Posted on 10/24/2013 5:12:05 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
As headlines go, it's certainly an eye-catching one. "Scientists Prove Existence of God," German daily Die Welt wrote last week.
But unsurprisingly, there is a rather significant caveat to that claim. In fact, what the researchers in question say they have actually proven is a theorem put forward by renowned Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel -- and the real news isn't about a Supreme Being, but rather what can now be achieved in scientific fields using superior technology.
When Gödel died in 1978, he left behind a tantalizing theory based on principles of modal logic -- that a higher being must exist. The details of the mathematics involved in Gödel's ontological proof are complicated, but in essence the Austrian was arguing that, by definition, God is that for which no greater can be conceived. And while God exists in the understanding of the concept, we could conceive of him as greater if he existed in reality. Therefore, he must exist.
Even at the time, the argument was not exactly a new one. For centuries, many have tried to use this kind of abstract reasoning to prove the possibility or necessity of the existence of God. But the mathematical model composed by Gödel proposed a proof of the idea. Its theorems and axioms -- assumptions which cannot be proven -- can be expressed as mathematical equations. And that means they can be proven.
Proving God's Existence with a MacBook
That is where Christoph Benzmüller of Berlin's Free University and his colleague, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo of the Technical University in Vienna, come in. Using an ordinary MacBook computer, they have shown that Gödel's proof was correct -- at least on a mathematical level -- by way of higher modal logic.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Even at the time, the argument was not exactly a new one. For centuries, many have tried to use this kind of abstract reasoning to prove the possibility or necessity of the existence of God. But the mathematical model composed by Gödel proposed a proof of the idea. Its theorems and axioms -- assumptions which cannot be proven -- can be expressed as mathematical equations. And that means they can be proven.
That is where Christoph Benzmüller of Berlin's Free University and his colleague, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo of the Technical University in Vienna, come in. Using an ordinary MacBook computer, they have shown that Gödel's proof was correct -- at least on a mathematical level -- by way of higher modal logic. Their initial submission on the arXiv.org research article server is called "Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel's Proof of God's Existence."
Kurt Gödel was The Man.
A mathematical expression sophisticated enough to be sentient.
Huh?
Ahhhh Bach...
‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
‘But,’ says Man, ‘This mathematics proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
I take it that this is not a man Obama would hire for his website?
One of our species finest!
LOL!
What software did they use? java? C#? Mathematica? Is there a download I can try at home?
Bump
Philosophically such proofs cannot be real for a simple reason. Abstracts, such as mathematics, only describe reality; they do not define reality.
You may paint the prettiest, most accurate picture of an apple ever made, but it remains just a picture, not the apple itself.
well then nothing written - numbers or words - can really describe anything. they just are attempting to define concepts in either a number, or a language term. and yet writers write about the world and scientists use equations to model the world.
God exists. Things do not just spontaneously create everything out of nothing, there are no self-creating effects, there is always a cause. Only God fits a self-creating cause. Information and codes prove an intelligence in DNA.
You either know He exists and know Him, you know He exists but don’t know Him, you just don’t know, you don’t care, or you know He exists but wish He didn’t exist.
Thank you I stole it (with minor modifications) from Douglas Adams.
I really miss him.
Chancellor sure looks blue and so does that map. Illinois, too, wow.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.