How much would a proof for/against God's existence matter to you?

[DetlefK]

Let's say there were a proof. It is logical, undeniably correct and relates directly to our universe and our lives.

1. There is undeniable proof that God does not exist. What would that mean to you? What would change, what would stay the same?

2. There is undeniable proof that the God you worship exists. What would that mean to you? What would change, what would stay the same?

3. There is undeniable proof that a God exists, BUT he's nothing like the god you worship. You have been worshipping a non-existent, false god the whole time and the real God, and his religion and his morals are radically different from what you believe. What would that mean to you? What would change, what would stay the same?

[Ed Suspicious]

1. As much as proof of Santa Klaus means to me.

It's sort of like saying, "you know the president is real." "Ok. I've never really met him, but that's cool. Thanks for sharing."

[hrmjustin]

2. My life would not change too much if they proved God did not exist.

[edhopper]

9. Would you still go to church and pray

if it was proven to you (that is, you accepted the proof) that God does not exists?

This is a hypothetical.

[hrmjustin]

16. Not pray but i would still maintain friendships within my church community.

But i would not attend church if I no longer believed.

I don't always go to church anyway.

[edhopper]

18. thanks

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. Proof FOR a God's existence would require a major rethink of my worldview.

Proof AGAINST wouldn't change much, because in an empirical worldview, proof is not static, but can be superseded if further, more correct proof comes along. Ie, 'undeniable' is not a word that gets used much. Some things certainly APPEAR to be 'proven' in a static way, but I don't rule out some incredibly infinitesimally small chance that some deviance will come to light requiting an alteration of our understanding.

[stone space]

4. It might depend on whether or not the proof had any interesting mathematical applications.

[RKP5637]

5. One day a large UFO might land and say "were're back!" It would just be another WTF day for me! n/t

[Fumesucker]

6. What would such "proof" look like?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from godhood (magic). We can bring back the recently dead sometimes and technology is only going to improve in ways that we can't even imagine at the moment.

How do you tell what is a perfectly mundane being with very advanced technology and what is a god?

Is there a significant difference given advanced enough technology?

On edit: I don't mean to be argumentative but I have no idea what I would accept as prima facie proof that there is a supreme being, a god, these are not rhetorical questions.

[stone space]

10. I'm hoping it's parsed with dots.

What would such "proof" look like?

[Fumesucker]

11. There's only one answer for that

[3catwoman3]

12. Exposing an area of ignorance of mine, but I have to...

...embarrass myself by asking WTH is that?

[stone space]

13. It's from Principia Mathematica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica

Principia Mathematica

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. In 1927, it appeared in a second edition with an important Introduction To the Second Edition, an Appendix A that replaced ✸9 and an all-new Appendix C.

PM, as it is often abbreviated, was an attempt to describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven. As such, this ambitious project is of great importance in the history of mathematics and philosophy,[1] being one of the foremost products of the belief that such an undertaking may be achievable. However, in 1931, Gödel's incompleteness theorem proved definitively that PM, and in fact any other attempt, could never achieve this lofty goal; that is, for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate mathematics, either the system must be inconsistent, or there must in fact be some truths of mathematics which could not be deduced from them.

One of the main inspirations and motivations for PM was the earlier work of Gottlob Frege on logic, which Russell discovered allowed for the construction of paradoxical sets. PM sought to avoid this problem by ruling out the unrestricted creation of arbitrary sets. This was achieved by replacing the notion of a general set with the notion of a hierarchy of sets of different 'types', a set of a certain type only allowed to contain sets of strictly lower types. Contemporary mathematics, however, avoids paradoxes such as Russell's in less unwieldy ways, such as the system of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory.

[3catwoman3]

15. During the last quarter of my senior year of high school, way...

...back in 1969, my math teacher handed us a slender black leather book on calculus, and announced, "Here. This is all self-explanatory."

She was wrong. It was not. At least not to me. Only thing in my life I ever got an "F" in.

Please tell me you do not have it committed to memory.

[stone space]

17. Oh, yeah...I cut and pasted it.

It's a fairly famous passage, because it's the point in the three volume text where the equation 1 + 1 = 2 is first proved.

So lots of people have uploaded images of those particular pages.

[procon]

7. It would have no impact on me whatsoever.

And what about you?

[edhopper]

8. Proof that God existed

would have an impact on my life. But I can't say what until I know the nature of this God.

[safeinOhio]

14. best answer so far.

[edhopper]

19. Thanks

becoming an atheist had an impact, so I imagine this would as well.

[Agnosticsherbet]

20. It would prove that agnosticism is wrong. It is possible to know.

1. I would investigate the awesome science capable of discovering that knowledge.

2. As an agnostic, I worship no god. I would investigate the awesome science capable of discovering that knowledge. See answer 3.

