God Only Knows
Nozick, Robert
GOD ONLY KNOWS ROBERT NOZICK Proving God's existence isn't all that easy—^ven when you're God. So, I ask you, how can people expect to do it? To appreciate the problem, imagine that you're...
...If the people don't already have the idea of me and my properties, they won't realize how the signal exhibits these properties...
...To be fully effective, a signal will not only have to symbolize me...
...As an object symbolizing me, the signal would have to command respect...
...Couldn't whatever they saw, however intricate and wonderful, have been procured accidentally by some unintelligent mechanism...
...I knew that the major difficulty with the sun as the signal was that when people became scientifically sophisticated, they would seek one complete cosmology and cosmogony, one unified deterministic theory of everything...
...that it is the gravitational focus of their planet and the energy source of life and appears at intervals, because the planet rotates with respect to it, and is dazzlingly beautiful, and so on...
...Despite reservations, I was fond of this way of contacting people, and used it...
...To appreciate the problem, imagine that you're God—or, better, that I am— and think about the straightforward way: I send them a direct signal or message...
...I exist...
...If there were some object which was the energy source of all life on earth, one which dominated the sky with its brilliance, whose existence they couldn't doubt, which was unapproachable and which couldn't be poked at or treated condescendingly, an object about which their existence revolved, which poured out a tremendous quantity of energy—only a small fraction of which reached them—an object which they constantly walked under and whose enormous power they sensed, one they even were unable to look at directly, yet which did not oppress them and make them feel as subjects (and so provided a model for how they might unresentfully coexist with an immensely dazzling power...
...His work appeared most recently in our October 1977 issue...
...P.S...
...But deep down, I think I always knew it wouldn't work...
...Exhilarating questions to ask...
...A solution does suggest itself, but it is only with effort that I can now reawaken the old enthusiasm...
...But others will...
...A signal that was continually repeated, or permanent though discovered later, wouldn't be good enough either...
...That wouldn't really do the trick though, would it...
...if it were immense and also similar to billions of others scattered throughout the universe so that it couldn't have been created by more advanced beings from another galaxy or by any being lesser than the creator of their universe...
...The message hypothesis about the sun falters only after people have the notion 'of a unified deterministic cosmology...
...A signal which is a symbol does create a problem, though...
...If some language had shapes like cumulus clouds meaning that I exist, how many people would think I was constantly sending them messages...
...But when you're God, you don't get stumped right away...
...For them, it would be an accident or brute coincidence that the same object plays a role in all these facts...
...And so they would think this theory, when discovered, would give them a unified explanation of all the facts about their sun, and so make unnecessary the hypothesis that I was communicating to them...
...it also will have to give people the idea or concept of me, so they can know what the symbol is a symbol of...
...But I ask you, how much experience have you had being dead...
...The signal should be a powerful object, playing a central role in their lives...
...You yourself might try to devise an even better way that I could use...
...Whatever the nature of a signal, why should people believe it came from mel Skywriting would have dumbfounded earlier generations...
...if it were dazzlingly spectacular and beautiful...
...No one should have to be an historian to know that the message had come...
...its meaning should shine forth...
...When you think systematically, things start to fall into place...
...Instead, they would have to explain the conjunction of these facts by a conjunction of individual separate independent explanations...
...No typical medium-sized main sequence minor star could do the whole job, all by itself...
...With the message that I exist written in their sky and throughout their life, would further proof be needed...
...If I put up a signal, like thunder and lightning, at the beginning, people might never come to understand it...
...an object which was not permanently before them but which could be relied upon to reappear...
...The problem is to devise a signal that will carry that message perfectly...
...if there were such an object, could anyone doubt that through it I was revealing my presence to them...
...So before they succeeded in formulating the specific theory, they would think that these initial conditions, whatever they turned out to be, would provide a unified explanation of all facts...
...It is somewhat dismaying to be a rejected hypothesis...
...They would imagine its contours and realize that it would contain some initial conditions...
...However, I'm afraid there isn't a foolproof way I can demonstrate my existence to people...
...In the beginning...
...Then you might check to see whether I have...
...there had been a sound heard...
...I could write in the sky the statement that I exist, or say in a big booming voice, "This is God talking...
...no one should have to take another's word for it...
...Of course, they wouldn't succeed in this right away...
