From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: Proof of God's Existence
Date: 8 Sep 92 14:45:34 GMT
Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.

In article <ARA.92Sep3133928@camelot.ai.mit.edu> ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
>
>I don't see why everyone is trying to prove the existence of God. I think
>the people of the world are virtually unanimous in the opinion that
>God does not exist.

I am a bit confused here. A great deal of the world's population is comprised
of people who belong to strongly theistic religions, such as Islam.

>To see why this is so, let us merely assert, in addition
>to the mere use of the word "God", some property of God and ask if
>people believe that God exists and has that property and overwhelmingly
>the response will be no. For example, can you eat God? Some people think
>so but most don't. Can you have sex with God?  Does God reside in
>a particular idol? Does God have any physical manifestations at all?

You can have all these properties in ordinary "things", such as a book.
(Finding someone who denies that the book has any physical manifestations
at all is easy - Cf. eastern religions. The hard part is finding someone
who is really willing to eat it...)

>Is there more than one God?
>What do they have in common that makes them
>God and why are their other characteristics irrelevant?

Let's not confuse existence with uniqueness.

>Does God have
>a proper name that should be used to address God? What is it?

Having a name makes it easy for humans to discuss something, by I cannot
think it is necessary for that thing to exist, nor is it sufficient.

>Is God
>on call whenever some country wants to declare war on some other country?
>Does God care what people do? Is there something specific that God wants

	[Allan Adler asks about the nature of God deleted...]

>Once one tries to get specific about what exactly one is talking about
>when one talks about God, one finds that the majority of the world's
>population does not believe it.

Is this a permanent state? Is this related to the question of existence? If
we use the example of the germ theory of disease, we can most certainly
find examples of things which were almost universally disbelieved, and yet
are now nearly universally accepted. Take a close look at what you find
in materialist science and I think the result is that most things we are
asked to believe have this property.

>All that remains if one wants to assert
>the existence of something without specifying any properties is the
>vague feeling that something exists, a feeling utterly without content or
>meaning.  And indeed something does exist: we exist. Without specifying
>the content, the fact that we exist shows that the vague feeling that something
>exists is true.

You're lucky compared to some philosophers who can't get past this one.

>But so what?

Yes. This is one of the better questions to ask about the existence of God.
Suppose yes. Then so what. Suppose no. Also so what. In the case where God
exists, is it not _very unlikely_ that God's existence requires us to affirm
this with belief? Is God an elected official who needs our vote? Questioning
the existence of God is usually motivated by a desire to evade or impose
moral responsibilities, whichever way you see the existence answer.

>Religion is an advacned delusional system.

It seems that religion, like anti-religion, is what you make of it. The
special words, the funny hats, etc. might be just that, or they can be
a legitimate expression of the human relation to an idea of ultimate reality.
I tend to think that Hardy's atheism was somewhat credulous (for example his
pacifism) and it had it's humorous aspects (his anti-God equipment), and
even a strongly problematic justification in the end - (that he had done
nothing useful - Cf. Mathematician's Apology). But whether you come down
for or against theism, can you really think of all these attributes as
more than the periphery of Hardy's life? His atheistic expression is something
_he_ needed. Had he supposed that he had _proved_ it as ultimate truth, he
would have put it down in big letters as a result beyond all those ever proved
before. So it seems that proof was not necessary or relevant for him. Surely
there is _a priori_ the possibility that God exists, and the possibility that
God does not exist. However, is Hardy to be regarded as deluded since he was
not an agnostic even in the absence of proof?

>Throughout history people possessed
>of this delusion have thought it was an act of piety to kill others who 
>possessed different delusions, or to persecute them in various ways.

Forgotten Hitler and Stalin's state-sponsored atheism, have we?

>We like to think we are exalted in some way because we are smarter than
>most other animals, according to are own definitions. But our willingness
>to kill others in the name of religion is always there to remind us of
>our true nature.

As is the willingness to murder out of atheism or nihilism. In fact some
large fraction of the world's theistic systems include proscriptions against
murder. Why would this be necessary if humans were not only capable, but
in some sense prone to murder?

>Actually, there is nothing special about religion in this connection. People
>are willing to kill each other over fairly arbitrary differences of all
>kinds, and each such distinction has at one time or another been
>the basis for violence.

Indeed. And so this point is pretty far from the question of the existence of
God.

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Newsgroups: sci.math