Proof of God via The Raven Paradox
Also known as Hempel’s Paradox, for the German logician who proposed it in the mid-1940s, the Raven Paradox begins with the apparently straightforward and entirely true statement that “all ravens are black.” This is matched by a “logically contrapositive” (i.e. negative and contradictory) statement that “everything that is
not black is
not a raven”—which, despite seeming like a fairly unnecessary point to make, is also true given that we know “all ravens are black.”
Hempel argues that whenever we see a black raven, this provides evidence to support the first statement. But by extension, whenever we see anything that is
not black, like an apple, this too must be taken as evidence supporting the second statement—after all, an apple is not black, and nor is it a raven.
Hempel has proved that seeing an apple provides us with evidence, no matter how unrelated it may seem, that ravens are black.
We can take this further: seeing anything, say, item A, provides evidence for all other item, yet the evidence of item A is evidenced by the next thing we see – item B is not an apple – therefore A is an apple.
This means that the existence of everything is contingent upon the existence of everything else but not upon itself.
But wait! For Item A to be an apple it must have, among its identifiers, a unique identifier absent in all “non-Apples”. We will call this A’. It is the thing that makes it an Apple.
Everything that does not have A’ is not an apple.
If a new thing appears, then it must be accompanied by this unique identifier, without this identifier, no other item could refer to it in the negative -> No item that is not <insert
unique identifier of X> is X” and thus the item would not have an identity and would not exist.
NB The Raven paradox applies to a unique identifier of a class – Ravens.
And this is the point: there is room in the universe for one thing whose “unique identifier” is that it does not have a unique identifier, as that condition is, itself, unique. It is also not a member of a class.
This means that the thing that cannot exist, can exist – but only one of them can exist but it cannot be described because of the absence of a unique identifier - and it is not part of a class.
There is not a “class of “Gods” we are agreed that, whatever else atheists might say, none of them say there is more than one “God”.
God is so magnificent that he cannot be described – He defies description. He is the unique Being that can exist without a unique identifier. And this is not unreasonable as within Him must be all possible identifiers, none of which are unique until he uses that identifier as a unique identifier for an object that is <insert unique identifier>.
We cannot say that if there is evidence, there is no evidence and the evidence is then that God must exist, and “that everything that is not indescribable is not God.”
This makes entire sense, as if you look at anything around you, you can say “That is not God” and, in the same way that “everything that is
not black is
not a raven” gives you evidence of Ravens (that nobody denies) the things that you look at give the evidence about God and if you look at enough things, the evidence is overwhelming.