Can It Be Shown That God

Can it be shown that God (or some ultimate reality) exists? Mike Sifeldeen (I.D. #1187816)

The one universal of every human culture throughout history is a concern with the existence or nonexistence of the Ultimate. As per the guidelines of the paper, I would like to focus this essay on what is undoubtedly the religion most well-known and understood to most Canadians: Christianity. I will attempt to outline the difficulty in combating religious argumentation with scientific rebuttal, and then attempt to provide a common logical groundwork on which to decide if the question of a god or god’s existence is actually reducible to a ‘yes/no’ statement. Specifically, I will start out by describing how science and faith are seemingly mutually exclusive realms in the matter, and using either framework to attempt to prove or disprove the premise of the existence of a god or ultimate reality is an ultimately fruitless endeavor. Then we will look at the very root logic of the matter and I will show how, depending on the definition of ‘god’ that we are using, the question of whether or not an ultimate reality exists yields two disparate answers.

As any good scientist knows, it is impossible to prove, only to disprove. For example, it has always been that water freezes at 0° Celsius. To say “Water freezes at 0°” is a fact or a ‘scientific theory’, and means that it has withstood repeated, rigorous testing and has always shown itself to be true. One day, however, if water does not freeze at the predicted temperature of 0°, but instead at 1°, that theory would be disproven and science will happily take itself back to the drawing board to develop a more accurate theory. Science can always change or alter its views on a particular phenomena based on newly acquired evidence. That said, religion has at its disposal a trump card of sorts against science: faith. Faith has the unique property of being impervious to reason, and this is where the quandary of Science vs. Religion begins. Science stays firmly on its side of the fence dealing exclusively with the natural world. Conflict only ensues when religion, not satisfied with the color of the grass on its side of the fence (namely, the side of the supernatural), tries to overstep its boundaries and dabble in the attempted explanation of natural phenomena. A scientist would ask that religion and faith remain in the supernatural world and leave the natural world to the experts. A person of faith would then reply that the very properties of nature that the scientist is able to quantify and describe are the properties put in place by God. It becomes easy then – just as the scientist can alter their views based

on new evidence – for the person of faith to backtrack from science and claim that “God did it”.

In regards to the logical problems of the existence of an ultimate reality, we must first define whether we are talking about an established religion like Christianity’s “God”, or simply the premise of “god”. Let us discuss the former first, as it is the easiest to dispute. There literally is no evidence for the existence of Yahweh, YHWH, G-d, etc. at all. Using the Christian and/or Hebrew bible to verify the claims made by the Christian and/or Hebrew bible is not verifying anything at all, and is simply engaging in circular reasoning to try and validate an opinion when no other evidence exist. Additionally, when the Christian claims that his god is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc., this can be refuted plainly based on the lack of a common ground of comparison for such claims, as “Comparisons presuppose standards… and just as there is no significant class of comparison that includes [for example] ball-point pens and tennis players, there is no significant class of comparison that includes everything.” (Kessler 90) A proponent of the Christian religion gives no credence to the truthvalue of the claims that Thor, or Allah, or Gilgamesh is the one “true” God, despite the “evidence” each has in their own holy books. The Christian will respond with “Well, prove that my God doesn’t exist”, but this too is a copout of sorts. It ignores the Burden of Proof, which

states that the person making the assertion must prove his claim, not the other way around. But this argument should be no surprise to the Christian, because he engages in its very reasoning when he claims that his Christian god is the “God.” As Stephen Roberts famously put it, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

As for the general premise of “god”, the logical point here is that the claim that a god exists is arbitrary. Arbitrary statements are neither true nor false; they are like the division by zero error of logic. They hold no logical basis and therefore are less than false, but rather inherently improvable on their face. They are referred to in logic as the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantium, or the appeal to ignorance. For example, take the statement “There exists an invisible pink unicorn on the dark side of the moon. Disprove this.” Proof is a logical concept and logic requires valid deductions from valid generalizations and observations. When there is no generalization or observation, and no deduction to be had, the concepts of proof or logic do not apply. There is no evidence to support the invisible pink unicorn claim, the assertion it makes is arbitrary, and it is neither supported nor contradicted by any evidence because it states nothing. It is therefore meaningless to debate such an assertion. The point of this analysis is that, if it is

reasonable to dismiss certain assumptions like the existence of pink unicorns on the moon, and to deny the validity of any supernatural being besides your own, it is therefore unreasonable to hold belief in any deity which follows the same theme of being untestable and therefore unfalsifiable.

It is clear, then, that while science and religion will eternally be at odds with each other about the validity of their respective belief systems, logically-speaking, the question of whether it can be shown that God or some ultimate reality exists can at best be answered with “it is impossible to know”, or when speaking of culturally-specific “Gods”, rightfully “no”.

(1081 words)