- (Photo: Says-it)
Two scientists have declared they have proved the existence of God using nothing more than advanced mathematics and a computer.
The two scientists Christoph Benzmuller of Berlin's Free University and his colleague, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo of the Technical University in Vienna, used famed Austrian mathematician Kurt Godel's theorem based on principles of modal logic.
Godel, who died in 1978, put forward a theory regarding God based on Modal logic that extends propositional and predicate logic that covers operators expressing modality. Modality is a linguistic construction that allows a person to attach expression to a belief set.
Godel stated that a higher power must exist because, by definition, God can have no creator and which nothing greater can be conceived.
Furthering along those lines if God exists then we could not, by extension, conceive him as greater than if God physically existed, so, therefore God must exist.
Linguistically it is roughly the same as stating that if a person is required to believe in the existence of God for proof of a corporeal being than God has to exist or that person would not exist. However, Benzmuller and Paleo used advanced abstract mathematical reasoning to prove the linguistically based theory.
The pair recently published their conclusions in their submission, "Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Godel's Proof of God's Existence," to arXiv.org,
"It's totally amazing that from this argument led by Godel, all this stuff can be proven automatically in a few seconds or even less on a standard notebook," Benzmuller told Spiegel Online.
While there is still skepticism surrounding this newly proposed work, it does speak volumes at the direction of future mathematical thinking, given most of the calculations were formulated on a laptop.
"I didn't know it would create such a huge public interest but (Godel's ontological proof) was definitely a better example than something inaccessible in mathematics or artificial intelligence," Benzmuller stated. "It's a very small, crisp thing, because we are just dealing with six axioms in a little theorem. … There might be other things that use similar logic. Can we develop computer systems to check each single step and make sure they are now right?"