A Logical Proof of the Existence of God
Full credit goes to William S. Hatcher for the following proof. As I mentioned here, I'm paraphrasing a presentation that he gave last week at UWO. This proof shows that there must be one unique uncaused thing from which everything else was caused. He applied the term 'God' to this concept and the two ideas mesh well but the actual proof is intentionally limited in what it tries to do.
Here's the complicated quote from Hatcher's book, "Minimalism."
P.0 V is composite.
P.1 Every existing phenomenon (B) is either cause (other-caused) or not caused (self-caused), and never both.
P.2 Suppose that A->B holds, where B is a composite. Then A->E also holds where E is any part of B (i.e., where either EεB or E(B ).
P.3 A->E cannot hold if E is a component of A.
Now let me break it down a bit more.
Proof #0: Something exists. Hopefully we can agree on this one. :)
Reality (V) represents the everything that ever was, is or will be. A phenonmenon (A, B, C, D)is the word that represents any old aspect of reality. All of reality is one big phenomenon, made up of a bunch of smaller ones.
Proof #1: Everything was caused by something else or by nothing else.
No assumption made either way. Maybe things can pop into existence on their own, maybe they can't. We just have a rule that clearly states this, plus the fact that it can't be both.
Proof #2: If A causes B, then it also causes everything inside of B.
B may be made up of a bunch of smaller pieces like E, F and G. If that's the case, then anything that causes B must also be the cause of E, F and G. For example, if we say that Homer and Marge Simpson created Bart then they also created Bart's hands and eyes.
Proof #3: A thing cannot be the ultimate cause of something inside it.
Bart Simpson canot be considered the cause of creating his own hands and eyes. Sure, he might be the reason that those hands and eyes aimed and threw a super-tomato at Principle Skinner but Bart himself didn't pop into existence from nothing. So what caused Bart? And what caused that cause? (I'm sure Matt Groening enters into the equation somewhere.)
Final Proof: Reality is made up of smaller pieces. If we compare reality to my example of Bart, then P.2 shows that reality can't create itself. To expand on Bart's example, it also means that anything that is made up of smaller pieces can't create itself - and the opposite must be that anything that pops into existence on it's own has to be one piece.
So G ('God' or 'the uncaused thing') can pop into existence on it's own and it can cause everything else in reality to appear, either directly or indirectly. All of reality boils down to one cause and it's God, who is outside of reality but can interact/has interacted with it.
So there you go, that's my version of Hatcher's proof of God's existence. His point is that to disprove or disagree with his conclusion, then you have to disagree with one of the first few ideas. Since each idea is straight forward, they're hard to disagree with. By all means, though, feel free to post your own comments or arguments.
3 comments:
Sounds like the law of first causes, or the cosmological argument. Bertrand Russell had a thing or two to say about this in "Why I am not a Christian", and Hume explained that humans can't even determine cause and effect. The Hindus that hold the Advaitic (One Reality) approach would say that the law of first causes simply suggests that we are all parts of the diety's imagination. However, William Lane Craig would argue for Christianity, rather convincingly.
Proving God is like trying to prove you had a certain dream, you can explain it very clearly, so it makes sense, but you can never absolutely prove it.
I agree, it does sound like the law of first cause. My friends said the same thing when we left the lecture, although his case is somewhat more involved.
And as I mentioned, Hatcher spent a large amount of time reviewing the history of his proof, looking at how numerous other philosphers over the centuries have used and developed this kind of proof. He didn't say he invented this, he said that he derived a better version of it. He gave credit to 'Relational Logic' for a big part of it, since that was only invented around the 19th century and no one used it before then.
He did spent a disproportionate amount of time proving the first cause idea, under the 'minimalist' umbrella of keeping things as simple as possible. His conclusion is that this is indeed proof, under the rules that this term designates in mathematics. It's not enough that someone disagrees, they have to disprove one of the first four proofs. He did assert that this was absolute logical proof.
I might take a stab at disproving it in a later post but if you have a counter-proof then by all means go ahead, Abe. I would love to hear it.
THANKS MUCH FOR THIS ELEGANT AND SIMPLE PROOF OF GOD
Post a Comment