The Irrefutability of Belief Systems

Abstract

character in a John Wisdom dialogue observes that What you call 'the logic of God' couldn't be simpler than it is without His being less than He is, for the simpler the possible proofs that something is so the simpler it is for it to be so.' She further claims that it is not just that does not happen yet to be any fool-proof proof, there couldn't be. But that doesn't mean that are no evidences of God's existence; it doesn't mean that are no proofs of his existence; nor that these are not to be found in experience; not even that they are not to be found in what we see and hear. While I am neither gracious enough nor skillful enough to expound Wisdom, I propose to elaborate on this problem of proving God's existence and nature. It is too often approached with the assumption that proofs of all sorts and conditions of things should be accomplished in the same way. There are philosophers who think that exactly the same empirical techniques should be used for proving the existence of stones, of intelligent beings in outer space, of unconscious mechanisms, and of God I want to claim instead that the nature of the thing to be proved determines the type of proof which should be used. To prove the existence of anything at all, some philosophers claim, one must consult experience and come to conclusions which are consistent with the rules of scientific inquiry. Logical deduction may be very well in its place, but its place is formal systems which are empty of any factual content, and you cannot get any conclusions about facts from logic. Conclusions about facts come only from empirical inquiry, according to this tradition. Plainly, if it is the case that exists nothing but the kinds of entities which are accessible to science (parsimoniously interpreted), and if it is true that the world is not rational, then such rules as those proposed would work in philosophy. A consequence would be that would be no need for belief in any sort of transcendent entities, whether unconscious layers of mind (as separate from brains), or gods and the like. Proofs would be relatively simple because the kinds of things which were acknowledged to exist would be relatively simple.