How to prove something for example God to exist in objective reality

[KingCoil]

I have read time and again that specially with atheists, they are willing to state that they cannot prove God does not exist, but neither can theists prove God exists.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church declares that God can be known to exist by reason.

I agree with the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

But how does the Catholic Church go about proving from reason that God exists?

In particular to atheists?

On my part, I think in order to prove something to exist in objective reality, all parties engaged in the issue must first agree on how to prove something to exist in objective reality; otherwise, there is no way a proof of something to exist in objective reality is going to be accepted by everyone: because there will be always someone with an objection against the proof, at least that it is not yet sufficient, therefore not adequate.

For the end of coming to concur on what is proof and how it is obtained, let us everyone theist and atheist first consider all the kinds of things we humans seek to prove to exist in objective reality.

And what kinds of things do humans seek to prove to exist in objective reality?

First, things we humans have access to with our external senses and out internal senses.

For example, to prove to folks so backward that they have never seen a television set, all we have to do is to bring a tv set to them and operate it in front of them for them to enjoy the tv set, viewing it.

Another example, about internal events in our mind and body, like how the perception of food can stimulate the secretion of saliva in our mouth: just get a person to go without food for say just a whole day, then set before him food and his mouth will be wet with saliva from his salivary glands.

What about people who insist that we cannot be sure of our existence, that it is all delusion or illusion or hallucination or we are living in a cyberspace matrix.

There is what I will call an infallible test to bring them to their senses that it is a certainty that we everyone alive exists.

The test consists in daring him to bang his head harder and harder against a concrete wall or hit his nose harder and harder with a hammer, and it will be sooner than later that he will come to certainty that he exists: so he must stop the test unless he wants to come to non-existence, which for a living thing means death.

Do you notice, dear readers here, that the way to prove existence with things which are accessible to our senses is to experience their presence?

That is direct proof of existence of something in objective reality.

But to experience something we must be conscious.

So, conscious experience is the way and means to prove to ourselves even atheists that something exists, but that works only with things accessible to our conscious experience.

Even our each one’s individual experience of consciousness is the way to prove for each one to himself and by himself and for himself that he is conscious, and he is a conscious living being.

What about things which cannot be directly accessed by our senses or by way of our conscious experience of their presence?

Such an object is God.

Here is where we all theists and atheists in particular with atheists must come to concurrence on what it is to prove and how to prove or disprove the existence of God.

We theists and atheists want to work together to first arrive at agreement on what I call the indispensable principles of thinking: by which we prove or disprove something to exist, which something is not within our access by way of our conscious experience of it.

What are these indispensable principles of thinking?

KingCoil

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I have read time and again that specially with atheists, they are willing to state that they cannot prove God does not exist, but neither can theists prove God exists.

On the other hand, the Catholic Church declares that God can be known to exist by reason.

I agree with the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

But how does the Catholic Church go about proving from reason that God exists?

In particular to atheists?

Just a note, it’s much easier to read stuff when it’s in paragraph form.

Anyways, moving on you question. God can never be proven in the scientific sense, as he is above the physical reality, to which science’s studies are limited. It’d be like a 1D entity trying to comprehend a 3D entity, they simply aren’t equipped to do so. Philosophically, however, one can prove that got not only does exist, but, as a result of out existence, must exist. You should research St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God. In spite of people falsely attributing logical fallacies to them, they are every bit as valid as the day they were formulated.

On my part, I think in order to prove something to exist in objective reality, all parties engaged in the issue must first agree on how to prove something to exist in objective reality; otherwise, there is no way a proof of something to exist in objective reality is going to be accepted by everyone: because there will be always someone with an objection against the proof, at least that it is not yet sufficient, therefore not adequate.

While this thought makes sense, it’s pretty much impossible. People don’t like it when their belief structures are upset (whether that be belief in God or belief in nothing), and are unlikely to agree to a system where such an upset is possible. Beyond this limitation, is the fact that people who reject the existence of God are generally only willing to accept the limited field that is scientific “knowledge.” As I stated above, God cannot be proven scientifically, so people like that have basically backed themselves into a corner by only accepting one, very limited, field of Knowledge. As a result, it’s almost impossible for those attempting to prove God and they denying His existence to reach a common area of discussion from which “proof” can be given.

For the end of coming to concur on what is proof and how it is obtained, let us everyone theist and atheist first consider all the kinds of things we humans seek to prove to exist in objective reality.

As stated, God cannot be proven in a manner atheists would accept as “object.” The majority of Atheists reject absolute Truth, and without a concept such as absolute truth, any objectively philosophical discussion of God would be, to them, one of an infinite number of possible “truths.”

And what kinds of things do humans seek to prove to exist in objective reality?

First, things we humans have access to with our external senses and out internal senses.

For example, to prove to folks so backward that they have never seen a television set, all we have to do is to bring a tv set to them and operate it in front of them for them to enjoy the tv set, viewing it.

