Wednesday, November 15, 2006

God only knows

God only knows

January 10th was my last post. A busy year is an understatement. But we all know that's an excuse. Too many hours on the xbox to make this excuse anything other than lame.
I was musing on the train the other day about blogs. I thought about the blog title and wondered if Douglas Adams had a point when he was talking about the Babell Fish and the existence of God.

The thing that struck me was the 3rd commandment. In Christianity it is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me", The Jehovas witness says "Jehovah exacts exclusive devotion; He tolerates no rivalry with other gods", the Muslim "There is no other god beside God." And finally the translation of the Hebrew "I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"

There is always the after dinner discussion around the existence of God and proof etc. The issue always seems to come down to the scientist always wanting the proof and the religious accepting faith to be enough. The problem with looking for proof of existence or non existence of god is that science works on observable experimentation to validate a theory, which is why string theory has a lot of opposition because it cannot be proved experimentally (see the book Not even wrong). That's what makes it science. Without that observational experimentation all scientists have is a theory and therefore can provide little more argument to that of the believer. The issue must come down to one of two things. If God does exist as the religious believe then there can be no physical proof that he exists unless he wants to provide it (and it is a common argument that there is no proof because God wants faith) which is very convenient and impossible to argue against. The believer will state that this is his test and that only the faithful will go to heaven. It's a fair argument and one that is a possibility (we cannot discount it). So where do we go from here? And this is what struck me on the train. If it is impossible to prove the negative (god does not exist) as observational experimentation cannot prove the lack of existence of such an entity unless it can identify the place (using this term very loosely) where god should be if he did exist as described (heaven?) and show he is not there (i.e. prove there is a gap where god is supposed to be) which seems an equally difficult task. Traditionally such problems in proof have used clever alternatives. Rather than trying to prove the negative, try and prove the positive and see if you fail.

One of the starting points here is to look at the interactions that have supposedly been between God and mankind and use the versions which the religious amongst us subscribe to being true. So, back to the 3rd commandment.

The various versions are fairly aligned between the fact that there are no other gods or that you should not put other gods before him.
If we accept a few of the religious positions in terms of gods capabilities, he is omnipotent and therefore knows everything there is to know. One also assumes that this scope of knowledge is infinite. Omnipotent definition "Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful". Finally, if he is God then we should believe what he says (i.e. he does not lie). If this is not the case then an immediate paradox is reached and its game over.
So the variation in commandment 3 is worrying. One states that there are other gods but we should not worship them, only him and the other version states that he is the only god. Rather vague for an omnipotent being. We will look at each in turn.

"There is no other god beside God"
If this is interpreted as there are no other gods it leaves us in an interesting position. People have been worshipping gods, seeing visions and following prophets of many other gods throughout history. God (capital G) now states that there are in fact no other gods and that all the believers in these other gods have been wrong all along. So why would we believe this God over and above the statements made by other gods. If we are to assume that gods from other beliefs are omnipotent then God is stating not just that believing in other gods is wrong (because they don't exist) he is implying that belief in an apparently omnipotent being other than him is wrong. So believers in omnipotent beings can be wrong. So it opens up the prospect that if belief in another omnipotent being can be wrong, how can that believer be sure (even with faith) that this one is not wrong. God is infallible, God says belief in omnipotence is fallible, God is omnipotent. A paradox.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"
In this version it gets worse. One could reasonably interpret this as his acknowledgement that there are other gods. If he is omnipotent then he must be right and therefore there are other gods. But this has implications. How many gods are there? If we are to assume that the characteristic of a god is that they are omnipotent (and god makes no statement on this either way) then they also know everything (infinite knowledge). So why would God care? The only reason he would care is if the other gods wanted something different for mankind (a different path) than God wanted (including us to worship them rather than him). This implies that there are multiple possible outcomes to the paths mankind could take depending upon the god that is worshipped. But if God is omnipotent then he would know all of these paths and which ones we would take. In fact to know everything would imply that either a) things are entirely deterministic or b) that they are not and there are infinite possible paths and he knows all of them but wants us to go our own way (but voluteer to go his way). But to be an omnipotent being must put you outside of time so God already knows the path we will take (deterministic or not). But so do all the gods he recognises as existing.
So God is omnipotent, other gods are omnipotent, God knows the right path for mankind, other omnipotent beings do not know the right path, omnipotence is fallible, God is infallible, God is omnipotent. Another paradox.

The final argument to these two positions will be that the assumption that other gods (in the second position) are not omnipotent. If this is the case then we are back into argument one which says that the believers of these other gods (who have equally strong faiths in their omnipotent gods) are wrong and therefore belief in omnipotency can be fallible. (see argument above).

Paradoxes are the proof that there are significant issues at play here. The point of a paradox is that both positions cannot be right, they contradict each other. Therefore the 3rd commandment, if written by God produces a paradox in itself because it produces paradox that means God cannot exist. So God would not create a commandment that proves he does not exist and therefore the probability is that the commandments were written by man.

So thats what I was thinking about on the train that day. Next stop Euston.