A Proof of the Existence of God



A Proof of the Existence of God

and

Why does Universe Exist

7 Nov 2005

Revised: 2 Dec 2005

By Torgny Tholerus

Part I: A Proof of the Existence of God

Introduction

This is a scientific paper about God. I will here examine what is scientifically possible to say about God. Specifically I will prove that it is impossible to deny that God exists today. I start by studying compound structures.

Compound structures

Many things in the world consist of compound structure, simple parts that build up more complex objects. We have:

● A number of atoms building a Molecule.

● A number of molecules building a Cell.

● A number of cells building a Human being.

Now we take a closer look at me. As Descartes have said I have a mind, and this is the only thing I can be certain of exists. The part of my mind that you can communicate with I will call the personality. So in this essay the word personality will denote the part of may mind that constitutes my “person”. It will not denote my personal behavior.

Now, suppose I have a scientific Cell in my body, and this cell is going to study me. What will this cell see?

This cell will see a lot of other cells interacting and cooperating with each other. The cell will see that I behave as if I had a personality. But how close the cell looks, he will never se any personality. He will only see a lot of brain cells sending impulses to each other, but there is no physical experiment or observation that can show that my personality exists.

First the cell thinks of Poppers falsifiability criteria. The hypothesis that I have a personality is not possible to falsify. So it will not be science to say that I have a personality, he thinks.

But it is the truth that I have a personality. And it is not science to deny the truth. So it will be impossible for the cell to deny that I have a personality.

What about you then? When I study you, I can not see any personality at you. The only thing I can observe is that you behave just as if you had a personality. There is no physical experiment I may conduct, to decide if you really have a personality. I have no possibility to falsify the hypothesis that you have a personality.

But I can see that you resemble me. You look like me, or you behave in the same way as I behave, or I can communicate with you. And I have a personality. So the most rational conclusion is that you also have a personality. That is why I believe that you have a personality.

Now, let us return to the compound structures. There is no reason to believe that this building more complex structures will stop at the human beings. So what will happen if we combine a lot of human beings? We will then get the mankind. What properties will this mankind have? Does this mankind have a personality of its own?

When we look around, we see a lot of humans interacting and cooperating with each other. But we can never observe the existence of any personality of the mankind.

But as we saw in the case with me and the cell in my body, it was not possible for the cell to deny that I have a personality. It is the same for the mankind. It will not be possible to deny the existence of the personality of the mankind. So the most rational conclusion is that this personality of the mankind exists.

What shall we call this entity, the personality of the mankind? We could call it The Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever you like. But the most commonly used name for this entity is God. So I will use that name in this essay.

But before we look closer on God, we can set up a more complete list of compound structures:

● A number of Strings building a Quark.

● A number of Quarks building an elementary Particle.

● A number of elementary Particles building an Atom.

● A number of Atoms building a simple Molecule.

● A number of simple Molecules building Proteins and DNA molecules, that can reproduce under good conditions.

● A number of complicated Molecules building a Cell.

● A number of Cells building an Organ.

● A number of Organs building a Human being (with a personality).

● An Organization is build by a number of Human beings.

● A Nation is build by a number of Organizations and Institutions.

● A Religion is build by a number of Churches and Nations.

● A Mankind is build by a number of Religions and Nations and Institutions.

And God is the same as the personality of Mankind.

A Science of God

What properties does this God have? What will a science of God look like?

First, if we compare me with a cell in my body, we see that I am extremely more powerful than the cell in my body. The same relation then ought to be true for the relation between God and me. So we may then draw the conclusion that God is extremely more powerful than what I am.

But God is not almighty or omnipotent. But this does not matter in practice. If God is almighty, or if God is extremely more powerful than me, have no real importance in the daily life.

If we return to me, we also see that my personality did not exist before I was born. The atoms in my body did exist before I was born, but it was only when the atoms in my body were composed in a special way that my mind and my personality started to exist. The same is true with God. God did not exist before mankind. The only thing we can be sure of is that God exists today.

