Being uncertain of a state of existence is not the same as proving existence…

I found an old entry of yours as I was searching online, and I found the topic to be interesting as I am intrigued by both (in)completeness (of the Godelian kind) and philosophy of religion, so I hope that this comment will be welcome, though most certainly dated, lol.

If I understand your reasoning correctly, you think that the proposition “God exists” is undecidable and that, therefore, we can reasonably take it to be an axiom of sorts. If we can reasonably take “God exists” to be an axiom, then we can reasonably believe in God (presumably regardless of other considerations).

If I understand you right (and I may not have, lol), then I have some constructive things to submit for consideration.

First, the technical form of (in)completeness that you’re describing, at least in my understanding, requires that one be talking about a specific system of axioms that is sufficiently strong. That is, the proposition “God exists” is undecidable relative to a set of axioms. If this is the case, then we still might be able to choose a different set of axioms such that “God exists” is no longer undecidable. (Consider the Continuum Hypothesis in ZFC or the Axiom of Choice in ZF). For instance, quite vacuously, if we take the set S to be the set of axioms that you normally accept and then form S’ = S U “God exists”, then “God exists” is not undecidable relative to S’. (There are more interesting examples, but this was the first one that came to my head, lol.)

Second, I wonder if we should really consider “God exists” to be undecidable rather than simply undecided. You are totally right when you say that philosophers *still* manage to argue about these things and that they are far from resolved. But, I think the question is whether there is reason to think that questions such as these cannot be resolved *in principle*. Until there is such good reason, why give up so soon? Lol.

Third, I think that perhaps what you’re going for more generally is a limit on what we can know, an epistemic limitation. One might be tempted, given the state of the debate on the existence of God, to put “God exists” in the category of “unknowable” propositions (as opposed to simply unknown), along with “God does not exist”. This is basically the statement of strong agnosticism. If we take this position, then why is it acceptable to hold “God exists” to be true anyway? A lot of things can follow from a belief in God. If someone believes something without good reason to believe it (more specifically, on a desire, whim, or personal feeling), then it could potentially be harmful. Consider the effect of creationism in modern American public schools on the quality of scientific education (although it differs specifically on what kind of God one were to believe in). It seems almost reckless to choose to believe in something that one believes to be unknowable. In general, as competent, rational beings, we ought to maximize the kinds of true things we believe and keep to a minimum a belief in things that are false. The equivalent of a coin flip doesn’t seem to be in accordance with this general rule, as we could do this with more “unknowable” propositions, yet, as we increased the number, the likelihood of us having a set of true beliefs decreases exponentially and the number of false beliefs increases exponentially.

Fourth, I guess, more simply, I don’t agree that “God exists” is an “unknowable” proposition in the epistemic sense. The concern about philosophers debating endlessly about the issue of the existence of God seems to simply be a pragmatic one. If we are to think that “God exists” is “unknowable” in the epistemic sense, then there ought to be good reasons for thinking that “God exists” cannot be known, even in principle (much like what I was talking about earlier). There are some that try to show this, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion, :). In short, I don’t think that one can simply cop-out of the question because one isn’t in a good epistemic situation.

Anyway, that went much longer than I meant it to, but I hope that I said something interesting… if not, then just ignore my ramblings, lol. Good luck with your blog.

Jake

If God knows everything, He must have some manner of containing knowledge. Let’s suppose it’s a notebook called “Knowledge I Possess”. To get started, God writes down

1. I exist.

From 1, he derives

2. I know that I exist.

He reads His notebook and finds a third new piece of knowledge.

3. I know that I know that I exist. (by statement 2)

God, being a sharp fellow, realizes He’s entering and infinite regress. So, He throws away the notebook and gets another. This time, He writes in bold at the top of the first page

For each piece of knowledge in Knowledge I Possess, define a function f: Knowledge -> Knowledge where f applied to some statement k produces a new sentence “I know that” concatenated with statement k.

This saves God a lot of writing, and also captures the infinite regress.

Incidentally, this is the basis for Kronecker’s observation that the natural numbers are the work of God.