Another example, about internal events in our mind and body, like how the perception of food can stimulate the secretion of saliva in our mouth: just get a person to go without food for say just a whole day, then set before him food and his mouth will be wet with saliva from his salivary glands.

Same problem. Most people who reject God cut themselves off from him and no longer acknowledge their need or drive to know him. It’s be like a man who’s gone a week without eating, and keeps insisting that he’s not hungry. Generally, logical will not prevail on such individuals.

What about people who insist that we cannot be sure of our existence, that it is all delusion or illusion or hallucination or we are living in a cyberspace matrix.

People like this are in denial of their own consciousness. In my estimation, such people should seek counseling, as they are denying themselves. however, if they did not exist, they would not have the cognitive capacity to recognize that they don’t exist, therefore they could never come to the conclusion that they don’t exist. Since these people think they don’t exist, the necessarily must exist.

There is what I will call an infallible test to bring them to their senses that it is a certainty that we everyone alive exists.

The test consists in daring him to bang his head harder and harder against a concrete wall or hit his nose harder and harder with a hammer, and it will be sooner than later that he will come to certainty that he exists: so he must stop the test unless he wants to come to non-existence, which for a living thing means death.

That’s kind of a sadistic test…

What about things which cannot be directly accessed by our senses or by way of our conscious experience of their presence?

Such an object is God.

No, God is such an entity. #1: God is not an object and #2: Not all things that cannot be experience by sense are God.

Here is where we all theists and atheists in particular with atheists must come to concurrence on what it is to prove and how to prove or disprove the existence of God.

We theists and atheists want to work together to first arrive at agreement on what I call the indispensable principles of thinking: by which we prove or disprove something to exist, which something is not within our access by way of our conscious experience of it.

What are these indispensable principles of thinking?

KingCoil

The main indispensable principle of thinking is that logic should prevail. Atheism cannot claim to be logical because it insists that Something came from Nothing, which is a physical impossibility.

 

[empther]

The universe could not have existed through an infinite past.

Therefore, there had to be a God to start it.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Using reason, there are many ways to infer the existence of God without being able to show God to the atheist up close and personal. But there is** no** way to show or to infer that God does not exist. The problem for the atheist is that he is using only his head to look for God, while he is using his heart to flee from God. Until the two come together in search of God, the atheist will obstinately deny the God from whom he flees.

I ought to know.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Using reason, there are many ways to infer the existence of God without being able to show God to the atheist up close and personal. But there is** no** way to show or to infer that God does not exist. The problem for the atheist is that he is using only his head to look for God, while he is using his heart to flee from God. Until the two come together in search of God, the atheist will obstinately deny the God from whom he flees.

I ought to know.

How true. The intellect can only understand what the will allows it to understand. It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his worldview depends upon him not understanding it.

 

[ngill09]

The universe could not have existed through an infinite past.

Therefore, there had to be a God to start it.

The fact that people don’t see what’s wrong with this argument is a pretty good reason to think that God doesn’t exist.

 

[davidv]

The fact that people don’t see what’s wrong with this argument is a pretty good reason to think that God doesn’t exist.

Since the argument referred to here is not the Church’s argument, your conclusion is invalid as it is based on a strawman.

Proving that one’s will is always more powerful than any “proof”.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Since the argument referred to here is not the Church’s argument, your conclusion is invalid as it is based on a strawman.

Proving that one’s will is always more powerful than any “proof”.

Yup (on both counts).

 

[ngill09]

Since the argument referred to here is not the Church’s argument, your conclusion is invalid as it is based on a strawman.

Proving that one’s will is always more powerful than any “proof”.

I like how you refer to the arguments made by Catholics in this thread as strawmen.

I suppose I have to agree that the will to believe is more important to Catholics than arguments.

 

[Al_Moritz]

I suppose I have to agree that the will to believe is more important to Catholics than arguments.

Actually the problem holds for believers and non-believers alike. It’s human nature (and even the most intelligent persons are not immune to it).

 

[polytropos]

Refutations of Aquinas’s proofs are often flawed in a few ways.

They often argue that the Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause would need to have a cause. This misunderstands why a Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause is posited in the first place: because the alternative does not work.

What Aquinas calls motion is often conflated with the modern physics concept of motion, though Aquinas really meant “change.”

It is widely believed that quantum physics violate the principle of causality. This is shoddy science. This perception is due to our inability to measure quantum states perfectly and our inability to make multiple measurements of the same electron (Heisenberg uncertainty). It is a misinterpretation of what probability means: elements undergo radioactive decay at an observably random rate, therefore radioactive decay is random and uncaused. Basically, mathematical models for what is observable through physics have been taken at philosophical face value. Our inability to model the causes of quantum phenomena has been taken as evidence that quantum physics violates causality.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Refutations of Aquinas’s proofs are often flawed in a few ways.

They often argue that the Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause would need to have a cause. This misunderstands why a Prime Mover or Uncaused Cause is posited in the first place: because the alternative does not work.

What Aquinas calls motion is often conflated with the modern physics concept of motion, though Aquinas really meant “change.”