So strictly speaking, it is not correct to say that Jesus is the son of God. It is more correct to say that God is the son of Jesus because the Christian God was created after that Jesus had lived. It was Jesus that created God.

By studying me we can draw one more conclusion: I am extremely more intelligent than a cell in my body. So this makes it reasonable to believe that God is extremely more intelligent than a Human being. This is a reason for us to have faith in God, and to trust Him.

But this faith should not be blind. Just in the same way as I may be wrong, so is it possible for God to be wrong. So if God tells you to do something, you should always be critical, and think of if His will is reasonable. Mostly it is, but not always.

One more thing: I want that all cells in my body should be happy because when my cells are happy, I will be happy. From that we can conclude that God wants all human beings to be happy. So God wants you to be happy.

How to Communicate with God

When God have a personality of his own, then it ought to be possible to communicate with that personality. Is it possible, and if it is, how should this be done?

One reasonable position is to use the method used by the humans for the last 2000 years, i.e. by Praying.

But do we really communicate with God when we pray? That we do not know. But this is not so important. The important thing is if it works or not. If the prayers work by really communicating with God, or if it is just some sort of Positive Thinking, or if it works by making the Immune Defense work better, or if it work through Telepathic contact between the humans, is not so important.

So this will be the subject of a scientific test: To make an experiment to test if the prayers work or not.

This may be done by selecting 100 persons that have a personal wish. They shall write down their personal wishes. These wishes should be such that they could be fulfilled either if you pray or not.

Then you divide the group randomly in two groups. One group shall pray every day to God about their wishes. While the other group is not allowed to pray. After a year we will check how many in every group that got their wish come true.

But there will be problems with this experiment. It can be hard to prevent the prayers for those how are not allowed to pray, because your unconscious mind might pray for you, without you knowing about it. One other problem is that some or the persons are believers and others are not believers. So in the result you ought to look at the believers and the nonbelievers separately.

So in this experiment can only those participate that know that they are believers or nonbelievers. Those that don’t know if they believe or not ought to be excluded.

One more problem is that it might be hard for the nonbelievers to pray to God. But it might be possible if they realize that they do it in the sake of science. And there is also the opposite problem it might be hard for the believers not to pray. But when they pray, they might try to avoid the wish that they had written down.

There might also be problem of deciding if a wish has come true or not. One unemployed person may have a wish to get a job. If this person gets a job, but is being kicked from that job after a month, has then his wish come true or not? In this case the checking could be if he has a job or not on the day of checking. But in other cases it might be harder to decide.

Religious Language

How can you make God more powerful? God is not omnipotent, just much, much more powerful than the human beings. The power of God depends on how many human beings that are willing to follow God’s will. The human beings are the tools of God.

How can we then make a person to be more willing to follow God’s will? If that person really believes that the power of God is unlimited, then he or she will be more willing.

So this is why you in religious rituals have a special language. The purpose of that language is to make God more powerful. The religious language is not logical, and it should not be logical.

In that language you say that God is almighty and that God created the universe and that Jesus is the son of God. This language is the correct language to use and believe in the religious rituals, because this will make God more powerful.

What is God

In the list of compound structures, we had several examples of collections of human beings. We had the organizations, the nations, the religions, and the mankind. But what is God here?

One reasonable idea is that every religion is a god. There you will then have the Christian god (the Lord), the Islamic god (Allah), the Jewish god (Jahve), and a couple of other smaller gods. These gods fight with each other, and they try to defeat each other. They do it by the crusades and by missionary activities.

But the best for mankind is to have one single God. That would be the best for all of us. It is better to cooperate than to fight each other and to hurt each other.

But a reasonable thought is that every collection of humans has some sort of soul. Every religion has a soul, every nation has a soul, every political party has a soul, and every organization has a soul. But this soul will be more rudimentary the fewer people there are in the collection.

Even small organizations with a hundred persons will have a soul. So DSV has a soul. So it will be possible to pray to the soul of DSV. But probably you will not get any answer when you pray…

Testimony

In the science of God it is interesting to include direct observations of God. So I will here tell my experience about when I heard the voice of God:

I was salvaged the 16 July 1982. Before that I had been a fanatic atheist for all my life.

