The best proof of God's existence is by quantum physics
How strong it is : Richard
Conn Henry, professor of physics, who was teaching quantum
physics for many years, reports to have changed
his mind by the mere
force of teaching quantum physics, from atheism to "theism"
(as he wrote, though I am not sure if this is word is more
appropriate than Deism, as it did not lead him to any particular
"revealed" religion such as Christianity), thus outside any
influence of psychological pressure by Christians trying to
propagate their faith, nor sophisticated logical fallacies provided
by any apologetic work. See references on
quantum consciousness including the list of relevant articles
from him and others.
For details of how the argument exactly goes, see my clear and
rigorous exposition of quantum physics
and my detailed discussion of the interpretations
of quantum physics: how to express the mind makes
collapse interpretation (involving a concept of God
continuously creating the universe) and why it is by far the most
coherent and natural : what are the troubles with other
interpretations, that some try to develop for the sole purpose of
trying to keep materialistic
worldviews at all costs.
They could not
formulate any reasonably coherent one yet, as, I would say, such a
task is rather hopeless.
Who I am
See summary
of my position (for those who missed the link from front page).
In short: I don't belong to any religion (anymore, after a period of
Evangelical Christian faith that turned out to be a disaster), I
don't think that belief in God can "save" anyone. I am rationalist.
Still I believe in afterlife (but not in any need to believe anything special
to get prepared for it). So I don't care if anyone believes or not in
God or afterlife, and I occasionally love reading some atheists
writings, such as Greta Christina's "Atheists and anger" article and
video.
So, my motivation to develop that understanding of God's existence,
is just in the line of my general interest for mathematics and
physics.
How bad are Christians at arguing for God's existence
Many Christian theologians developed lots of works to present the
best proofs they could of God's existence. But how good are they ?
Ryan Bell, a former Adventist pastor who had growing doubts about
what he was previously preaching, then spent a "Year Without
God". In that year, he undertook to study all arguments he
could from both sides (theist and atheist) and finally found
the "proofs" of God and Christianity provided by Christian
apologists to be lacking, (while, instead of accepting a
debate and trying to feed him with better arguments, the most
famous Christian "debater" just preferred
to make fun of him) ; he is now a non-believer.
Looking for more meaningful references ? Here you go : - what seems to be the most official Christian reference
on the topic. Visibly, despite all the usual faith in the existence of Christian
scientists (that strong rumor so spread throughout the Christian world),
they still did not care or manage to find a good Christian physicist to write
a good first-hand expert review on the topic : the author of this page only
has a superficial understanding on the topic (well ok, "Master’s degree in
Physics from Texas A&M University where he studied Supersymmetry &
Cosmology" but his understanding of the debate on quantum interpretations
is still visibly quite approximative).
And this has some effects : he only looked at the fact that New Age
authors claim QM to be in their own pockets when looked at by the
Copenhagen interpretation and the one by the fundamental role of consciousness,
just like any preacher of any religion will similarly pretend that science
supports their specific ideology (no matter if it really does or not).
This frightened him, so he cared to not support this interpretation over others
(as, one may wonder: which Christians would expect an argument against
materialism to not be automatically
rigidly specific on which exact religious doctrine may be claimed to be supported
by some esoteric science point, in the mouths of propagandists just trying to
present anything they can as supporting their own doctrine in the face of a large
ignorant public who will never care to actually learn theoretical physics to check
the correctness of the argument anyway ? Well ok, some
do). Then he vaguely invited to generally look for support to his own
theology just as much from every other interpretation, no matter that these are actually
naturalistic interpretations (artificially hold as relatively plausible by their followers
despite their troubles for the precise motivation of their naturalism). How funny.
- A Theological Argument for an
Everett Multiverse, by Don Page, high-level physicist who is Evangelical
Christian, thus dismissing the only interpretation of quantum physics with metaphysical
significance towards God's existence, in favor of one rather devoid of it. He also expressed
skepticism about the possibility of proving God's existence.
- A reference (not so special).
- a
crackpot one also found among high ranked google results, which notes that "the question of the conceptual
implications of Quantum Mechanics has never been given serious treatment in a biblical context".
- A book commented
here seems to just have missed the whole issue.
- "Quantum Common Sense" in the site of American Scientific Affiliation (ASA, community of Christians who are scientists, engineers, and scholars in related fields). Also remains in a safe position of quantum uncertainty about how quantum physics should be interpreted.
- I once thought that the "Inspiring Philosophy" group with Johanan Raatz,
were doing a better job. Somehow they do, but still they have a trouble :
they cannot stop mixing the correct arguments with bullshit. I spent a lot
of time trying to correct them in private conversations, they ultimately
refused correction. I gave up. See
here some beginnings of my tries.
Conclusion : trying to prove God's existence, or reading things from
people (such as Christian apologists) motivated by any bias (such as
trying to "save" people) only leads to logical fallacies, and
illusions of having arguments when there isn't any genuine one ;
thus flawed ways of thinking. Clear genuine understanding of things
and why God exists, much better comes from pure science, such as
physics.
But why is it so ? It really looks like, Christians (apologists and
"scientists") are quite bad at proper science and discernment of the
genuine arguments...
And not even God, that they claim to personally know, could properly
inspire them for this, or could He ?
