Add link for scientific review

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Hi, this project is pretty interesting. Can you please put a link to the relevant scientific peer review in the main README in a way that one could dig further in this subject?

Thanks.

[ceilican]

Hi Fagner!

Thanks for your interest and for your suggestion. I have just implemented it. Please have a look on the main ReadMe now. I hope this is what you wanted. In case there is still some missing information that you would like to see there, please let me know.

Best regards!

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

@Ceilican Probably I didn't expressed myself very well, I am interested in the basic premisses regarding this theory. What does it proves exactly? Does it uses the scientific method (observation, hypothesis, prediction, experiment and conclusion) or it's just philosophical?

Thanks.

[ceilican]

Hi Fagner!

I have just added a few paragraphs in the ReadMe. I hope they answer your question.

We also have a few texts and interviews available in the Press folder of the repository. Have you looked at those already?

Don't trust what most journalists say about our work (or about any event, in fact).

If you still have questions, let me know.

Best regards!

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Ok, I've read the readme.

In this case, one thing that should be changed is the "God" name. God has several definitions among cultures, so using a subjective concept may not the best way to express a potential objective fact. You would be basing your findings in an existent unproven definition instead of a newly discovered one.

It's a similar case to the "god particle", which represents the newly discovered "higgs boson" and has nothing to do with the popular and culture-based definition of a "God" or "Gods" (it only serves to drive massive confusion by the media).

[ceilican]

That (i.e. that the "gods" of which ontological proofs speak are not necessarily the same "gods" of which various religions speak) is a good point. And it is something that philosophers have already discussed quite extensively. The book "Logic and Theism", by Sobel, devotes a few sections to this topic, for example.

One advantage of formal ontological proofs is that they always contain precise and consistent logical definitions of the concepts (e.g. "God") they are talking about. On the other hand, religions tend to work with vague and often contradictory definitions, in order to accommodate the superstitious beliefs of a large number of followers.

I wouldn't mind using another name for the object of ontological proofs. We have just followed the traditional terminology of Anselm, Descartes, Leibniz, Gödel and other philosophers, who have worked on this before us. We used the same name as they did. To distinguish different definitions of "god" in different ontological proofs, we have used different names (e.g. G_A, G_H, G_B, respectively for "Anderson's God", "Hájek's God" and "Bjordal's God") in some of our papers.

I consider the precise definition of concepts and the invention of new names for different concepts one of the most important duties of science. However, If everyone came up with a new name for every slightly different concept she imagined, we would soon run out of words, and the proliferation of words would make it harder for people to understand each other. We must keep in mind that "naming" (and language in general) is a social process. As such, it happens very slowly and it cannot be imposed by a single person. In the meanwhile, what we must always do is to precisely define the concepts we are talking about, at least whenever there is a high risk of misunderstandings. And this is where formal logic can help us.

When we were approached by journalists, we have always emphasised the definition of "god" used in Gödel's ontological proof. But in most cases journalists did not emphasise this in their articles. This is understandable, since the more vague an article is in this respect, the more attention it will attract and the more it will sell. Unfortunately, this is beyond our control.

[FagnerMartinsBrack]

Quite a challenge indeed.