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(And this may require more concentration and attention span than what is routine here.)

I’m not all that interested in hearing arguments for and against the existence of God (and by “God” I am simply referring to the God definition common in the West where most people think of a god who is a creator of everything and is associated with theism rather than a more impersonal deism. (Yes, we could get into the entire theism/deism debate but let’s keep it focused.) I’m more interested in the proof process.

Just as we approach mathematical proofs in their own formal system sort of ways, I wonder if we have to make different allowances (or not?!) for proof methodology with questions of God. And to invite maximum participation, I’m intentionally dumbing this down a lot (no offense to anyone). I’m also trying to establish more of the “Zen flavor” of the context of the question — the aroma so to speak [yes, that is an easy setup] — by starting with examples;

Example from mathematics: Do imaginary numbers exist? If so, in what sense? If they DO exist, why do mathematics disagree so much about HOW they exist?

Example from law: Does the right to privacy exist in the Constitution? (i.e., U.S.) You can pick a dozen of the top law professors in the country and they will debate for hours simply as to whether it EXISTS (let alone is guaranteed!) in that document! And yet the document is neither overly long nor hard to read. (There in black-and-white, so to speak.) What are the criteria for proving the existence of that constitutional right?

Going back to math, consider Godel’s Theorem’s,and I will boil Godel down to concepts “This is a false statement” (??!) and “Proving that this theorem is provable requires going outside the formal system or you just can’t prove whether it is provable.” [Yes, I know. It stinks rather strongly at this point but a lot of readers have never heard of Godel.]

—-> Could it be that proving/disproving the existence of God is in an entirely different category of proof from what we are familiar? <-----

After all, as in various other fields, the arguments for/against God's existence seem to go in circles and very intelligent people [yes, let's grit our teeth and admit it] strongly disagree on the question, and there's no evident difference in the curriculum vitae of those professors to give us the simplistic cop out that one side is brilliant and logical and the other sides is a bunch of idiots. And if you take some portion of the debate, such as the Cosmological Argument, a thinking person can easily find objections to either side's reasoning -- and as with so many of the arguments, it often comes down to definitions and whose AXIOMS are assumed to be either self-evident. (Surely we can all admit that one man's self-evident axiom is another man's irrational presupposition and a "wild leap to conclusions"! That's probably the biggest problem!) And these are just a few of the many explanations we could offer for why these debates have gone on for centuries without resolutions. (And I will smugly make the claim that if anyone is certain that for "intelligent people" these debates were resolved long ago, I will suggest that you were deprived the benefit of sufficiently brilliant professors with the skills to demonstrate how deadlocked or at least unresolved these debates truly are.)

Yes, we all know that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is about formal systems and we can't apply the discovery to every other "proof system". But what if we admit that properly dealing with the God-question requires a fundamental quantum leap in "proving proofs" similar to what Godel provided. (Shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his first book, which was centered around Godel, Doug Hofstadter made the comment to a group of us -- and this was at a noisy departmental coffee hour so I wasn't sure if he said it as a prediction or if someone actually had done such a survey -- that a ranking by the country's top scientists as to the most revolutionary discovery of the 20th century would put Godel's Theorem at #1.) Godel's Theorem was one of the great "aah-hah" moments of discovery and nothing was the same ever again.

So at least PART of what I am suggesting is that any serious attempt at proving the existence/non-existence of God is going to recognize that it is in a class of "problems" which represent a whole other category (perhaps one in which proper recognition of the entire universe as its own kind of "formal system" is necessary.) And to me, part of what made the announcement of Godel's Theorem so amazing (a few decades before my birth) is that suddenly some fairly simple "proof problems" which hadn't got much prior consideration as such, suddenly got recognized as "unprovable" and Godel had explained why.

Now that most readers fell asleep long ago, I'll conclude prematurely and abruptly wi
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OLP_FAN, You've reassured me that SOMEONE on this forum has a sense of humor!! (Thanks.)
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ANDREW D, "You are assuming that the only way to prove existence of a superior being is through mathematical proofs." Either you have very poor reading comprehension OR you simply didn't read my question. (Even a broken watch would be correct twice a day.) Whatever. Next!
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At least OLP_fan demonstrated somehow getting to the end of the essay by noticing the humor at the end. (I meant it to function as the old "sign your name on the last page of the blue book for 10 points" to see who read the directions on the exam. Alas......)

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