Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Incomplete ontology

I'm no good at maths. But Kurt Goedel was. As far as I remember he said something about the proof of a formal system always lying outside itself. Incompleteness.
 I was always interested in Anselm's ontological argument, too. Its says something like this: God must actually exist because it's better if He actually exists than if we just made Him up. And because He is by definition perfect, and so "better", then he must actually exist.
OK, not a lot of people find that convincing. I did once read a book by Alvin Plantinga on a many-worlds version of the same idea. But that was a long time ago.
Anyway, it turns out that if you put together Goedel's incompleteness with Anselm's ontology, formalize it and run it through computer software than analyses stuff like that, there's really no problem in asserting that God must exist.
According to these guys, anyway... Link to Cnet article

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