This mystery can be explained in several ways:
Non-Christian explanations for the lack of divine inspirations for
arguing on God's existence, in the line of the general evidence
against divine revelation :
- There is no need or value to believe in God, not even in
preparation "for going to heaven", so why would He care ?
- If God had an opportunity to guide or inspire anyone, He would
have much more urgent things than this to do with it than explain how to argue for His
existence, but we can observe that even the more urgent things are not done, so that there
is of course no chance for the less urgent ones to be done either.
- Thus, God does not guide anybody anyway, not even Christians
apologists and those who like them, the least bit
And an almost-Christian one (which Christians themselves would never
explicitly tell of course, but I do it here for them):
- God hates the sane intelligent people and only loves idiots,
so He finds it good to inspire His preachers to only propagate
the flawed pseudo-arguments that He chose, to only convince
idiots, as this is what God needs to better select His people as
those stupid enough for His taste, to whom he likes to provide
His grace and salvation ; people too intelligent for being
fooled by these pseudo-arguments and who would need
correct ones instead, would not be fit for heaven
anyway, so, let them go to hell.
Is there any other good proof of God's existence or anything close
to it ? Well, there is something : Near Death Experiences support
the existence of afterlife, and things also approaching the concept
of divinity, though the relevance of the precise name "God" is not
clear, and any relation to the specific teachings of any religion is
not supported at all.
Criticism of particular arguments
The Argument
from Design
Ontological arguments (ultimate cause, etc) : this rather
expresses a lack of imagination. See some quotations from
Richard Feynman
Several
particular arguments were refuted by Winston Wu
See also
The debate on quantum
idealism and science (science vs. pseudo-science)
A call to clarify the
debate on the links between quantum physics and consciousness
(to list the different possible interpretations)
Why is physicalism now a
form of obscurantism in physics
The pseudo-science
of "Scientific skepticism"
Some fqxi essays on the
connections between maths and physics
Is there any mathematical proof of God's existence ?
Some would say yes : Godel's
ontological proof, has been formalized. (see more comments)
However I do not agree as I see there too many arbitrary axioms and
choices of definitions that can be criticized. Someone tried to
simplify it. Seems it does not prove anything, it is rather based on a mess of confusions.
On the other hand I have arguments that
God's existence is not mathematically provable, and that the mind is not algorithmic.
External links and references
Religion and
Science article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reports some debates
on the connections between quantum physics and the concept of God,
which unfortunately did not reach any official consensus. I guess, one
reason may be the usual insufficient grasp of the mathematical structure of quantum physics
and other conceptual analysis by participants.
"Why
I am not a Christian, essay by Bertrand Russell (one of the
founders of set theory),
dismissing some usual arguments for God's existence that were not
logically well-founded.
Deism : a belief in God based on
reason, without religious superstition.
The God
Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism, 2013
book by English philosopher and humanist, A. C. Grayling ; other books
recommanded by Ryan Bell
Proofs that God is imaginary
Hundreds of
proofs of God's existence
Is
"Existence" a proper qualification for God ? and other
nonsense with the Christian theology
God can be found on Facebook
The
Top One Reason Religion Is Harmful by Greta Christina
Among the first found google results on the topic
5 proofs
"Within time and space there is moral-evil, corruption, and decay.
Since the Creator is outside of this He must be holy, immutable, and
impeccable. This then excludes the concepts of "God" put forward by
Islam and Mormonism. But it fits perfectly with the concept of God
as portrayed in the Christian Bible."
As if there was any kind of perfection in
the Christian God's characters
A short summary of
arguments in a philosophy site
Christian Web sites : Existence of God - Proof that god exists
A sentence in a book : "holy people are
considered by von Balthasar to be the best 'proof of God's
revelation"
on Yahoo answers
on thoughtco
An
apologetics page
a
Christian site recognizes that most Christian arguments are
flawed, but what he presents as the best argument instead, is no
better
"The Existence of God – Logically Proven!"
20
arguments for God's existence. Here are my few comments:
4. The Argument from Degrees of Perfection
wrong, absurd. Not even the world
of pure maths has any ultimate, perfect version (but only
relative ones, or specific things such as the rules of proof in
first-order logic) ; and the world of consciousness is similar
The ideas of 8 and 10 are actually close to (aspects of)
considerations related with quantum physics:
8. The Argument from the World as an Interacting Whole
10. The Argument from Consciousness (that is the same idea as the
"unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" and the inteligibility
of the laws of physics, that was the topic of the fqxi essay contest
on the connection between maths and physics)
11. The Argument from Truth
I disagree with "Truth properly resides in a mind". Mathematical
truths properly exist in a computer as well, or as purely
mathematical entities, independent of mind
16. The Argument from Desire
Big bullshit : both premises 1 and 2 are false, in good
approximation.
18. "Therefore, there exists a "divine" reality which many people of
different eras and of widely different cultures have experienced. "
Great, so, many people from different religious backgrounds met the
same real God as well, and happily described Him in ways that flatly
contradict each other. Then in the name of this, Christians (like
many others) came and claimed in the name of the God they personally
know, that only they have the truth from God while all people with
different religious beliefs of course have it wrong and are going to
hell as they rejected the real God.
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