On Proofs and Being of God
In this section of 'A Body of Divinity' Watson offers six proofs for the existence of God. Personally I feel this is the most dated of Watson's sections. Since it is more than 400 years old that isn't too surprising. Arguments from design, the ontological argument and more can use some updates. I have worked on creating a few theological arguments for the existence of God yet those are novelties more or less. Ultimately one has faith or not and uses one's reason or not in choosing to believe that the first particle or waveform that collapsed into an eigenvalue formed as a field phenomena given to exist by God.
I especially like Watson's fifth 'proof' for the existence of God.
[5] That there is a God, appears by his prediction of future things. He who can foretell things which shall surely come to pass is the true God. God foretold, that a virgin should conceive; he prefixed the time when the Messias should be cut off. Dan 9:96. He foretold the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, and who should be their deliverer. Isa 45:5: God himself uses this argument to prove he is the true God, and that all the gods of the heathens are fictions and nullities. Isa 41:13. Testimonium divinitatis est veritas divinationis. Tertullian. To foretell things contingent, which depend upon no natural causes, is peculiar to Deity.”
I'll innovate some modern proof criteria. There are newer and numerous proofs efforts I would guess. Here is my 'Blue Balloon Argument'.
02:07pm Feb 22, 2002 EDT
The Ontological Argument and The Argument from Design are well known. Of the numerous others that provide analogies regarding the absurd in attempting to disprove the existence of God, one of mine is the Blue Balloon Argument...
The Blue Balloonist point of view is up and away from the ordinary self-originating inflationary universe models. The universe is like a balloon in rapid growth of expansion from singularity to omega. The hot big bang is the force that contained all the inertial/momentum force mass necessary for the composition of the entire universe. The clumps of coalescing mass such as galaxies are on the balloons walls. From its humble yet radical beginning the future of the balloon was pre-designed/determined.
Some of the balloon's 'intelligent' phenomenalities are not sure if the balloon will expand forever, blow up, dissolve or collapse under its own stretched elastic strength/gravity back down to a humble singularity, and perhaps inverse right on through to expand in the opposite direction as an anti-matter balloon. Radicals have proposed that the balloon came into being by crashing into another balloon (ballooning membrane theory).
The riders of the balloon theorize a reversible-direction universal balloon going back and forth like a pendulum from anti-matter universe to matter-universe may obviate the need for a designer as the balloon has existed eternally-from the beginning. Some riders have commented that the air bag space is expanding quicker with space from an unknown source. Isn't it absurd for the balloonists to conjecture that no intelligent designer of the balloon could exist?
One discerns that philosophical arguments and first cause and the existence of God differ somewhat from arguments about the mechanics of creation and of arguments that the mechanics of creation require a designer. The philosophical methods are easier to reduce to yes-no propositions that must ultimately be decided with faith. It is difficult for finite beings with finite minds to comprehend the infinite. At best one might understand abbreviations of infinite things or perhaps classify trans-finite infinities along the mathematical set paradigmata of the mathematician Grigory Cantor. Yet one returns to the parameters of an initial non-temporal being always existing whom foreknows all things to be created or phenomenally appear within creation.
Watson writes-
“God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power,
holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
Here is, 1: Something implied. That there is a God. 2: Expressed. That he is a Spirit. 3: What kind of Spirit?
I. Implied. That there is a God. The question, What is God? takes for granted that thereis a God. The belief of God's essence is the foundation of all religious worship. Heb 11:1.
‘He that comes to God must believe that he is.' There must be a first cause, which gives being to all things besides. We know that there is a God.
[1] By the book of nature. The notion of a Deity is engraven on man's heart; it is
demonstrable by the light of nature. I think it hard for a man to be a natural atheist; he may wish there were no God, he may dispute against a Deity, but he cannot in his judgement believe there is no God, unless by accumulated sin his conscience be seared, and he has such a lethargy upon him, that he has sinned away his very sense and reason.
[2] We know that there is a God by his works, and this is so evident a demonstration of a Godhead,”-page 42
“Psa 14:1. ‘The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.'
