The Proof that No Proof can Exist for God's Non-existance

My professor for Section 4 of Philosophy 100 was Dr. Kathleen Wider, who I enjoyed immensely.  We talked and learned about all that mind-bending philosophical stuff that introductory philosophy professors love to use to confuse their students.

After a while, we got to our God chapter, and we began discussing all kinds of not-very-good proofs for God's existence, and a lot of less bad but still incomplete critiques of the proofs, and we were told it was time to write our first and only paper.

The assignment I settled on discussing would have involved disputing or supporting the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas in his proofs of God's existence, or of critiquing or supporting a non saint named W.I. Matson's arguments against them.  I had glanced over the arguments on both sides long enough to know that I wasn't interested in doing this.  I was sure that hundred's of thousands of philosophy students around the world had critiqued this stuff millions of times over, and if no consensus had been reached by now, then probably no consensus would ever be reached.

I decided that, instead of writing what I was supposed to write, I would write something demonstrating that both of them were wrong, and that, in fact, anyone who ever dared to write anything about religion was also wrong.

So, as a first step, I naturally spent six-and-a-half of the seven days I had been given for the assignment writing a word processor from scratch.

This kind of stupidity came easily to me.  I had spent about two years of my life lamenting that I couldn't keep track of my schedules because I couldn't get the schedule program I was writing on my computer to work.  It honestly never occurred to me just to go out and buy a date book.

So, there I was, the day before my paper was due, and I had perhaps three or four hours to prove that the proofs that philosophers and theologians had been working on for the past six thousand years were all a waste of good parchment.  All on a word processor that had never even been tested before, let alone employed for something useful.

I didn't have a plan, but I did have a purpose.  I thought a few moments, came up with what seemed to be a reasonable strategy, and started writing without even bothering to think the problem all the way through.

As a first step, I demonstrated that no proof could ever exist for the non existence of God.  I called this…

The Proof of the Mischievous God

1. Suppose that God exists, and that this God is all powerful and all knowing.
2. God can, then, influence the human mind and make one believe whatever He wants us to believe.  This would certainly fall under the heading of what an all powerful person could do.  (As for making us believe anything, I'll deal with Descartes another day.)
3. God could, for example, cause one to believe a false proof for God's non existence, and to believe it for as long as He so chooses.
4. Therefore, there can exist a situation where a proof for God's non existence exists despite God's persistent existence.
5. Under these circumstance, the proof would be false.
6. There would be no way to determine if these circumstances exist, because God, being all powerful and all knowing, could keep us from finding out.
7. Any proof for God's non existence could therefore be false beyond our ability to prove otherwise.
8. Since a good proof, by its definition, can never have a false conclusion, it follows that God's non existence cannot be proved.

This is, of course, only one-half of the proof necessary for my purpose.

At this point in the paper, I noted that the proof had the really cool side affect of disproving the proofs of virtually everything that man had ever done.  All one has to do is insert the appropriate proof name in the appropriate places and watch its truthfulness erode.

Anyway, back to the paper.  I pointed out at this point that I wasn't stating that I believed that God would actually do anything as mischievous as what He does in the proof, only that He could, and that even this possibility is what makes the proof work.

I went on to point out that probably the one proof that this proof doesn't disprove is the existence of a proof for God's existence, which was my original goal.  How could it be possible, after all, for a non existent God to make a proof of God's existence incorrect.

And, while an existing God can make the steps of a proof incorrect, He can't disprove the conclusion without causing his own non existence, which would make the proof doubly wrong.

I will continue with the other half on another day.