Whether God's Existence Can Be Proven VIII

One argument which people will sometimes offer for the truth of the proposition that "no sound argument with the conclusion that God exists is possible," is that since God's existence is not empirically verifiable, that is, verifiable through sensory observation, it follows that God's existence cannot be proven. This conclusion follows from the stated premise, however, only with the additional premise that unless a proposition is verifiable empirically it cannot be proven. In other words, a premise is needed which limits provability to empirical provability.

But why should we accept this latter premise? While God's existence may not be provable empirically, His existence might still be provable in some other way.

With this needed latter, additional premise the argument would then be:

1. Only propositions which can be verified empirically can be proven;
2. The proposition that God exists cannot be verified empirically;
3. Therefore, God's existence cannot be proven.

The easiest way to evaluate critically this argument is point out that the assertion, "Only propositions which can be verified empirically can be proven," cannot itself be verified empirically. This does not show that the proposition is false, but it does show that according to the proposition itself people cannot have a sufficient reason to accept it; and therefore people do not have a sufficient reason to accept the conclusion of the argument which includes this premise.

In this way, people who limit provability to empirical provability are forced to admit that they lack a sufficient reason for accepting that "no sound argument with the conclusion that God exists is possible".