ABSTRACT
Proofs in the God dialogues and debates are a peculiarity of the Western religions and in particular of the Mediterranean religions, and even more specifically refer to the Christian God. If as some theologians and philosophers believe that God can neither be proved nor disproved, their importance may lie not so much in the proving but rather in bringing God into our discourse. From at least Pythagoras and Plato on, the Western tradition has always shadowed intuition, faith, and belief with some form of rationality. It would not be too strong to claim that all forms of Western thought are infected by rationality. Thus, believers are always in a challenge arena provoked to demonstrate the grounds of their beliefs through reason, empirical demonstrations, or logical arguments and proofs. We should not expect to find provocations to prove God in traditions not subject to the Western scientific (and more broadly rational) traditions. To some extent this means a different attitude toward proof in modern and pre-modern societies. The author also considers the role of evidence and argument in the non-Western religions.
The chapter includes an annotated appendix of logician Kurt Gödel's mathematical proof of the existence of God and an appendix on Bayes' theorem and God.