Two days after the salvation I prayed to God for the first time in my life. And on the 3rd day I prayed for a wife and a living. And then I got the answer that God already had chosen the woman who should be my wife. I did not know who she was. But the only thing I needed to do was to keep my eyes and ears open.

On the 5th day of salvation I traveled to a Christian camp. And there on the 8th day I took part in a boat trip. After the trip I and a woman walked together up to the houses. And when we were almost there, I heard a voice saying: “She is going to be your wife”. I was very surprised and I did not know what to believe, I had never heard the God’s voice before. So I decided to continue to have my eyes and ears open.

Three weeks later I moved into this woman’s flat. Then I had got both a wife and a living. Three months later we got married, and now we have got five children and we are still married.

But this was the only time in all my life that I have heard God’s voice. But that is enough. When you have heard God’s voice once, you will never doubt any more.

But was this really God’s voice? Could it not have been a hallucination? Yes, it could. But one reason for this not to be a hallucination is that I only have heard this voice once. If I had hallucinated, then I probably should have done it more times.

The Bible

As a curiosum it might be interesting to look at what the Bible says about God being the mankind. We will then find these quotations:

Romans 12

4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Romans 14

7For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

1 Corinthians 12

 12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

So even the authors of the Bible were in some way aware of that God had something to do with the mankind.

Part II: Why does Universe Exist?

Introduction

Now that we have concluded that the most probable is that God started to exist two thousand years ago, then we have the question of why Universe exists. It is not possible to answer that question with that it was God that created Universe. So we will need some other answer on that question.

Why does Universe Exist?

The answer to this question is very simple: Universe exists because it is a mathematical possibility.

The laws of mathematics are always true. They are true either if something exists or if nothing exists. So all mathematically possible Universes exist, and our Universe is one of these possible Universes.

But you can equally well say that all the other Universes do not exist. Because it is impossible for us in our Universe to get in contact with some of the other Universes. If we could come in contact with some other Universe, then this Universe should not be a separate Universe, but instead it would then be a part of our own Universe.

One very simple example of a mathematically possible Universe is John Conway’s Game of Life. You can find a description of it at the URL: .

In this Universe you can have compound structures that behave in different ways. You can have a Glider that moves through this Universe, and you can have a Gun that generates a stream of Gliders. This Universe is governed by three simple rules and a starting condition. When the starting condition is given, then the future behavior of this Universe is completely determined.

Most of the mathematically possible Universes are uninteresting. For a Universe to be interesting, it must be enough rich. It must be enough rich for it to be possible to build structures that may reproduce themselves, like the DNA molecule. But it must not be too rich, because then the Universe will be chaotic.

More conditions for a Universe to be interesting are that it must be possible for life to emerge, and it must also be possible for creatures to emerge that manage to reflect over their own Universe. I.e. some sort of creatures resembling human beings.

So it is self-evident that the Anthropic principle must be true. There exist Universes with different values of the basic physical constants, but our Universe must be one where life as we know it must be possible. There is no need for any Intelligent Design or Divine Design.

But will it then be possible to deduce which Laws of Nature that must be true in our Universe? No, it is not possible. The number of interesting Universes will be much, much fewer that the number of possible Universes. But still there will be many interesting Universes with different Laws of Nature. And it is not possible to know which of these Universes that is our own Universe. The only possibility to find out which Universe we live in is to study what properties our Universe really have.

The concept “all”

Most properties of the Universe are impossible to deduce. But there are some properties of the Universe that is possible to deduce. One such property will show up by studying the concept “all”.

What do you really mean when you talk about “the set of all natural numbers” or “the set of all sets”? What is the meaning of the word “all” in these phrases? To make these phrases to get a meaning you must define what is meant by “all”.

One possible definition of “all” in “the set of all natural numbers” could be to include all explicit natural numbers that some human being have said or thought of, or will say or will think of, plus all natural numbers in between those numbers.

