-theorem-a-928668.html

Personally I have always found Pascal's Wager a reasonable (semi-rational?!) reason to believe in the existence of a supreme being, if one is looking at the issue from a purely philisophical point of view.