existence of stars

From: Saibal Mitra <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 15:31:33 +0200

Bruno wrote (on the FoR list):
``Lee Corbin wrote (answering Russell Standish):

>> >I can prove that God sees stars. Clearly a God which can see
>> >stars is greater than a God that cannot see stars, and God is
>> >'that which nothing greater than' can be conceived, and since
>> >we can conceive of a God which can see stars, it follows that
>> >God can see stars. Q.E.D.

I said (probably to quickly):

>> You are using some implicite hypothesis here: mainly that stars
>> exists, isnt it. Because if God see stars and if there is no stars
>> poor little God is hallucinated.
>> i'm afraid Russell Standish is right here.
>> If God see stars and if God exists, then indeed stars exists, but
>> nobody has ever give any evidence for stars or gods. Alas.
>> (Independently of the question of the existence of Gods, or stars).
>>
>> You can only prove (following indeed St. Anselm) that if God exists
>> and if stars exists, then God sees stars.

Charles Goodwin comments:

>Who says there's no evidence for the existence of stars? I for one am a
>convinced stellist and firmly believe that stars exist. (Including the
Sun -
>it's bigger than me so I don't argue with it.)

I certainly agree we have strong evidence that stars and galaxies are
relatively stable heroin in the most probable stories we share.

But this means that we *bet* (inductively) on stars (as a part of a
world-view we are betting). St. Anselm was trying to *prove*
(deductively)
the existence of God. You told me that
you can prove that God sees stars. For that purpose you must prove
the existence of stars (to bet on it is not enough). Or you just mean
that God can imagine stars, as seen by us in some story? Or do you think
God shares our story?

BTW, do you know that Godel wrote a formalisation in the modal logic
system S5 of St. Anselm proof of the existence of God? (I'm not sure
there is any evidence that Godel takes his proof seriously, but it is
a nice little piece of exact and very modest theology. See Vol 3 of
the complete work of Godel edited by Feferman & Al.).
My opinion? Well I don't believe in S5 :-)´´

Can't we prove that stars (and for that matter anything we observe) exist
in at least some universes? Since we have identical copies in those
universes, it really doesn't matter.

Saibal
Received on Fri Jun 01 2001 - 06:36:21 PDT