3. I would want to learn about this marvelous being because that would provide insights into the nature of the universe. I want to know as much as I can. I would feel no compulsion to worship this being. I am capable of determining determining my moral and ethical path.

Question: Why does God need to be a he. What does a creature capable of creating the universe do with a Penis.

[rjsquirrel]

21. Such a "proof" is impossible

It's a logical impossibility, because "God" is an irrational human projection from a time before nature was scientifically understood.

In other words, this is a false equivalency. There is no burden of proof on those who say there appears to be no "God." One does not have to scientifically prove the absence of something never known to or observed to exist and with no stable definition. Pure semantics, really. For thousands of years humans have asserted the existence of gods while no confirmable, reproducible, consensual, material "proof" has ever emerged, and every explanation ever offered for natural phenomena by any religion has fallen away as ignorant magical thinking in the face of proven facts, the age of the earth itself securely among those now known facts.

What form would this "proof" of "God" even take? A 6 billion year old man in a chariot coming down from the clouds to smite us? A subtle play of light over the ocean? Can you predict its material form as a premise for the question, please? Many people embrace tautological arguments as such "proof" -- "creation" is too beautiful or complex (compared to what, might I ask?) or just "the bible tells me so."

Without knowing what such "proof" would be that would be intersubjectively confirmable, it's just a meaningless exercise in false equivalence. You know, "both sides do it equally," a la Fox News.

[DetlefK]

22. Me: "Imagine, there's a proof." - You: "Nooooo!"

The details of the proof are irrelevant. It's there and it's correct. That's all you need for this hypothetical.



1. I'm agnostic for a simple reason: For statistical reasons, it is impossible to prove/disprove God (as an entity with the attribute infinity) by experimental means.

To find the final and correct description of the whole universe, you would need to make an experiment on the whole universe. But all the experiments we can do are of a finite nature and all theoretical proofs are based on premises derived from our finite knowledge.
-> The dataset is not all the available data, but a subset, a collection of random samples of data.
-> (I don't know how to make the mathematical argument here real quick, so you'll just have to believe me. You can look it up in a mathematics textbook on statistical analysis.) If you use only a subset of the data, the explanation you derive from it may or may not be the correct explanation, with a probability that depends on the amount of data. (That's what "confidence-levels" are there for. They describe how well your empirically derived explanation fits reality.) As you take larger and larger subsets, the probability that your explanation is the correct one approaches 100% when your data-set is identical to all the available data.
-> Nothing is ever definitely proven. And as God is infinite and therefore cannot be reduced to a small and handy data-set, God especially cannot be proven/disproven.

I have found a different version of this proof here on DU: As humans are finite beings, the cannot tell the real, infinite God apart from a finite impostor.



2. I have found a theological proof that God cannot be omnipotent AND omniscient AND interact with beings that are neither (e.g. react to prayers) at the same time. The proof is too long to cram it in here. Basically, the proof revolves around God being immune to time and the concept of alternate time-lines. It ends with a paradoxic situation where God tries to do and undo something at the same time.

[cleanhippie]

23. I've yet to meet a believer that would accept anything that contradicts their belief.

i give the more extreme believers credit for at least attempting to argue their position (even if it is simply quoting scripture as some sort of evidence for), but at best, more liberal believers usually resort to the "you can't prove God doesn't exist" nonsense. We see that right here nearly everyday.

[gcomeau]

24. Which God?

Most of them are serious psychopaths who are wont to go around committing genocide or mass torture on a whim or if anyone is insufficiently slavishly subservient to them.


Assuming it's consistent with the majority of the depictions of God we'd probably have to start organizing some kind of large scale project to figure out a way to neutralize/kill it for our own protection.

The ones that aren't psychopaths tend to be so vaguely defined as to render them completely irrelevant to anyone's day to day life, so I supposed they'd make interesting objects of scientific scrutiny and otherwise they'd have as much impact on the way I live my life as the existence of some distant nebula. You'd know it was out there... and yeah, that's about it.

[struggle4progress]

25. Wittgenstein said: If you want to know what has been proved, look at the proof

[Humanist_Activist]

26. I don't think there can be proof of a god not existing without us first attaining...

perfect knowledge, without error, of the nature of reality and the universe. That, in itself, sounds boring and horrifying.

However, if there was to be proof of a god existing in this universe, and I'm assuming, interacting with it, depending on the nature of the god(is it the 3 O creator god, or a type of deity that's not all-powerful). If its all-powerful, I'll fear it, won't worship it though. Such a being would be either indifferent or malevolent towards humans.