Thursday 15 November 2007

Is God dead?

Idling in the web I read the following about a Norwegian trying to prove that God doesn't exist.

-"Our project is nothing less than proving that God doesn't exist. In each program I will commit a deadly sin in a new country. ... If God doesn't react by the end of the series he is declared dead."

Well, I wouldn't care if God was dead. But this Norwegian clearly know nothing about how to prove that God doesn't exist. Any believer might just as well say "He chose not to act". In order to falsify the existance of God you need God to be falsifiable. Otherwise it's like beating someone capable of changing the rules of the game while playing.

An example of this. Say that I have constructed a device that can detect with 100% accuracy if God is within a 25m radius. I start the device and it says that God is not within 25m. I claim that this is a proof that God doesn't exist. How ever, any believer might simply say "You can't detect God if he doesn't want to be detected." or "He wasn't there at the time, since he doesn't want to proved, he wants to be believed.". Thus, any godly being can't be proven to not exist. Any attempts at doing this are futile and therefore should be ignored. It's better to spend our time at tasks that may lead to results that benefit us, rather than to chase ghosts.

Article in SvD (In Swedish)

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