Home » God and Gödel’s Theorem of Incompleteness

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Sir Valiant for Truth

Submitted by HisWillness on April 21, 2008 - 10:49am.

Sir Valiant for Truth wrote:

I thought as much. Even if it is a variant of the "god in the gaps" argument, that doesn't change the validity of this particular  form (about like it is also a variation of the first cause argument.) So is the application of Godel's Theorem of Incompleteness to the gaps argument original specifically?

I'm not sure. I've seen it a couple of times already, that's all. I wouldn't be able to point you at a publication. It doesn't tend to hold water, since it rightly demonstrates the limitations of logic ... which says little of the physical sciences, which are based on statistics and probability.

Sir Valiant for Truth wrote:
EDIT: Godel's Theorem is also not a demonstration that we will never have exhaustive knowledge. It is simply that truth outruns formal provability. These two statements are fundamentally different. The one implies incomplete knowledge of a single system, the other implies that there must be a higher proof-system still.

You're absolutely right - I was being a bit too general for a discussion about logic. To be honest, I'm more of an information theory (and thus probability) type, so absolute proofs of things don't do much for me. On the one hand, Gödel did us a favour by taking the wind out of the perfectionism that bore logical positivism, but on the other hand, the common perception is that Gödel somehow disproved the usefulness of logic ... which doesn't really make sense.

Sir Valiant for Truth wrote:
Also, as an added paradox, how is it possible for a universe considered to be finite (about 15 billion light-years across) to have an infinite amount of knowledge to it?

I'm not sure where you got "infinite amount of knowledge". Is that an interpretation of Gödel's? Did I just miss something?

Will: no gyration without funkstification.

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