He durst not speak it with his tongue, but says it in his heart: he wishes it. Sure none can be speculative atheists.”-page 45
“[3] We may prove a Deity by our conscience. Conscience is God's deputy or vicegerent. Conscience is a witness of a Deity. If there were no Bible to tell us there is a God, yet conscience might. Conscience, as the apostle says, ‘either accuseth' or ‘excuseth.' Rom 2:15. It acts in order to a higher judicatory. Natural conscience, being kept free from gross sin, excuses. When a man does virtuous actions, lives soberly and righteously, observes the golden maxim, doing to others as he would have them do to him, then conscience approves, and says, Well done. Like a bee it gives honey. Natural conscience in the wicked accuses. When men go against its light they feel the worm of conscience. Eheu! quis intus scorpio? [Alas! What scorpion lurks within?] Seneca.”-pages 43-44
“6] That there is a God, appears by his unlimited power and sovereignty. He who can work, and none can hinder, is the true God; but God can do so. Isa 43:13. ‘I will work, and who shall let it?' Nothing can hinder action but some superior power; but there is no power above God: all power that is, is by him, therefore all power is under him; he has a ‘mighty arm.' Psa 89:13. He sees the designs men drive at against him, and plucks off their chariot wheels; he makes the diviners mad. Isa 44:45. He cutteth off the spirit of princes; he bridleth the sea, gives check to the leviathan, binds the devil in chains; he acts according to his pleasure, he doth what he will. ‘I will work, and who shall let it?'”-page 44
The omniscience and omnipotence of God-of an eternal being allowing a Universe to be and become has innumerable parameters and/or models, potential configurations and relationships to contingent, sen tient life within. I described a little of that a comment about Brian Josephson/G.W.F. Hegel Evolution of Spirit misc. (below). Much of contemporary discussion might use computer algorithms as formalisms and models for designing artificial intelligence. Kurt Godel's works about abstract sets comprising incompleteness (one cannot create an accurate finite description of the unbound infinite) exemplify the problems that not only computer programmers have searching for a way to make lines of computer code become a living mind as smart as they are perhaps, or able to understand the aesthetic difference between light and darkness, but physicists have in constructing a complete account metaphysics of the phenomenal Universe.
Recently I watched a video of the physicist Roger Penrose named :The Emperor's New Mind, Quantum Mind, Quantum Consciousness, The Laws of Physics” at Youtube. In the video he relates the reasons why he thinks a computer cannot be given an actual mind with lines of programmatic logic. Essentially he thinks that the cytoskeleton, or the infrastructure that make up the brain neurons and synapses functions at the quantum level (with all of the issues of quantum super-positioning, quantum uncertainty and so forth) and thus cannot be modeled in programmatic logic.
Of course it might be possible to design an automatic operating quantum computer one day with its own brand of artificial intelligence with real-world integration able to randomly reconfigure material reality according to its own inscrutable will without any sort of moral reservations-yet I think that wouldn't be a very good idea. That would be something like designing a robotic arsonist with its own will to set as a security guard in a fireworks factory. At any rate it would take quite a long time for the clever writers of computer code and physical designers of quantum computers to evolve that sort of technology... a century or two at least. So it isn't much of a clear and present danger.
Brian Josephson/G.W.F. Hegel Evolution of Spirit misc.
Recently I encountered a philosophical and cosmological worldview of Brian Josephson-I believe the eponymous inventor of Josephson junctions (for quantum tunneling)- a Nobel laureate, that resembles G.W.F. Hegel's idea about God realizing himself in history (described in The Phenomenology of Mind). The idea transcends the boundaries of naive evolution vs. creationism quite a bit. Josephson believes that quantum mechanics can evolve its own complexity inclusive of mind, yet his theory stipulates an initial observer starting the development or evolution of a system of evolving quanta that becomes sentient biologically. I want to expand the parameters of the Josephson theoria to extrapolate and explain theological implications.
The physics and what is known of biological systems of aggregating change and increasing complexity and complex structures appear to support Josephson's thesis that is comparable to a neo-Hegelian evolution of spirit realizing itself in history. Josephson's theory obviates the need for the extra dimensions of M and String theories. In those theories there is a vast number(10 to the 500th power?) of ways of putting dimensions together to form a Universe such as this and hence equally as many mathematical forms to describe it. Finding the right formula and dimensional model to account for the nature of this Universe would be rather challenging. Instead of a virtually infinite number of dimensions that with randomness or perhaps logical permutation experiment (an anthropomorphism) with the generation of a Universe capable of supporting life-an approach often used by atheists to negate the anthropic principle/Goldilocks 'just rightness' physical constants of this Universe such that it supports life, and observer initiates or primes the initial quanta to be and become.
Such an observer could be hypothesized to have evolved for-himself in some way before the Universe existed, although Christians stipulate that God existed from eternity rather than having a beginning. One might consider that the 'ancient of days' did not simply evolve mind as the first created Person and become God to all subsequent Universes. In a way that is incomprehensible to the human mind, God always was. God was and is prior to the existence of the first virtual particle, erg of energy or dimension of possible space-time. In any event once God was, and as God was, with omnipotence and omnipotence all potential creations, Universes and evolutions were with God and for-God.
At any rate though, since God existed He would be able to jump-start any number of possible Universes though they could be designed to evolve like a growing, branching tree. Because God is a sentient mind who may evolve sentient minds in contingent Universes it is likely that as an omniscient mind he foreknows all contingent minds that exist or would exist in any possible Universe. God's being transcends and encompasses all temporal space-time and contingent sentient beings within a given universe.
Though this is a scholastic sort of theological speculation rather than scriptural it is useful to show that evolution theory is not incompatible with God creating the Universe, with physical determinism nor with God continuing a sustaining role knowing the content of all sentient thought within a physically evolving Universe. Alpha through Omega.
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