Proof! that There Are Proofs for the Existence of God

An article on io9 caught my eye (ref), not because they were claiming a new proof for the existence of God, but because of the report that it was the great mathematician, Kurt Gödel, who offered that proof!

Gödel is most famous for his Incompleteness or Inconsistency Theorems (ref). Gödel worked during the middle of the twentieth century, when general relativity and quantum mechanics were offering a new relativistic, indeterminate view of the world. This view was over against the formerly classic Newtonian view. Gödel's theorems were part of that zeitgeist, in that he proved if you tried to build a system (or a computer!) that could develop a complete set of logical statements from scratch, there would necessarily be at least one which might be correct in that system, but whether it was correct or not could not be proven. For instance, if the system being developed were the English language, it could create the correct English sentence, “This is not an English sentence.” ... which is not capable of proof (although it sounds like something I would say.) And so you could never have an absolutely complete logical system. Ever. 

This brought the relativistic thought of that age to new heights, arguing that just as there was no absoluteness to the universe; neither could there ever be an absolute system of thought. But that the man in his free time was also doodling proofs for the existence of God was news to me (ref).

Gödel's Proof for the Existence of God

The io9 article starts out by inferring it was a modification of the proof offered by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) in his best-selling Proslogion (ref). I am somewhat aware of Anselm’s proof and know that it was used in process theology and process philosophy in the 70s and 80s (a school of thought which was favored by some members of the Dominican religious order or “Dominicanes” in Latin. Tradition has it that their detractors said it with a pause, “Domini Canes” = Dogs of the Lord. Religious humor. Ha.)

Anselm’s proof is not adequately portrayed in such a short news article (nor I suspect is Gödel’s.) In fact, it seems to me that in the article text, there seems to be a flaw that occurs between the these two sentences:

1) If he doesn't exist, he necessarily doesn't exist in any possible worlds.
(insert flaw here)
2) It is not possible to say that God does not exist in any possible world.

The first sentence stands almost as a tautology:

If (God exists = FALSE), then necessarily (God exists = FALSE).

OK, got it, but there is no reason to think that the second sentence follows from the first, nor is any proof offered that the second sentence is true on its own. So, the first sentence is all that stands.

But the Wikipedia article referenced above does a more complete job, as when they reference Anselm's restatement of his proof in his third chapter of the Proslogion. This version states, in short form, if the God concept is “greater than which cannot be thought” yet doesn’t contain the necessity to exist, you haven’t thought hard enough. That's the version of the proof that was preferred by process philosophers following Charles Hartshorne (ref)

Gödel’s proof does seem to follow along Anselm's lines, but I wasn’t able to find a good statement of it in the article. I suspect Gödel’s proof (which I can’t read) doesn’t have that simple a problem wrong with it, but likely has some unprovable hypothetical that didn't take away from it's use as an exercise in logic. This article here (ref) does do a more complete job of explicating things. But it still comes to the same point; that without proof that God exists somewhere, there is no convincing argument anywhere.

Maybe God wanted it that way.

What goes up, must come down. Global warming edition.

I saw this article today about California having record heat AND cold in the same day. Believe it, it is an effect of global warming.

Global warming is an odd thing.

It is calculated on an average temperature. 

For the entire planet.

But it does work as a valid indicator of the current state of thermal affairs, even better than sticking a thermometer in your mouth as an indicator of your body temperature. That's because over the last 4 1/2 billion years, the Earth has settled into a sort of heat balance. Insulated by the vacuum of space, heat in to our atmosphere comes from the Sun and internal radioactive sources and heat out is radiative transfer of infrared into space. 

But into that balance is a bunch of things including the increase of heat from the entropy of human activity around the world. And that heat energy is feeding into the abovementioned heat balance. If you view the current heat balance like a swing in the park, imagine what happens when you push it, pump more energy into it? Yah, it's average height (read "temperature") goes higher. But it also has more energy too, swinging back and forth, up and down, harder than ever before

That's why just focusing on the average temperature, although a good measure, doesn't touch on these changes which we all experience, an increase in the frequency or occurrence of climate events with increasing severity.(ref)

People are confused when they read about sudden changes to extreme cold or sudden severe rainy seasons, they wonder aloud "What happened to global warming?"  But, in fact, these downs are just the other end of the swing ups of extremely high temperatures and droughts.

It's a system in balance and it's being perturbed. What we can do about it and what will be the result is yet to be determined. But we will see the swings continue to climb up. And down.