Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Does God really Exist ? : Let's see what Science , Philosophy and Mathematics say about it.

 


Ever since my childhood I had gazillion questions regarding existence of God.

Does God exist ?  Why should we worship God ?  Can I manipulate God's existence ?  Does God punish you if you do not worship him ?  Why should I donate money to Temples rather donate the same to charity ?  Why can't I top my class just by worshiping God ? Does God really expect me to create debt to provide him offerings if I am already in debt ?

Well, based on my silly questions above if you are judging me that I must be a moron and an Atheist then you are partially wrong. I might be a moron but definitely not an Atheist . Look at my other set of questions : Why can't Science disprove the existence of God ? If God doesn't exist then why does more than 90% of the people in this world believe in God ? If you are hopeless, is faith(god) the solution ? Is God actually a concept rather than reality of existence ?

Yes , I am an agnostic and my quest is to really understand the logic behind existence of God.

SPOILER ALERT : I have not yet found a completely convincing answer regarding existence of God but I have made some crazy explorations which gets me closer to get a convincing answer regarding existence of God.

1) What does Science say about existence of God ?

Nothing!  Literally nothing!



By Science , I meant understanding of natural phenomenon. Mathematics is the language used in Science but lets talk about mathematics later. For now lets just say in this context "Science" means experiments , objective evidence , observable facts etc.

Over the past thousands of years , mankind has used science to understand the universe , natural phenomenon , logic behind most common things we come across everyday. But still there are so many things which mankind is trying to understand. We might have discovered millions of organisms living on this planet but there millions more which are not yet discovered. There are places on this planet where mankind is not able to explore like deep oceans(Oceans cover almost 71% of earth) , remote polar regions etc. Recently a robotic machine called "Nereus" had reached approx 11 km deep in Marianna Trench but still it is not enough since that was not the end of ocean.

So clearly science does not give me answer to existence of god because it itself has so much left to explore.

2) What does Philosophy say about existence of God ?



Science is part of Philosophy but in this context "Philosophy" means understanding of mankind , existence and relationship between them.

I have been taught many things in school about various scriptures , epics(Mahābhārata and Ramayana) , history of mankind etc. If I look for answers to existence of God , some are spiritual in nature while some are religious. Chanakya in his book "Chanakya Niti" says "Mother is above all God" (by the way Chanakya is one kickass philosopher . I just love his preaching and really like his delivery style. If you are wondering why I used the term "kickass" instead of "great" then you must read "Chanakya Niti" to understand it). And there is a famous sanksrit verse "अहं ब्रह्मास्मि" (Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi) which means "I am the ultimate energy" (in other words "I am God").



Does this mean God is a person who is dearest to us ? Are we worshiping ourselves ? Was I praying to myself all these days to get stuff done ? . OMG!! Too much to digest.

I have also watched talks of many modern day Gurus/Yogis/Godmans (sensible and nonsensical charlatan gurus). But speaking about sensible gurus , yes there are a lot of things which makes sense about what they say. It starts getting dull for me once they start speaking about spirituality , mind , inner peace etc because I really do not get it. May be I am not that intelligent enough to understand it but anyways those doesn't make sense to it.

So I have not yet got convincing answer or logic for existence of God in the world of philosophy.

3) What Mathematics say about existence of God ? 



All my life till this day , if there was anything which made sense to me and which I could clearly understand then that would be Mathematics. I really believe Mathematics is the language of universe.

Mathematics is transparent. You have set of axioms which makes sense to you and prove a theory using these basic axioms. Then the new proved theory becomes an axiom. So simple right?

While reading some random article on facebook , I came across this field called Ontology which is kind of philosophical study of being but it has more to do with logical explanation rather than spiritual/religious explanations.

Kurt Gödel who is said to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time , made all the mathematicians question the whole system of mathematics itself through his mind blowing "Gödel's incompleteness theorems". After going through "Gödel's incompleteness theorems", I was really impressed on how logic can be used to prove the impossible. You guessed it right , then it must be in some way possible to get answer to "Existence of God" using Mathematics.

After Kurt Godel died , there were many of his unpublished theories which were recovered from his personal belongings and one of them was the great "Gödel's ontological proof" for existence of God.


I was very excited and started to go through the theorem. Franky speaking , It was not that easy proof to understand. I had to first learn several axioms which are not basic , Gödel's assumptions which are very skeptical in nature and other mathematical concepts like Modal Logic to finally understand the proof.

After spending some time understanding the proof, I was very impressed and truly speaking if those assumptions were to be axioms then it would have convinced me that God does exist but I am very skeptical about the assumptions made in "Gödel's ontological proof" for existence of God. So that's not enough for me to get convinced but far far far better than other areas I explored because you know I love Mathematics and it makes sense to me.

Conclusion :

After exploring multiple areas to understand the existence of God , I clearly understood that this is not a question to which you get simple answer. 

Finally a random thought passed my mind which is : If paradoxes can exist in nature , if a number can be positive and negative at the same time , Why can't there be a scenario of God's existence and non-existence be true at the same ? Why can't Theist and Atheist both be correct ? 

My Opinion : Existence of God is a paradox. Now, how do we solve paradoxes ? Only God Knows :P.




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