This might look as a circle definition because the word “all” is used in the definition. But in this case it is not a circular definition because the set you describe is finite, and therefore it is theoretically possible to replace the word “all” by an explicit enumeration of all these numbers.

So the number 17 is included in this set, because I am saying this number just now, and the number 4711 is included of the same reason.

But a consequence of this is that the set of all natural numbers is finite. So there exists a biggest natural number. We may call this number N.

But what will then happen with the successor of the biggest natural number, i.e. N+1? It is nothing peculiar with that. N+1 is a natural number, but it is not included in the set of all natural numbers. Because N+1 is not an explicit natural number. And the set of all natural numbers did only contain the explicit natural numbers.

When you, as all mathematicians use to do, conclude that N+1 is contained in the set of all natural numbers, then you make an illegal conclusion. Then you make a conclusion that is not consistent with the definition of the concept “all”.

But will it not be possible to define the concept “all” so that this conclusion will be legal? No, no human have succeeded to give such a definition, and it is very probable that no human will ever succeed to give such a definition. How should that be done? It will never be possible to construct any “infinite” sets.

But what about Peano’s axiom then? One of these axioms says that: “for every natural number it is possible to construct the successor of that number”. Does not this axiom construct an infinite set? No, it doesn’t. It just constructs a lot of numbers. As soon you try to define what is meant by “for every”, you will end up in a finite set.

It is the same with “the set of all sets”. We can call this set S. One possible definition of “all” here would be all explicit sets that any human has thought of or will think of. Here “all” can be replaced by an enumeration of all these sets.

How about the set itself here? Is S included in S? No, it is not, because S is not an explicit set, and therefore not included. It is not possible to define the concept “all” so that S is included in S.

So it is logically impossible that a set can contain itself. It is impossible to construct a set that contains itself.

A consequence of this is also that the Russell set, consisting of all sets that does not contain itself, is exactly the same as S. And this set does not contain itself. So there is no paradox. You will only get a paradox if you make illegal conclusions.

The total conclusion of all this is that “infinity” is not a logical concept, it is an impossible concept. There is no infinity, it has never existed any infinity, and it will never exist any infinity. The word “infinity” is a total meaningless combination of letters. To talk about infinity is unscientific.

(The proof here above is not a complete proof. There is a much better and more complete proof in my essay: “Explanations and Universal Laws”, in the section about the Universal Laws.)

Finite Universe

The conclusion of all this is that our Universe must be finite. All Universes must be finite. (Also the total number of Universes is finite; they consist of all Universes we can think of.)

So our Universe is finite in both time and space. Furthermore time and space must be discontinuous, there must exist a smallest time interval and a smallest space distance.

That the Universe is finite in space is easy to understand. Because Universe started as Big Bang, and then Universe was very small. When Universe expands it will be bigger and bigger but it will still be finite all the time.

That the time is finite is a little harder to understand. But one possibility is that the time goes in a circle. So Universe starts with a Big Bang, expands, and then shrinks together again, and end with a Big Crunch. Then it will continue with a new Big Bang, and so it goes on. But the second turn is then exact the same as the first turn; everything that happened in the first turn will happen in the second turn in exactly the same way, because it is the same time moments in both turns.

Another possibility is that Universe will continue to expand and expand. At last the Universe has become so empty, so nothing more happens. Then the time has ceased, and in that way the time has become finite.

To judge from the observations, the second alternative seems to be the most probable, because the expansion speed of the Universe seems to increase all the time.

When it comes to the smallest distance and the smallest time interval, the Natural units of Planck seems to be the most natural. They are the Planck length that is about 10-35 meters, and the Planck time of about 10-43 seconds. You can read more about them at the URL: .

Conclusion

In this paper I have proved that it is not possible to scientifically deny the existence of God. I have also shown that it is probable that God exists today. The human beings are the cells of the body of God. And then I have developed a Science of God, and discussed what properties God may have.

Then I have explained why Universe exists, and concluded that Universe must be finite.

Torgny Tholerus

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