...And what's to stop people from misinterpreting the message after they encounter it, or even from denying altogether that there is a messaged (Should I put that past them...
...The people who come later would never even believe Robert Nozick is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University and author of Anarchy, State and Utopia...
...What more fitting place for the clinching message than in the initial conditions...
...To match my being the source of all life, all life on earth should depend (mediately) on it and center about it...
...no people traipsing all over it, cutting and analyzing it in their laboratories, or dominating it...
...Couldn't anything, even what is apparently a miracle, come from the technology of advanced beings from another star or galaxy...
...it would have to exhibit at least analogues of some of my properties and my relationships to people...
...As I was saying, it's not all that easy...
...Having some of the properties it speaks of and itself instancing part of its message, makes the signal a symbol...
...Drawing these consequences would be a non-mechanical task, presupposing some sense of fit-tingness and appropriateness about such matters...
...It would have consequences about their currently open astronomical questions...
...Certain things are obvious from the start...
...Let it be available to different sense modalities, so one defect of sense doesn't cut someone off from the message...
...For they wouldn't have one unified explanation of the facts about the sun, e.g...
...It should capture the attention...
...While they're alive...
...Thousands of years later, wouldn't others think the discovery had been made before that written form of the language was developed, and that fraudulent records of the language's origin had been planted by fanatics to deceive those who came later...
...You mighf think the same problem must arise again, even when proof is given to someone who has died...
...Suppose people in the 20th century discovered that the path of an elementary particle spells "God exists" in English cursive script...
...Won't their scientific methodology require them to accept it...
...So, the signal itself would have to be analogous to me...
...The trick is to approach questions systematically: first to see what conditions an optimal communication would satisfy, then to make one like that...
...This hypothesis isn't empty of predictive content, either...
...if it served to give the very idea of me to some cultures and civilizations that lacked the concept...
...It's not difficult to make any particular physical signal, or to decide which message to send...
...Therefore, I should so construct the universe and so pick its initial conditions that when they pursue the actual cosmogony, when they get past the blind alleys and begin to see the real story, they'll encounter me talking to them...
...But, still, there's the defect of the interim years after the message hypothesis weakens but before the adequate cosmogony is discovered...
...The signal would have to carry a message unmistakably about me, if about anything...
...an object overwhelmingly powerful, warming them and lighting their way...
...When they confirm the consequences of the hypothesis for many of their currently open questions about the sun and its relation to life on earth, about stellar evolution, and so forth (consequences no other one theory can entirely predict), won't people then accept the explanatory hypothesis that I'm sending them a message...
...Except, need I mention", for the initial conditions themselves...
...if their daily bodily rhythms depended upon their relationship to the object, if it supplied energy for all life processes upon earth and for the beginning of life as well...
...It should endure permanently, or at least as long as people do, so that it is available to all of them...
...None of their scientific accounts would explain as much, or coherently reduce the number of independent explanatory factors by as much as the hypothesis that the properties of the sun and its relation to the earth are such as to best fit its being a signalmessage revealing my existence...
...To cope with the fact that anything can be interpreted in various ways, the signal would have to show its meaning naturally and powerfully, without depending on the conventions or artificialities of any language...
...It should be observable by everyone...
...People who fail to see why the earth's orbiting around the sun or the sun's being dazzlingly brilliant are "appropriate"—given the hypothesis—will not best ferret out its further implications...
...Or that they were in contact with anyone at all...
...They couldn't explain why there is one thing that has all these properties...
...First of all, in what language would I write or talk...
...but they should be able to rely upon its return...
...How could people be certain it was I they were in contact with...
...And if that signal did make sense in some language, later generations would conclude the language was cooked up to make it mean something...
...Better, it should not be constantly before the people, so that they will notice the difference it makes when it is before them...
...Either people wouldn't figure it out, or they wouldn't trust it if they did...
...They would try to explain the facts about the sun without assuming that I designed it to symbolize myself, or that through it I am sending them messages...
...It would simplify things to make it unapproachable...
...Sounds are even worse...
...A perfect signal should be spectacularly present, very noticeable and impossible to miss...
...If I emblazoned my name at the center of their existence, could any one of them fail to see...
...Understanding the message shouldn't depend upon complicated and convoluted reasoning which is easily mistaken or faulty...
Vol. 3 • January 1978 • No. 3