Good observations.

It is widely believed that quantum physics violate the principle of causality. This is shoddy science. This perception is due to our inability to measure quantum states perfectly and our inability to make multiple measurements of the same electron (Heisenberg uncertainty). It is a misinterpretation of what probability means: elements undergo radioactive decay at an observably random rate, therefore radioactive decay is random and uncaused. Basically, mathematical models for what is observable through physics have been taken at philosophical face value. Our inability to model the causes of quantum phenomena has been taken as evidence that quantum physics violates causality.

Here is what I wrote elsewhere:

Are there ‘uncaused’ events in science? Let us look at science in practice. As far as I know, being a scientist myself, in the tens of thousands scientific laboratories around the world the principle of looking for natural causes to natural effects is still very much alive. In fact, science as it is currently practiced and will be in the foreseeable future, is firmly based on this central principle. It obviously includes the broader assumption that every effect has a cause.

There appears to be some confusion, however, as to whether the findings from quantum mechanics suggest a loosening of the bond between cause and effect. Such a loosening does not really take place. Yet what does happen in the realm of quantum processes, is that a cause does not have a deterministic effect anymore, but a probabilistic effect. That the bond between cause and effect is unbroken is proven by the fact that the statistical distribution of the effects can be represented by exact mathematical formulas.

This can be well illustrated by radioactive decay: The cause for radioactive decay is the instability of certain types of atom which triggers them to loose a particle, e.g. a beta-particle, and in the process to convert into another element. Yet radioactive decay is also a quantum process.

If you have an agglomeration of 32-Phosphorus (32-P) atoms, or an agglomeration of molecules containing 32-P atoms, it is impossible to tell which one of the 32-P atoms will decay next to give stable 32-Sulfur (32-S). However, it is known that the half-life of 32-P is 14.28 days, i.e. after this time half of the material has decayed to 32-S, regardless which precise molecules out of the agglomeration of atoms do the decaying. This holds for any quantity of 32-P that is more than unimaginably miniscule. Even a chemically barely detectable trace amount of 1 femtomol still has 600 million 32-P atoms. Obviously, this is still such a huge number that, statistically, also this tiny trace amount will always decay with a half-life of precisely 14.28 days. The cause for the decay is the instability of the 32-P nucleus, and the effect is always this precisely determinable half-life. Thus, there is a clear correlation between cause and effect, a probabilistically determined correlation. Certainly, on the local level of the lowest imaginable quantities, statistics cease to work, but the correlation between cause and effect is still there. Let us assume, hypothetically, that we have an agglomerate of just three 32-P atoms. One may decay in, let’s say, the next two minutes, one in 4 weeks, and another one in 10 months. Obviously, a statistically determined half-life of 14.28 days will only work on a global level of many atoms, but not on the local level of these three atoms. The effect is random – who can predict when exactly these three atoms will decay? Nobody can. But is the cause for the decay different from that for a larger agglomeration of 32-P atoms, for which a half-life of precisely 14.28 days could be determined? No, of course not. The cause is still the exact same instability of the 32-P nucleus.

Thus, the effect of decay is still tied to that cause, even though the factor of precise statistical determinability falls away. The cause is the same, regardless if the effect is that the decay takes place within 2 minutes, or after 10 months.

---

It should be clear from this that the concepts of ‘random effect’ and ‘cause-less effect’ are two very different things. ‘Random’ in science means ‘by chance’, ‘unpredictable’, ‘indeterministic’ but not ‘uncaused’.

 

[polytropos]

I think we are basically in agreement. I would argue slightly differently about whether quantum physics are probabilistic rather than deterministic.

Probability is a mode of explanation. We use probability when we either cannot go into further detail or when we must excise data to present a more general, comprehensible datum. If I take a survey of 1,000 voters, I will use probability when I calculate the percentage that voted for A and the percentage that voted for B rather than presenting the data in its most precise form: a list of each person and his or her individual vote.

In chemistry, I refer to the temperature of a substance, not the individual kinetic energy of each atom. In this case it’s not just because a list of each atom and its respective speed is not as useful as the temperature, but because I don’t know and can’t know the speed of each atom. This is not a reflection of reality; it is a consequence of the nature of data collection and mathematical modeling.

Likewise with quantum physics: we see the “effect” that elements decay at a certain rate. We do not know the exact state of every atom. What an unfortunate amount of successful physicists have concluded from this is that decay is necessarily random. This is not a conclusion that we can draw. It is observably random: we know with fair precision that a certain proportion of atoms will decay after a specific amount of time, but we cannot predict which ones. The fallacy is that people have concluded that our inability to predict reflects a lack of cause. We have not even proven that radioactive decay is not deterministic, just that if it is, we haven’t been able to model it. When we talk about radioactive decay being probabilistic, we mean that our mathematical model for it is probabilistic.

And I agree: no sensible scientist actually conducts experiments as though we cannot depend on causality.

I admit, I am not a scientist, just a lay consumer of science materials. I also do not think I am really disputing you here.