Belmont Club

By Richard Fernandez

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August 21, 2008 - 4:27 pm - by Richard Fernandez
Teresita
2008-08-21 18:03:08

No one has yet created a Theory of Everything, and produce as it were, a formal proof of atheism right beside Godel’s ontological proof of the existence of God.

Anselm performed a bit of sloppy reasoning by assuming that there was a difference between the concept of a God and the “true” God which exists in fact, so that he could elevate the latter case as supreme. But if God can be shown to exist through means other than pure reason (such as by direct observation), then his existence is automatically incorporated into the true concept of God. We can have false concepts of God all we want, but the true concept of God always tracks the status of God in reality, whether he exists or does not. So it is never possible to demonstrate the existence of God purely by juggling our definitions of God and making a word salad, which is what the ontological argument is all about.